CONTEXT 184 : JUNE 2025 21 LEADERS OF CONSERVATION THOUGHT proposed that the vast Italianate textile mill – once the world’s largest building by floorspace – might accommodate a museum, homes and light industry. That month, SAVE organised a seminar in Saltaire, where politicians, museum officers, the public and those with experience converting mills, were invited to discuss the building’s future. In 2001, Saltaire was designated as a world heritage site, and Salt’s Mill now houses the largest collection of David Hockney’s art, as well as shops, restaurants and light industry. The sheer quantity of formerly industrial space continues to present enormous opportunity for development. In 2021, Historic England estimated that, if converted, approximately 2.3 million sq metres of unused floorspace in mills across northern England could provide around 42,000 homes.1 Alternative schemes have become a vital tool in SAVE’s armoury, used to prove a building’s capacity for sensitive regeneration. These schemes, produced with the aid of architects and structural engineers, are not simply speculative. In 1979, Marcus Binney proposed an art gallery at Bankside Power Station, and by 1992 the decision was made that Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s mid-century behemoth should be converted into Tate Modern, now one of the world’s largest museums of modern and contemporary art. Similarly, when the Union Chapel in Islington was threatened with demolition in 1982, SAVE suggested ‘hiring out the chapel itself for musical performances’. In 1991, congregants established the chapel as a venue in order to fund its upkeep. Now one of London’s most-loved performance spaces and acknowledged as one of the best examples of nonconformist architecture of the nineteenth century, the Union Chapel has hosted names such as Amy Winehouse, Elton John and Adele, while still serving its active congregation. Yet these schemes are also tools in their own right. When Smithfield General Market was under threat, SAVE initiated, fought and won two public inquiries alongside the Victorian Society. The first was in 2008 against the building’s total demolition, and the second in 2014 against a proposal that would have gutted its interiors and replaced the glass roof and magnificent dome with overbearing office blocks. SAVE’s commitment to raising the public profile of built heritage perhaps reached an all-time high during this campaign, when an image of SAVE’s ‘army’ of Lady Gaga lookalikes marching in defence of the market was reposted by the pop icon herself (her famous meat dress provided the perfect link to the battle for Britain’s finest wholesale meat market). In 2012, SAVE commissioned architect John Burrell to design an alternative vision for Smithfield, submitted as a rival planning application. The secretary of state for communities and local government cited the economic viability of the SAVE/Victorian Society proposals as a key reason for the other scheme’s refusal, as they indicated that ‘such a regeneration scheme would be possible, viable and deliverable’. Here, the alternative may not have prophesied the market’s eventual use – the soon-to-be new home of the London Museum – but proved that Smithfield could continue serving the City as a public space, just as it has for almost 150 years. Catalyst for positive change SAVE’s focus on reuse not only fights for the future of the historic environment, but also the communities immersed within and defined by it. A campaign to stop over 400 Victorian SAVE’s 1982 publication The Country House: to be or not to be featured Hazells Hall before and after its restoration by Kit Martin. In 1986 SAVE proposed that the vast Saltaire mill might accommodate a museum, homes and light industry. This 1982 pamphlet suggested Union Chapel’s potential for use as a performance space. Below left: Lady Gaga reposted SAVE’s ‘army of Gagas’ marching over Westminster Bridge in defence of Smithfield Market. Below right: SAVE’s poster celebrated victory at public inquiry in 2008 over the scheme that would have flattened the General Market Buildings at Smithfield.
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