- 1 week ago
Kevin McCloud's Listed Britain - Season 1 Episode 3
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:04The more I think about it, the more I think that listing our heritage assets, our great buildings
00:12and our monuments and our landscapes, is a very British thing. It reflects a natural British
00:18impulse to protect what we hold dear, to hold on to these things regardless of how old or
00:25inconvenient or eccentric they are. It's as if we don't like to ask the question, what
00:33can we replace this with? And we much prefer to ask the question, if this went, what would
00:42we be losing?
00:53Music
00:54Music
00:55Music
00:55Music
00:55Music
00:55Music
01:01Music
01:12If you're a structure, it doesn't get much better than being Grade 1 listed or Category A in
01:20Scotland. It means you're not just admired and loved, but protected. Not just old, but exceptional.
01:30The brilliant thing that no photograph can prepare you for here is that the space is vast.
01:39In Britain, each nation has its own heritage body, responsible for assessing historic buildings. In Scotland, they can list buildings
01:48directly. In England and Wales, they have to put them forward to government for final approval. Whatever the process, their
01:55work is vital.
02:03Music
02:06Music
02:07Music
02:15Music
02:17Music
02:50Music
03:05Music
03:21Music
03:23Music
03:45Music
03:51Music
04:20Music
04:21Music
04:47Music
05:05Music
05:13Music
05:36Music
05:49Music
06:06Music
06:07Music
06:17Music
06:23Music
06:25Music
06:29Music
06:34Music
06:35Music
06:36Music
06:38Music
06:47Music
06:48Music
06:50Music
06:50a team of 12 weavers working for two years and it was designed by the great 20th century artist
06:58graham sutherland the moment you're approaching the front glass door you're already in a line
07:05of sight with that it's just so big it's extraordinary i met somebody actually who
07:10came into the cathedral yesterday she used to come here as a child she said i just used to
07:14be terrified she said it was his feet that used to do it for me it was so big the
07:21whole cathedral
07:22is a container for wonderful works of art tapestry sculpture lettering stained and engraved glass and
07:30wrought iron all by different hands and yet all speaking the same post-war language you may wonder
07:37how and why all this craftsmanship in this building works together harmoniously and it's because
07:44the architect basil spence took a meddling interest in everything he was like the director the
07:50conductor of the orchestra he even drew the layouts for the organ pipes i mean anybody else would just
07:59leave it to the organ builder but no he handed his drawing over to harrison and harrison the great
08:05organ makers and said make it work spence was involved in every detail
08:12he designed the crown of thorns screen at the entrance to the remembrance chapel and the
08:19striking baptistry window frame he did however neglect to put in one really important thing
08:28spence for whatever reason did not really adequately provide for toilets for ladies who might come and
08:35worship in the cathedral and so the cathedral authorities um within a few years of the opening
08:41just became so frustrated by that yeah that they made the decision without consulting spence that this
08:48space should be repurposed for ladies toilets it was designed by spence as the bishop's room and spence was
08:54so angry that he publicly resigned by letter i think to the daily mirror on the basis of all this
09:02had happened the
09:02headline in the paper was architect flushed out of cathedral i mean this was his i suppose his opus
09:09magnus this cathedral his most beautifully crafted casket of jewels and then somebody else sort of starts
09:14playing with it i mean absolutely oh poor man great story though yeah i know hard to believe isn't it
09:24anyway here we are yeah i bet you gents don't have the same story do we don't no
09:29do we don't have the same story despite this old-fashioned misgiving this building has established
09:35itself as one of spence's greatest achievements but until now the people who actually built this place
09:42have been forgotten my father was one of the tribe of men from all over the caribbean who came here
09:53to
09:53help rebuild this cathedral and now i i have been downstairs into the archives and looked with
10:01academics to see if we could find in the archives any any records of their the names of this international
10:10tribe band of men but nothing okay there's nothing there's no official record that tells us that he
10:18and others were here particularly men of the windross generation because your father's generation yes
10:24yes which seems a bit insulting given the fact that your father built this cathedral helped he he was a
10:34people builder so he would have made connections yeah with the other men from wales and poland and
10:40um india and other parts of the caribbean and i can actually picture him with a pencil behind his ear
10:48he always had a pencil behind his ear when he was making things and somewhere on his person a spirit
10:54level yeah to make sure it was was just right yeah yeah extraordinary he is a maker as a builder
11:03so he'll
11:03have been involved in concrete pouring and shuttering and last minute changes no doubt and a great deal
11:10of collaboration and and all the time surrounded also by the artists and the makers and the craftspeople
11:16who were doing all the the the add-ons you know the stained glass the tapestry the the metal work
11:22i'm i'm
11:22sorry that i didn't have the opportunity to sit down with dad as i'm sitting down with you
11:28to ask him dad what was that like i'm i i i missed that opportunity but what a conversation i
11:35would have had
11:39this place resonates with the human energy of those who built it and furnished it in the 1950s
11:48and also those who come here today
11:53see i've come here and i brought you here not because it's on a list of important places to visit
12:04an important grade one building it is all of that but for very personal reasons because it's
12:10just one of my favorite places on the planet
12:15so i can't dissociate my personal feelings my emotions from a sort of generic architectural
12:25appreciation or or a love of a particular craft or an admiration for an artist or any of that because
12:33it's all bound up i'm just very happy to be here
12:40very happy
12:56there's a generally accepted view in conservation that you should always wherever possible try
13:00and make sure the original purpose of the building is kept
13:05otherwise the building can wither the thing about this place the empty former cathedral and the new
13:13one next door is that that message that purpose is still super active and it's defined in in that very
13:22simple act made by the dean in 1940 after the fire to scratch two words onto that end wall one
13:32of peace
13:33forgiveness and reconciliation that message is still being broadcast from here with the same energy
13:44and goodness me
13:47it's needed perhaps now more than ever in the world
14:04the greatest battle in conservation is to pull a building back from the brink of ruin to save what
14:12is rare and precious mavis bank is one such building an 18th century villa in midlothian in scotland
14:22it's category a listed the equivalent of grade one and anarchy has been one of those trying to save it
14:30mavis bank was the first building to be called a villa actually in scotland which is to say that it's
14:34not a massive great big stately home it's a it's a sort of small country house and it was built
14:41in the
14:421720s so right at the beginning of the kind of georgian period and it's a really pioneering building
14:46it was really the first building to look like that to have that kind of design style that then became
14:53so familiar you know the whole of the new town in edinburgh looks like that but when it was built
14:57you
14:58know it was a it was a real novelty it was the first palladian villa in scotland and it was
15:05designed by
15:06william adam who worked closely with his hands-on client sir john clark of pennyquick to design it
15:13remarkably for a building made 300 years ago we've got a very detailed picture of how it was built
15:19we know everything about it because all the records survive every bit of correspondence between the
15:25architect and the crafts people and the client exists we've got the bills for every single bit
15:32of carving every pane of glass everyone who pushed a wheelbarrow or you know lifted a block of stone we
15:38know that we know what their names were we know what families they were in
15:45for a hundred years mavis bank was a country house
15:49then it changed hands by the 1870s it was an asylum
15:59mavis bank was very much at the forefront of the therapeutic treatment of mental illness rather
16:04than it being treated as a sort of borderline criminal condition the guy who ran it was a real
16:09pioneer of um treating mental illness with um you know with calm activities with space and fresh air
16:17and the grounds at mavis bank formed a big part of that so even as an asylum mavis bank was
16:25a place of
16:25forward thinking but then the national health service arrived the hospital closed and it passed
16:32into private ownership bought by a man called archie stevenson basically a really destructive owner
16:40who seems more or less deliberately to have set about bringing it down and so it went from being
16:46completely inhabitable and having a roof and windows and all the things that you'd expect
16:50to being a derelict shell within really a decade he turned the forecourt into a scrap yard there were
16:58burnt out cars where the formal garden had been then in 1973 a fire gutted the interior and by the
17:061980s
17:07the council was set to demolish it until the architect james simpson stepped forward
17:15the demolition contractor brought their machines to the site and the demolition was about to be started
17:25the lothian building preservation trust then raised an appeal and it went to the court of session which is
17:35the scottish equivalent of the high court and i was present when at two o'clock in the morning
17:42the judge lord kirkwood issued an interdict which is the scottish for injunction preventing the demolition
17:50from proceeding two in the morning the bulldozers were already on site a judge's signature was all
18:00that stood between this building and rubble the judge also ordered that the preservation trust
18:08should maintain a 24-hour watch on the site to maintain its security for 18 days and i was one
18:18of those
18:19who spent several nights here uh guarding the place from possible intruders
18:30the fight didn't end there the lothian preservation trust wanted it restored but first they had to
18:38find who owned it before he died archie stevenson claimed he'd sold it not only that he'd sold it
18:46but that he'd sold it in three parcels to three separate individuals which then nobody could find these
18:54people because i mean he probably almost certainly made them up completely he also sold off every
19:00access road so even if you could prove you owned it you couldn't get to it for the last 10
19:06years
19:06i and others have given up all hope really of seeing mavis bank survive but james didn't give
19:15up nor did anna and if you really really determined to pull it off it's about will it's ultimately about
19:24will i felt personally if i can't with all the colleagues and the resources and the charity that i
19:32work with them having worked in the sector for 30 years if i can't help pull this off i will
19:37personally have failed it's not good enough we have to do it they persuaded the local council to pursue
19:47compulsory purchase of it and then in 2024 the national heritage memorial fund awarded the landmark trust
19:56just over five million pounds if everything goes to plan we should be starting work on site building
20:03the drive this autumn this autumn after 50 i mean the fire happened the year i was born which is
20:09sadly more
20:10than 50 years ago on the bottom of one of the plinths carved in latin 300 years ago is a
20:21message
20:22the last lines of it say something along the lines of may this building the older it gets become more
20:31beautiful and may posterity take what has become broken and restore it intact it is like a message from
20:41him to say one day you will all be looking at this and it will be broken and i want
20:48you to know that i
20:49want you to mend it and that's going to be part of your job 300 miles away in wales and
21:03less romantic
21:04than a scottish villa is another structure that local people are fighting for newport transporter bridge
21:14there are only eight transporter bridges left in the world most were demolished this one nearly was too
21:22finished in 1906 it's a hanging platform that carries people and cars from one side of the river to the
21:29other
21:32you can see 1924 here it was a penny to go across on the platform but if you walked up
21:39and walk over
21:40the top and back down the other side it's cheaper certainly and there are apparently pictures of guys
21:46carrying heavy bicycles their lunch box up the steps all the way to the top across and then back
21:52down the other side to go to the steelworks newport was a booming coal and steel town at the turn
22:00of
22:00the 20th century and the bridge was a vital link to allow the steel workers to get to work for
22:0750 years
22:08the bridge superintendent kept a diary of everything that went on on the bridge always starts off with
22:15a weather forecast fine day with a light westerly wind then it's mainly what are the guys working doing
22:21they'll be doing some painting there's mechanics they often it's only three or four lines but then
22:28buried in the some of the longer entries i always looked at a lot yeah all this more here there
22:34must
22:34be something happened saturday the 3rd of april 1948 fair day heavy showers with a fresh westerly wind
22:43mechanics on routine work we have had a bit of trouble with footballers changing into their football kit
22:49while waiting on the car we have given them their final warning
22:56naked footballers were the least of the bridges problems though
23:00it stood on this exposed site for 120 years and corrosion and attack by the weather has been a
23:07constant problem replacement parts for it are also tricky just finding the correct material and the
23:15correct sizes of components there that definitely throws up a lot of challenges the bridge was
23:21designed by a french engineer in metric in millimeters but built by british workers who only had access to
23:28british steel made in imperial sizes each piece had to be matched as closely as possible to its metric
23:35equivalent the original substitutions were recorded during construction but many of those records have since been lost
23:44the original drawings never matched what was actually built and they're currently trying to repair the bridge
23:50and get it working again it's a massive learning curve it throws up its challenges in terms of not
23:56having proper drawings you're using photographs you're going through archives you're working with the designers
24:01to try and figure out um certain characteristics of the bridge from the past they can't trust anything that
24:08they can't measure and nothing comes off a shelf every single part has to be made from scratch
24:15all that pushed the cost of maintaining it up and up
24:20into the mid-80s it just became so expensive it needed expensive repairs it wasn't running because
24:28it wasn't safe basically so there had been talk of whether we demolish it whether we sell it to americans
24:36but it was a much loved landmark so the town of newport came together to fight for it
24:44there was an article written in the local paper saying we need to get rid of this ferocious
24:50petitions were got up letters to the editor saying we know we love this thing if we don't have this
24:55transporter bridge what else does newport have it's the symbol of our city it's iconic and we couldn't
25:05ever see it not flourish and we could never not try and get it to work it's also a symbol
25:11of our working
25:11class roots these were steel workers going back and forth for their jobs that is the backbone of this city
25:20now thanks to almost 17 million pounds in funding it's been given a new life
25:28we're here to refurbish the bridge try to repair bits that are quite badly corroded in
25:34terms of steel work blast away the old paint give it a new coat of paint
25:39replace a series of quite worn components on the bridge pins and cables trying to conserve as much
25:45material as we possibly can some things however have to remain unused this is the transporter
25:53rich toilet and as far as i'm aware it's the only transporter bridge in the world to have its own
25:57toilet unfortunately it's no longer functioning there was no trying to think of a polite way to put it
26:03it was just a long drop it's taken millions and it will continue to take millions it's taking time
26:10as well it's taken longer than we hoped every time we move a meter we find more but that's the
26:15reality
26:15of these kind of structures and we just gotta accept it when i'm long gone in 120 years i hope
26:20and expect
26:36it to still be here
26:38there is something almost magical about the idea of listing
26:44we assume once a building is recognized as exceptional it won't just survive but be cherished
26:52it'll be cared for funded and kept alive that's not what happened here
27:01this is a mothballed building
27:06it's empty it has however the highest level of protection it is grade one listed the thing is
27:13of course is that that protection doesn't keep the rain out it doesn't protect the building from decay
27:19it doesn't stop these timbers from rotting or the frame of it falling apart
27:27listing means you need permission to change just about anything but what it can't easily do is protect
27:34a place if it's not being used at its core bagley hall is the oldest building in manchester built for
27:41sir william de bagley in 1320 who supposedly made his fortune from cheshire's salt mines
27:49it's 700 years old and is now owned by historic england it's been vacant for the last 60 years so
27:57it was a man house to start off with then it became a farmhouse and then manchester corporation
28:03took the building on it was used as a timber store can you believe it you know this wonderful
28:07hall was just a storeroom for timber and then it was listed in 1952
28:15but the buildings that thrive are the ones people will pay to use and visit
28:21and a medieval hall with nothing in it in south manchester has never been an easy sell
28:28it's not like a national trust house where there's furniture that's important or paintings on the wall
28:33or anything like that yeah the national trust spent a lot of effort trying to make a place feel alive
28:38so the owners have just left yeah even though we all know there's still a red cordon and a pine
28:44cone sitting on the chair meaning you can't sit there in your mind how do you make a building like
28:48this accessible financial viability and money is always the problem it's always the biggest challenge
28:53at the minute it's it's beautiful but it's cold and it's got no soul and it's got no heart because
28:59there's nobody using it
29:02the great hall is extraordinary because of the way it was built it has no parallel anywhere in
29:11england every upright timber is two and a half feet wide and where the walls meet is a single corner
29:17post of oak one meter square in any other medieval hall the big timbers hold the roof up and smaller
29:26ones fill in between here there are no small ones the only people who built anything like this were
29:33seemingly the norse and they'd been gone from this part of england for 400 years by then the tradition
29:40it seems remained these huge timbers that you see are really really uh what makes this unique and
29:50unusual because these timbers are so beefy and muscular to the north wing timbers this big except
29:57in cathedral roofs hidden okay yeah you know they're on a giant scale yeah yeah almost like a child's
30:04drawing of a medieval building yeah but blown up yeah building on steroids exactly we think that these
30:11timbers have come from lime park which is a huge estate further east yeah and we've done dendrochronology
30:18on the timbers tree ring dating and dated them to 1398 1398 and i love all of the cusping details
30:27on
30:27the timbers how it looks when you're in the hall it's not just structural it's beautiful as well isn't it
30:35there is hope for this beautiful place and it comes from the people who love it who live locally
30:41a group known as the friends of bagley hall who are devoted to all things medieval
30:48morning morning good to see you fine outfits thank you i see you're not carrying a pike i'm not carrying
30:55a pipe or a musket no i'm a merchant yeah it's a way of illustrating and educating people yeah living
31:01history if you like we basically advocate for the building and make sure that the local people have
31:08somewhere that they can discuss what's going on with the building well at one time it was the hub
31:12of the community it was the most important building in the area it could easily return to a such a
31:18role
31:19what kind of activities would you like to see going on here all sorts re-enactments bringing the public in
31:24open days weddings theatres anything that can bring people into the building bring it back to life
31:30we're going for ideas the fight for bagley hall is sort of really just starting it's going to take years
31:43it's going to cost millions it's going to take the whole of this community to really get behind the
31:49scheme and to stay there steadfastly and what's going to inspire them well just up the road from here
31:57an hour away is another building that was taken on by the same building's preservation trust that has
32:04acquired this and here the community fought for it and won
32:15this is lytham hall on the filed coast in lancashire completed in 1764
32:23the clifton family lived here for three and a half centuries and then harry clifton inherited
32:31he was quite a character put it that way yeah and his mother lived here i think into the 60s
32:36but he um had spent most of the money by then so um he foreclosed on the mortgage
32:43so in 1963 the hall was taken over by guardian royal exchange who used it as their northern corporate
32:51headquarters for more than 30 years until the late 90s when the community rallied together and finally
32:58won it back somebody at british aerospace yeah gave the community some money yeah to buy it back that's
33:07right i think they donated a million pounds and it was hugely transformational but what the community
33:13didn't have is an operator or somebody to run it on a day-to-day basis right and that's where
33:17we came in
33:20when heritage trust northwest took on lytham hall it was dilapidated after years of neglect
33:26as well as looking after the day-to-day running of the hall peter has spent a decade putting the
33:32place
33:32back together we went through 18 layers of paint we had a wonderful chap called nigel leaney and nigel
33:42did all the paint archaeology on the house so he found the ochre color that you see the house painted
33:47in today it's original 1764 color when the house was new the paintwork was straightforward to restore
33:56compared to the furniture and artwork going back to the last clifton henry talbot de vere clifton he
34:03was henry but he was known as harry he was he was a bit of a gambler and he started
34:08to sell vast
34:09parts of the collection off he even had things like renoirs and stuff like that his mother violet
34:13clifton really put a foot down and said there's no way you're selling that so there's probably about
34:1830 percent of it was here that managed to escape the auction rooms the one good thing is that the
34:23portraits survived i don't know whether he had an emotional attachment to them but they survived
34:28they're usually the last thing to go yes they are family yes yeah of course yes so you've had to
34:33assemble have you of course yes we've begged steeled and borrowed along the way even you know if your
34:39mother's going into a care home and and they've got antique furniture is there any chance we can have
34:43it and things like that because the place was that empty that's ruthless and then what you do
34:48then it becomes a rolling collection because you replace things so they were good at one time
34:53and then you get offered something else the collection is just bettering itself all the time
34:58places like this need people like peter they need people who care and their numbers are legion we have
35:06400 volunteers 65 70 house guides we open seven days a week once once we turn easter we do weddings
35:15we
35:15do georgian afternoon tea twice a day so all these things are you know help keep the place sustainable
35:21the volunteers from the local community are invaluable in helping run this place but when it comes to the
35:28technical repairs of plaster joinery and gilding you need a specialist are you up there warren i am
35:37oh what a beautiful world you work in oh it's exquisite
35:44i just think that blows me away about this building is the plaster work i mean all this is beautiful
35:50and it's well attached and there's not much damage to any of this some bits on this side of the
35:57over the years there's water damage right so it's quite rough on that side so when a piece needs
36:03repairing and this is all i'm guessing some of the moldings for some of the latest stuff will be plaster
36:08of paris yeah and some of the earlier stuff will be wrought lime yep and what are you repaying with
36:14you go
36:14along various mixes various mixes and you've got to wait until it's just going off to get it on and
36:20mold it before because it yeah just to that point where it feels plastic and then you follow on with
36:25paint clearly paint in the back then the gold everything else two coats it needs to look all
36:31right up here for me can't just go with that'll do because it'll look good down there it's got to
36:34be
36:34right for sure it's beautiful though it is i'll come back and see when it's done hopefully yeah
36:39thank you very much warren i'm gonna just slowly back out now like the muppet that i am
36:56in order to take these buildings and wrangle them back into life to inject a vitality into them
37:04that requires a huge amount of positive energy yes there's money to raise and yes there are people
37:12to bring together and communities to inspire but the forces at work here are generally celebratory
37:25we restore and repair and we renew and we kind of breathe life into places through championing
37:31these are energies which represent hope and belief and imagination those are the energies that
37:41actually matter in our built world they matter in new buildings and they sure as hell are necessary
37:49in the reawakening of the buildings of the past
38:01the fights that save buildings aren't always dramatic sometimes they start with a decision a whip round
38:09and a terrifying amount of money for a tiny village that's how this building was saved great malvern priory
38:29oh
38:31oh this is very beautiful
38:37when henry viii was ransacking catholic monasteries in the 16th century
38:42the local people stepped in here alistair is the church secretary the population of malvern was
38:51about a hundred families and they had their own church and it was a partly wooden structure and it
38:58was rotting and starting to fall down and they looked at what was left of the old monastic chapel
39:04and they approached the crown and the crown said well yeah you could you can have it for 20 pounds
39:12sharp intake of breath from locals at that point 20 quid i mean how much is that in today's money
39:18it was roughly the equivalent of two years salary for a skilled craftsman
39:23so that was really a bargain for a building of this size 50 60 000 pounds so a real bargain
39:29knockdown price
39:34what those families bought was priceless they didn't realize at the time but the stained glass here is
39:41some of the finest in the country commissioned by henry viii and richard the third the great east window is
39:49linked to the workshop of john thornton of coventry the man behind york minster's masterpieces
39:56this is glass of international significance sitting in a tiny worcestershire town you have
40:05the most exquisite glass here and there's a huge quantity of it there is it makes up um the largest
40:13collection of english medieval 15th century stained glass in the country seriously yes the survival of
40:20it is is remarkable in such quantities this glass dates from the late 1400s it's survived the reformation
40:29the civil war two world wars and five centuries of english weather that isn't luck
40:40it is thanks to the efforts of the locals through the centuries that the glass was looked after
40:45people were far-sighted enough to remove the glass during those periods in the first world war and
40:51and in the second and they were stored in the second world war in 40s inclined boxes and then all
40:57reinstalled reinstated after the war was over somebody should have made a film about that
41:05beautiful as it is this is not just an historic relic to be preserved and admired
41:11malvern priory is a working building with all sorts going on in strange corners of it
41:17aha
41:21oh it's a little community of campanologists hello
41:26excellent yeah secret society up here yeah indeed yeah yes am i interrupting we're about to start
41:34i've never witnessed this this is exciting keep your feet on the floor hands to yourself and you'll be fine
41:38that's generally what i've been told to do in life so just watch yeah look two trouble's going she's gone
42:02going she's gone
42:03oh
42:09oh that was too good because it was a it was a proper octave and you maintained it and nothing
42:15went out of
42:15order and then... I got it wrong. That was really beautiful. I was going to say, why learn it? Why
42:22do
42:22this? I don't understand. What's the appeal of it? You can't do it on your own. When you get it
42:27right
42:27and eight people or ten people get it right, all you've done is pull your bell into the right
42:32position and the sum of the whole is greater than the parts. And if you get a nice piece of
42:38ringing,
42:38you stop and you look at each other and you think there's a buzz. How long have you all been
42:43doing
42:44it? I first started bell ringing about 70 years ago. How long? 70. Seven zero. You don't look old
42:54enough to be 70. No, I first laid hands on a bell rope at the age of eight and I'm
42:59now 78. So if I'd
43:01taken up bell ringing, I'd have a full head of amazing hair. It's not guaranteed. Tell me about
43:09the importance of the building because it happens, it's physical, it involves an interaction with
43:13the heritage asset itself. You're actually making it move and making it make a sound. And that seems
43:19to me to be primal. And what value does that bring to your lives? It's a massive community thing.
43:24Keeping this as an instrument alive is like constant work. You have to keep bringing new people in,
43:29young people in to like keep learning the tradition. And the oldest bell we have in here
43:33is from the 1300s. From the 1300s. From the 1300s. And it's still sound. It's still making a great noise.
43:39Yeah. Time for me to join the Malvern bell ringers on their ropes. Nice and relaxed. And then all you're
43:47going to do is just follow the rope up. Yeah. Get to the top and pull straight back down again.
43:52Yeah,
43:53yeah. Don't worry, it's only 400 kilograms. But it is nearly 700 years old. Okay, so here we go.
44:02And wait for the rope to go up. Straight back down. That's it. Perfect. And again. Straight back down,
44:11nice and gently. That's nice. That's it. Yeah. It's a stretch. It's physical. It's like a sort of stretch
44:19workout. Like Tai Chi. It's fluid. I like that. I could do that. I could suddenly and now I could
44:25do more.
44:27Excellent.
44:29The bell ringers of Malvern do as much as their ancestors did to keep this building alive
44:36simply by turning up, by using this building every day and by making a big noise in the community.
44:46In 1541, a hundred or so families here pledged, oh, so much of their income towards one idea. No,
44:57not saving a building, and that was too much of a luxury of an idea. No, it was to just
45:01have a church.
45:02And ever since, people have campaigned and raised money and fought and championed and written
45:10applications to lottery funding bodies, whatever it takes. That's what conservation looks like.
45:19Not one big heroic act, but hundreds of tiny ones. Yeah. And because this is worth saving,
45:28it's never going to stop.
45:41Next time, I'm exploring modern heritage structures, the cutting edge of what we choose to save.
45:47It was either absolute hostility, or this is a work of genius.
45:52Cathedrals shaped like wigwams. The space is vast. It is a basilica.
46:00And a modern grade one listed structure originally designed for penguins.
46:05What? Yeah, you can't do it. It's not edible.
46:08It's beautiful.
46:37It's beautiful.
Comments