5 FOREWORD AS THE Chair of English Heritage, it is a pleasure to write this foreword for this Institute of Historic Building Conservation Yearbook. The IHBC website bears the words Conservation, People, Places, and it’s these words that give me my theme: how Conservation can help People make new connections with Places. English Heritage now attracts more visitors and members than ever before. We have opened up more of our sites, intervened dramatically but sensitively in several of the most important sites, and shared more stories. I am proud to say that we are investing more money in the stewardship of this collection of remarkable sites than at any time in the past. I would like to thank everyone who has supported us, including members of the Institute of Historic Building Conservation – the distinctiveness of our collection, together with our world class aspirations, creates a variety of conservation challenges and in this regard, it is representative of the historic building stock of the whole country, for which members of the IHBC have long been at the vanguard of conservation. Crucially English Heritage is also placing the landmarks in our care at the heart of their local communities and engaging more people – most importantly the young – in their history and in their future. Clifford’s Tower in York is just one example of a site where conservation, people and place all combine to powerful effect. In April 2022, we reopened the tower, the last surviving element of the city’s royal castle, after a major conservation and re-presentation project. Exposed to the elements for more than 300 years, the tower’s historically fire damaged stonework has been painstakingly repaired, the chapel reroofed, and the carved heraldic plaques above the entrance conserved. Where previously the tower was an empty shell, we installed a gorgeous free-standing timber structure within it, protecting the ruin, allowing for more interpretation, and improving access by creating a new roof deck to provide magnificent views over York’s unique cityscape. We can now tell some of the stories from the tower’s dramatic and tragic history in new and fascinating ways. In March 1190 the Jewish community of York was forced by a persecuting mob to seek protection inside the royal castle. That protection failed to keep the Jews safe from their attackers; and when faced with inevitable capture and murder, many took the lives of their families before taking their own lives, leaving a few survivors, who were all massacred. The powerful resonances for today need hardly to be stated. Since the newly conserved tower re-opened, Jewish people and others in the city have come together there to mark both Hanukkah and the anniversary of the 1190 massacre. The tower is a powerful instance of how a historic place can be not only a repository of ancient memory: the recollection of the historic stories it embodies can guide our choices about what to do in the present day. English Heritage is very proud to be working with Yorkshire’s modern-day Jewish community in endeavours which we – and I think the rest of the heritage sector – share as the ultimate aim of conservation: to connect people to the past, even some of its worst aspects, and to build from that a shared future. Our purpose, in which we are not alone, is to go beyond looking after the nation’s collection of monuments and making sure that as many people as possible encounter them and find out more. We see better understanding and experience of our shared past – the buildings and the people – as an essential building block of national unity for the future. Like the stonemason carving a single stone which will eventually form a small but essential part of a glorious cathedral, we see our purpose at English Heritage as conservation, access and above all connection – to the past and to the future. Gerard Lemos CMG CBE Chair English Heritage
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