34 CONTEXT 189 : SEPTEMBER 2026 Jack Henderson is a building surveyor with Savills, advising on defects, maintenance and energy efficiency on a broad range of building types. All photos by Jack Henderson anyone could pick up instantly. With cob-walled buildings contributing a solid proportion of the housing stock in the south west, a cob builder in Devon really should not be a specialist. I thought that as there was an abundance of skilled people who had everything they physically needed to contribute to the heritage sector, and all they needed was a bit of an information upgrade to be reliable. Realistically, though, the heritage mindset, the ability to take the time required, to consider the right approach and to manage the variables sensitively, are huge factors in conservation, and they are not so easily communicated. That is where specialism comes in. It is positive that the government recognises that incorporating core heritage concepts into mainstream construction training is essential to closing the skills gap in the long term. Unfortunately, so far that has not happened in any meaningful manner. My plastering apprentices were on block release and did not touch lime during their whole course. Two of them found the course so demotivating that they left. In contrast, the members of my core team for nine years were exceptionally devoted to the work and could turn their hand to almost anything, but they had more formal training in health and safety than in practical heritage skills. When I found out that an NVQ earth building standard had been written, I inevitably wanted to put the team through it, only to find that there were no assessors in the country. So I signed up. The proposed local skills improvement plans will hopefully go some way to resolving this issue by targeting skill requirements locally, and giving variable vernacular styles across the country the support they often need. The current non-heritage construction workforce is a skills asset that needs to be mobilised quickly if we do not want to fall further behind, but I do not think it is going to be as easy as initially it might seem. Learning by doing is a strategy that can clearly work, but it is not without its risks in conservation. The industry provides so many mixed messages through proprietary materials and terms like ‘breathability’ that there would need to be consistency in the knowledge base before there is any chance of enough people transferring their skills. Even at a professional level there are inconsistencies in the knowledge being drawn on when specifying heritage repair work. Retrofit is another matter altogether, and has been blighted with confusion for years. Part of the solution is already available but it is not packaged up for the right people – the general tradespeople with the transferable skills. Take the independent heritage skills courses as a starting point to create a course backed and certified by Historic England that would guarantee an approved syllabus and uniform delivery standards. This should be made available to anyone in the sector with the core skills that need specialist add-ons to deliver the heritage grade work. This would reduce pressure on the term specialist, increase the size of the pool which clients and professionals can rely on, and make the industry more competitive. Installing sub-floor drainage in a Grade II listed cottage in Devon. Historic buildings often do not have dampproof foundations or floors, so managing groundwater can be a challenge, especially when the building itself is so vulnerable to damage from incorrectly installed approaches. Rebuilding an old cob pig shed as a garden store required specialist skills to build the earth walls, and consideration of appropriate methods of installing roof and floor timbers. Lime-mortared, slatehung wall cladding in Devon
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