THE Victorian SOCIETY

The Victorian Society is looking for volunteers. Like so many organisations they have found that people who used to be involved pre-Covid have found other pursuits to take their attention. They are also, truth be told, looking for younger blood.

What do they do? Here’s what they don’t do: “We don’t do dressing up” director Joe O’Donnell told me. We were talking about fundraising and I had asked the question which apparently many people ask them. They have dinners and talks but decided it did not really give the right image for a serious campaigning organisation to be swanning about in top hats, crinolines and capes, he told me (rather wistfully, I thought), even for fundraising events.

What they do is to try and stop developers tearing down Victorian and Edwardian architecture, or modifying it to the extent that they might as well have demolished it. At the moment they are trying to stop the developers who gave London The Shard, from enveloping Liverpool Street Station in a modern construction, adding 16 storeys to the existing five and changing it beyond recognition.

They have also been involved in the ‘Levelling Up’ legislation which, somewhat counterintuitively, involves planning law. Currently planning permission is not required to demolish a building, provided it is not listed or in a conservation area. The Society argues that needs to change.

“The Victorian Society regularly sees high quality historic buildings demolished through permitted development rights” Joe told me. “The Government’s perverse tax regime of 0% VAT on demolition and rebuild vs 20% VAT on repair and maintenance, further stacks the odds in favour of existing buildings being swept away.”

Construction, demolition, and excavation activities generate approximately 60% of the UK’s waste, according to the Green Building Council, and the material manufacturing and construction processes required for creating new buildings create new emissions.

“It is bizarre that in a climate emergency and a housing crisis you can just get rid of buildings.”

The Victorian Society was formed in 1958 with the late poet laureate Sir John Betjeman as one of its founders. Since there has been such a revival in interest in Victorian and Edwardian style since the 1960s, it is hard to understand now the strength of feeling at the time against all things Victorian, but academic Dr William Filmer-Sankey says:

“The founding of the Society took place against the background of an almost universal dislike of Victorian things, and the widespread destruction of Victorian buildings as the post war reconstruction continued apace.”

The Society lost two of its early battles - Euston Station and the Coal Exchange in the City of London. The tide began to turn in their favour when British Rail was prevented from knocking down St Pancras Station in 1966 and the building was listed as Grade 1. Albert Dock in Liverpool was saved from demolition in 1952 and now has the largest single collection of Grade I listed buildings anywhere in the country. The Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham was made a Conservation Area in 1981.

The Society set up regional groups in Liverpool and Manchester initially, but now have eight regional centres. Its importance was recognised by the government in 1969, when it was given a legal role in the listed building consent system. Following the passing of the Town and Country Planning Act, the Secretary of State directed that all applications involving demolition should be referred to the Society for comment.

Despite the official recognition by government, there is a sense of Groundhog Day about the work they do.

Developers are nothing if not persistent, especially when there is a lot of money at stake, and the Society’s case workers find themselves revisiting some of the same battles.

They work in partnership with Historic England, and also the Georgian Society and the 20th Century Society, with whom they often make common cause. Although by definition they are conservationist, they are also forward-looking Joe told me, and their work could not be more relevant.

“What we do is inherently what we need to do for a sustainable future” Joe told me.

Railway stations feature prominently in their work. Liverpool Street Station was under threat of demolition 45 years ago.

“We are back to where the Society was in 1974” said Joe.

“They are trying to cantilever a huge edifice over the top of it”

But he said, “there is an unprecedented coming together of heritage and conservationist groups to oppose it.” victoriansociety.org.uk

Volunteers who work with the Victorian Society do everything from helping with research for the casework to helping on the bar at social events.

If you would like to get involved with their work, to help with funding, or just to find out more about what they do, you can contact them at their headquarters in Chiswick: 1 Priory Gardens, W4 1TT. Tel: 0208 747 5897.