Local responses to the protection of medieval buildings and archaeology in British post-war town reconstruction: Southampton and Coventry

Post-war planning and rebuilding of Britain's towns and cities led to rapid changes in medieval building stock, topography and character, as well as below-ground archaeology. Two case-studies of large, industrial, bomb-damaged yet important former medieval towns are examined in this article: So...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Urban history 2018-11, Vol.45 (4), p.635-659
Main Author:	WEBB, MARK S.
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Archaeology Architecture Archives & records British history Cities Cultural heritage Excavation Historic buildings & sites Historic preservation Medieval period Middle Ages Planning Postwar reconstruction Protection Topography World War II
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	Post-war planning and rebuilding of Britain's towns and cities led to rapid changes in medieval building stock, topography and character, as well as below-ground archaeology. Two case-studies of large, industrial, bomb-damaged yet important former medieval towns are examined in this article: Southampton and Coventry. Together, they illustrate the range of local responses to protecting what we now term the ‘historic environment’ in the period 1945 to 1955 at a time when a limited protection mechanism was introduced through the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act. The responsibility for compiling lists of protected buildings and providing resources to protect them largely fell to local solutions. Using previously unpublished archive material from both national and local sources, this article offers an alternative ‘bottom-up’, local, organized grass-roots viewpoint to most official ‘top-down’ accounts.
ISSN:	0963-9268 1469-8706