THE SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF ANCIENT BUILDINGS
IN the recent Housing Supplement issued by the Times the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings has expressed its views on the housing problem in connection with old cottages. There are in this article two main points worth noting. The first is that until a subsidy is made, proportionate to the value of the work of repair, old cottages will not be readapted, but allowed to fall into ruins. The failure to award this subsidy tends to shift the responsibility, in regard to the upkeep of such property, from the owner to the State, for whilst the State encourages and partially finances new building, old cottages, though in theory valued by the Ministry of Health, in practice will hardly receive the attention they deserve. The second point is this: that the Society shows clearly it is no lover of mere decay, or old and mouldering walls, features we are apt to associate with the sketches of an early nineteenth century schoolgirl.
It lends no countenance to the habitual carping at all things new. It is as eager that the architecture of to-day should be as clean and decent—the natural expression of the life of to-day—as it is anxious to preserve, and where possible render habitable, those buildings of the past embodying the spirit of their time.
But since "words will build no walls," if our fine old cottages are to be preserved, it will need something more than mere discussions or eulogiums on their value as relics of the nation's past. By all who are interested more practical help must be given, and it is for this that the Society now makes a special appeal.