FEATURES
POINT OF VIEW
The Scottish Castle Restoration Debate 1990-2012
“There is undoubtedly a debate to be had on this issue, but all too often the debate has been far from
public. It will be interesting to see what response this exploration provokes by way of open exchange.
This detailed paper announces itself as “a paper to stimulate discussion and understanding”. It certainly
ought to do both, and I, for one, feel that this treatment is long overdue. It has the great virtue of treating
castle restoration not as a detached issue but as part of a wider context. Michael Davis’s target is those
conservationists who take a narrow view – who argue from the perspective of a particular discipline,
without engaging with the broader views across the whole field of architectural conservation. His standpoint
Mary Miers
is to argue for considered judgement rather than dogma from the planning system”
Yet, today, Scotland’s historic architecture is under real threat. To
judge by the number and quality of buildings on the Buildings at
Risk Register, it may well be considerably easier to abandon and
utterly neglect a listed building than to gain permission to restore
one. And the growth of huge modern shopping complexes and of
internet shopping is a ticking time-bomb for our declining high
streets and town centres, and for the rich and layered
architectural heritage they contain.
We in the AHSS have a choice. We can take the softly, softly
approach, and perhaps hope that organisations such as BEFS, part
funded by Historic Scotland, or the IHBC will try to improve the
system from within the conservation ‘establishment’, through
interaction with government consultations, and through reports to
government. Or alternatively, we can try to influence a wider
segment of the public and the media in the hope that, by actually
putting pressure on the political system from outside, politicians will
place a higher emphasis on the interests which are so important to
the AHSS. I personally have no doubt that the latter is the better
course.
By creating a stir and by creating wider ripples of interest, I
hope, in a small way, to stimulate discussion and understanding,
and to ultimately nudge conservation a little further up the
political agenda. I am beginning this process with an illustrated 100
page study of the Scottish castle restoration debate of recent
years. I intend to follow this with further examinations of Scottish
buildings at risk and offer practical suggestions as to how to best
tackle this complicated issue, including a study of our declining
town centres. There is the need for determined and radical
solutions before it is too late.
Castles are an exciting and popular aspect of Scotland’s cultural
identity. The chateau-like houses of the 16th and 17th centuries
have a unique architectural identity and importance. Yet in recent
decades, the Scottish heritage establishment, or an influential part
of it, has managed to knot itself with difficulties over whether or
not, or how, or which, ruined castles should be restored. My study,
now completed, teases apart various strands within this tangle of
open controversy and less obvious disagreement. Through
documents associated with Historic Scotland, through specific
case-studies, and through comments offered as part of the
planning process, now accessible on request, changing and
differing attitudes are revealed. Castle Tioram and Stirling Castle
provide the crescendos, perhaps, but there are less well known
and interesting cases. Most striking of all, perhaps, is the
restoration in recent years of Caldwell Tower in Renfrewshire.
Thanks to advice which placed too great an emphasis on
re х