Join us as we welcome Carole Ryan who will hosting a lunchtime CPD talk exploring the changing face of Context in the last fifty years. 

This webinar will explore the evolving context of landscape and streetscape, focusing on rural settings, market towns, and conservation areas. It will consider the impact of socio-economic change over the 20th century, drawing insights from literary sources that reflect social change in previous eras and personal experience over a very long career in conservation. Moving to the present, we will explore the aspirations of today’s homeowners in historic areas and the challenges they face. The role of regulatory bodies, particularly building control and energy conservation requirements, will also be discussed. Finally, we will address the importance of craftsmanship, the tension between modern and traditional materials, and the growing skills shortage in the heritage sector.

Register here

About the Speaker:

Carole Ryan is the former Head of Historic Environment at the former Shropshire County Council. Having joined the Authority in the early 1970s as an Archaeological Assistant she participated in the initiation of the Sites and Monuments Record – now the Historic Environment Record and pioneered the addition of historic buildings, considering them as vertical archaeology. Specialising in rural buildings particularly historic farm buildings she was at the forefront of the trend for the conversion of historic farm buildings, and wrote an early set of Guidelines for Conversion as well as developing a rapid survey technique for large parts of Shropshire for surveying their increasing loss. This enabled not only the recording of their importance but also investigating the possibility of re-use. After nearly 20 years she went on to be a Senior Lecturer for an innovative course in Heritage Conservation at Bournemouth University and Director for the MSc. in Building Conservation as well as offering a consultancy service for the repair of historic buildings and conducting further farm building surveys, until retirement. A post retirement conservation officer post in Dorset proved useful in comparing and contrasting the rural situation in a County closer to London with the attendant pressures on the historic rural  environment this created.  She is the author of two books ‘Traditional Construction for a Sustainable Future’ (2011 Spon Press) and ‘Farm and Rural Building Conversions, A Guide to Conservation, Sustainability and Economy’