SHBT Lecture Series: Conservation Contexts
29.09.25
SHBT Lecture Series: Conservation Contexts
This Autumn, SHBT brings you our latest lecture series ‘Conservation Contexts’, framed by Patrick Geddes’ famous ‘valley section’ drawing, in which he maps human activities into geographical contexts, from hillside pastoralism and forestry to mountainside mining, arable plains to city trading, and, out at sea fishing.
The valley section is a general diagram, but it is also an image for Edinburgh itself, situated between the hills and sea – containing a world heritage site, natural parks, and numerous historic buildings, sites and practices.
Each session in the series will be staged as a discussion between diverse stakeholders, with expertise ranging from heritage to nature conservation, local activism and the politics of World Heritage, coming together to consider what opportunities and challenges we face when we deal with conservation in context.
Seaside City: revisiting the history of Edinburgh’s coastline
Engaging with the starting point of Patrick Geddes’ Valley Section – the coast, the junction between land and sea; this session will focus on Edinburgh’s own coastline.
Stretching from the River Almond to the River Esk, Edinburgh’s remarkable coastline runs from one of the few Roman ruins in Scotland to buried quarries and beaches made entirely from the rubble of the city’s demolished buildings. Through docks and ports to beach resort, nature and culture, past and present are brought together in diverse ways.
This part of the city has enjoyed something of a revival of interest over the past few years: esplanade, beach, and shore, making new lungs for the city. How might engaging with this oldest and most ephemeral boundary of the city help us re-imagine it anew?
Jonathan Gardner is a contemporary archaeologist and critical heritage studies researcher. His work examines processes of recent and contemporary large-scale landscape transformations in the UK using archaeological methods, with his current research looking at the longstanding exploitation of Scottish hydrocarbon resources as a form of contested heritage. Gardner’s talk, ‘Washed up on the beach: revisiting the heritage of Edinburgh’s coastline‘, aims to provide an overview of some of the history and heritage of the city’s coastline and its importance for thinking about the city of the future.
Tamsin Grainger is a Walking Artist and writer. Her recent work, ‘Walking Like a Tortoise’, explored the edge of Granton using maps from 1870 to the present day, each showing a different boundary line, and collected stories of peoples’ heritage and local history. This work asked, ‘How are the people who live in Granton related to each other, the wider area, and the rest of the world?’ and became an enquiry into the links between geography and community, into mapping and belonging.
Tamsin’s talk, ‘A walk along the Granton Burn, from Hill to Sea’ follows a newly created map that traces the Burn’s journey from Corstorphine Hill Tower to the sea, reflecting May East’s advice not to rely on old maps when navigating changing urban landscapes.
Tale of Two Streets: Regenerating Princes St and Sauchiehall Street
The hearts of cities are often marked by their great streets: theatres of commerce, places for tourists to gawk at, and the settings for civic and institutional performance and display.
Edinburgh and Glasgow are thus characterised, respectively, by Princes Street and Sauchiehall street; each in its own way, architectural set pieces, and each subject to the vagaries of commerce and fashion.
How are the characters of these streets re-produced and managed in response to and for changing times? How can heritage bodies contribute to these characters, balancing at the same time both change and continuity of the city itself?
Terry Levinthal is the Director of Edinburgh World Heritage. With over 25 years of experience in public and charity organisations, he has held leadership positions with diverse organisations such as The Cockburn Association, National Trust for Scotland and Scottish Civic Trust. Additionally, he has held non-executive Board positions on environmental and heritage bodies including Historic Environment Scotland.
Princes Street has held a prominent position in Edinburgh, architecturally and as premier retail and business destination. It has seen change from its very inception to the current day and continues to change as shifting commercial and investment patterns dictate its direction. Levinthal will explore this pattern of transformation, consider some of the “visionary” ideas for the street and ponder what comes next.
Niall Murphy is the Director of Glasgow City Heritage Trust and a conservation architect with over 25 years of experience. He is co-chair of the Glasgow Built Heritage Commission, a Trustee of BEFS and Chair of Govanhill Baths Building Preservation Trust who are trying to save a large Edwardian baths complex in one of the most deprived communities in Scotland.
He specialises in heritage, conservation, and community issues in Glasgow and is passionate about architecture, urban design and cities.
Sauchiehall Street forms part of the Golden ‘Z’ – the retail heart of Glasgow. Unfortunately, the street is struggling with the loss of large scale retailers and two major fires since 2018. The challenge for Glasgow is to overcome the subsequent blight while handling the inevitable change in the street’s character as buildings are adapted, regenerated or new uses found. Murphy will explore this journey.
Heritage Retrofit: Historic Building Adaption for the Future
Up the hill from the sea and city are the raw materials from which both its built heritage and wealth are hewn and mined: timber, coal, ore, stone.
On the one hand, these materials represent the result of aeons, rather than the mere centuries of history. On the other, they are consumed over ever-decreasing durations, producing waste and degrading the environments they long predate.
This session will debate how heritage preservation might engage with this process. It has long been argued that conservation must be a carbon-positive activity, but alternative thinking suggests that sometimes keeping what already exists may not be the most sustainable approach.
Chris Morgan is a Chartered and ARB registered Architect and Director of John Gilbert Architects in Glasgow. His work seeks to marry high performance in energy efficiency and comfort while ensuring healthy indoor environments and reducing environmental impact more broadly.
Chris will explain how we can protect our heritage, minimise both operational and embodied carbon, manage moisture and air quality, while also drawing in a range of other benefits from the use of local and natural materials.
Henrietta Billings is Director of SAVE Britain’s Heritage; a national charity that campaigns for the re-use of threatened historic buildings. As the former Conservation Adviser at Twentieth Century Society, Henrietta played a key role in several successful high-profile campaigns to save threatened sites and has extensive experience in the heritage and planning sectors.
Across Britain we needlessly knock down thousands of buildings every year – many of which were once handsome historic landmarks. At the same time we are facing a climate crisis exacerbated by consumption of huge amounts of raw materials and the energy required for new builds.
Henrietta will make the case that repurposing old buildings and saving embodied carbon in the process is indeed one way to help rescue the planet, and historic buildings that people love. Henrietta will outline the role SAVE has played in bringing the heritage and climate change debate to national attention.
Evolving Estates: Community and conservation in the green belt
Surrounding the city in the heart of Patrick Geddes’ valley are the fields and agricultural estates which once upon a time provided both its food, and for the luckier few, leisured retreats from its crowds and hubbub.
Now they supply cheap land for cheap homes. To Edinburgh’s west and south, eighteenth-century landscapes are filled with new houses, shopping centres and warehouses. Here and there, a mansion or two offers reminders of what was once the city’s hinterland.
This session will bring together diverse stakeholders of this shifting world to discuss the possibilities and problematics that are presented by the largest part of the city: its outer suburbs.
Lindsay Aitken, chair of Gracemount Mansion Development Trust, founded the community group ‘Friends of the Mansion’, to raise awareness and gather support for the Gracemount Mansion project, and in November 2022 established GMDT as a charity. GMDT are working to develop and reopen The Mansion, surrounding buildings and greenspaces, as a community hub offering a range of learning, training, volunteering, social, environmental and heritage opportunities and activities, that benefit the mental and physical health & wellbeing of the community.
Lindsay will discuss the tensions between modern expectations for listed buildings and their practical limitations, including the positives and complex challenges of creating meaningful community hubs in historic spaces.
Andrew Hopetoun is Chairman of Hopetoun Estates and resident trustee at Hopetoun House. Hopetoun, with its related estates, is managed as a diversified rural tourism, hospitality, events, agricultural and property business. Andrew will discuss Hopetoun and its related estates, the relationship with people and places.
Nature-led Conservation: Can Heritage Survive Without Nature?
At the top of Patrick Geddes’ valley section are the hills: the scene of only sparse and temporary human habitation: shepherds, walkers, windmills and dams, shooting ranges and drives, forest.
We often conceive of ‘nature’ as the opposite of ‘culture’ (be it urban or agriculture), but of course the hills, for all their apparent emptiness, are as tightly managed and as man-made as any city street. Nature is, in itself, a cultural construct.
As such, it has heritage all of its own – histories of farming, walking, imagining, and centuries of care. This session will consider what happens when these forms of conservation meet one another, and speculates upon what might, and could, happen.
Currently the Head of Technical Conservation at Historic Environment Scotland, Colin Tennant has worked in the heritage sector for nearly 30 years in both the public and third sectors. Having studied Geography at the University of Strathclyde before moving onto University of Dundee to study European Urban Conservation, Colin has always been interested in evaluating both landscapes and townscapes and understanding how activity in both have come together to create our historic environment.
His talk will try to demonstrate how we need to relearn the link between natural and built environments to have a sustainable future for Scotland’s heritage.
Diarmid Hearns is Head of Public Policy, Risk and Environment with the National Trust for Scotland. He leads on the Trust’s engagement with developing public policy, including in the historic environment, cultural development, and nature restoration.
Diarmid will discuss the many overlaps between nature conservation and conserving the historic environment, and how in recent years, nature conservation has moved to a more ambitious agenda of restoring nature wherever possible.
Zoe Alston is an RIAS Advanced Conservation Architect with an MSc in Architectural Conservation.
With more than 20 years of experience dedicated to the heritage sector, Zoe is a Director at Groves-Raines Architects Studios Ltd. (GRAS), leading the practice on conservation as well as staff development and education. Zoe will present GRAS’ work with WildLand on projects that touch on both building and nature conservation.
Lisa MacKenzie is a Senior Lecturer in The Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and a practising Landscape Architect.
Her work examines place based ecological dependencies and interconnections to evolve dialogical relationships with nature in the climate and biodiversity crises.
Book Your Spot at a Lecture
Book onto our events in the Conservation Context lecture series via our Humanitix events page.