Unless water levels rise to more than 20m, which they won’t be anytime soon, our High Street should be immune from flooding, or so you would think (check the dynamic graphic below from Climate Central that models a 10m rise). First off though, there’s a session being run by the Scottish Flood Forum in West Barns Village Hall on the 27th of November and then at the Methodist Church on the 9th December 2014. Insurance, protection and planning are all apparently going to be covered. Of particular interest to those who stay in low lying areas, by rivers and streams and definitely anyone with a beachside/seaside property.
Predictions of sea level rise of a couple of metres are increasingly plausible, and who knows when the next apocalyptic catastrophe will arise? Preparing for the worst seems to be the byword of the times, but I ask myself, exactly where am I to store all the sandbags that I will need? It is hard enough to deal with my growing recycling habits for which a new room/shed is now required. My cellars are now hopelessly too wet, since the nice people at East Lothian Council neglectfully damaged the clay lining. It had lasted 200 years but the new street scheme several years back put paid to that.
Next up are blocked street drains. Take a stroll on a rainy day, I just love the way rain washes everything away, even the blues. At least twice a year, however, I have to get my sleeves up and shove my arm full way down the drain pipe to remove (expletive deleted) cigarette buts and cigarette foils and films, occluding the drain, which otherwise sends the water straight down my steps and potentially flooding my garden flat. In the expectation that the next event will catch me unawares or absent, I have created a french drain beneath my flags to help the water drain more easily.
But I take the view that one should embrace the changes that a ‘dynamic earth’ brings about, and, as a conservationist, embrace the idea of managed retreat. I’m not daft enough to think that the Government should pay to protect people who build in floodplains, but then I have always subscribed to the wisdom of insecurity. If you have ever lived in an earthquake zone or underneath a volcano, which I have, you get philosophical about catastrophes rather than blame god or the government. People in flood plains maybe shouldn’t throw stones, but they should build on stilts.
So what does this all mean in the context of buildings conservation? Is managed retreat a half baked and complacent idea or pragmatic and fit for our austere times? Rob Inkpen – who I met years ago when he was tutoring at Exeter summarises some of the issues relating to stone decay in the context of atmospheric pollution and climate change.
I’d say that the endemic lack of resources for buildings conservation and management, unlike for e.g. agri-environment schemes, which plough billions into nature conservation is a major threat and problem to our heritage. Buildings conservation is now only for the elites, with grant funding available only if you happen to live in an A listed or Grade 1 building.
But if the decay and forces of decay are irreversible, then stepping back might just be the best option for some buildings that are already beyond saving – as this doesn’t necessarily mean tearing them down, as Grahame Armett has shown in his imaginative proposals for the Abbey Church.