“A Career in Ruins” – a talk by Colin Richards MBE

On 15th May Colin Richards MBE spoke to the Society about his career in historic building conservation, a talk which he wittily titled ‘A Career in Ruins.’  During his childhood in Sutton St Nicholas he grew up with an appreciation of  the old ways of rural life. One farm still employed working horses and steam rollers continued to be used on the roads. The impact of two world wars on the villages remained evident. He remembered his grandmother receiving a gift of ‘Tinned Fruits from the Empire’ from the King after her husband’s death in WW2. Because of the emotions that were attached to such a gift, she insisted these were never to be eaten. There were plenty of opportunities for him to look back into the past. He recalled weekly visits to Hereford on market day; the firm of Cadbury’s collecting milk from the farms; exploring the countryside with his friends,and a formative Art A Level course at Leominster Grammar School. The syllabus included history of architecture and the class would be taken to visit old churches, learn about their history and then paint what they had seen. All these things influenced his future life.

Colin studied Planning at Nottingham Trent University. His thesis on rural deprivation took him to Kirklington, a mining community in Nottinghamshire where he met a family living in a shack in the harshest of situations. They invited him in, talked openly about their lives and were generous about what they shared. Holiday jobs included working as a driver’s mate for Bulmer’s, as a crane driver and time on a hop farm. Talking to people on the hop farm helped him to understand what people wanted for their communities going forward. He started to think about how old farm buildings might be retained as important vernacular structures while allowing the agricultural industry to progress.

Following university, Colin worked in a hands-on role for a restoration builder in Hereford restoring farm buildings in the Wye valley, a job which he really enjoyed. There are builders in his family tree – he says it’s in his genes! He then joined Hereford Council as a Planning Officer but straightforward planning was not what he really wanted to do. He was sponsored to do an evening course at Building Conservation Diploma at Bristol University and subsequently he got a job in Ludlow working for South Shropshire Council as their first Conservation Officer. In this role he saw immediately how the move away from traditional lime based mortar to cement based mortar after the war threatened the survival of many traditional buildings on his patch.

He explained how cement based mortars allow damp to permeate structures which then invite infestation by the death watch beetle.

He also realised that the people who used the traditional techniques needed to restore many buildings were all retiring resulting in a skills shortage. This is when Colin became thoroughly involved in capturing the skills of retiring traditional builders. He worked on educational programmes with colleges in Shrewsbury and Hereford, obtained grants to run apprenticeships for newcomers and ran roadshows to raise awareness of traditional building methods.

In the 1990s, a major project in Colin’s career was the conservation of Shropshire metal mines. In 1875 he said 8000 tons of lead iron ore was being produced in Shropshire. The lead mine at Snailbeach had been one of the largest in the whole country served by its own narrow gauge railway which joined the mainline network. From there lead used to be taken by train to Shrewsbury, on to Liverpool and thence to Aberystwyth by boat for smelting. Colin’s slides of the site as he found it showed an extensive complex of abandoned semi-derelict buildings, structures and ground features all of which had made up the lead mining operation. Over the course of time, funded by various grants, the site was reclaimed, made safe and the buildings consolidated. He told us how on one occasion he managed (by the skin of his teeth) to save a key building from imminent demolition. A tower had been rendered unstable by a tree growing into it and it posed a major safety risk. Had it gone down it would have displaced a huge body of water in a flooded shaft which would have caused a tsunami-style surge to hit a nearby village. He had just 48 hours to get funding to save the condemned structure which he managed to accomplish by making a mad dash to relevant body in London. The Shropshire Mines Trust now continue with the preservation of sites across the county and run tours, educational projects and visitor experiences.

Throughout his talk Colin spoke about his various quests to source authentic local building materials to use in restoration projects. He had to obtain funding from Defra to open a quarry or quarries for local stone.

When the gable end of the George public house in Ludlow collapsed there were no ‘fiery orange’ bricks for the repair, all the village brickworks having long closed down. His solution was to build a kiln at Acton Scott farm and make his own. Enough bricks were made there to restore several local buildings. Eventually commercial brick makers stepped in to fill the gap in the market thus enabling Tesco’s in Ludlow to be built from bricks made out of Shropshire clay.

The use of ‘green’ building technologies (as he referred to them) and his role as a traditional skills trainer is clearly close to Colin’s heart. If his slides are anything to go by here is a man who is happiest with his sleeves rolled up and muck on his hands, whether it be charcoal burning, mixing wattle and daub, building a brick kiln or, as in China, binding traditional lime and sand mortar with sticky rice!

In 1996 Colin was invited to Romania to look at traditional buildings. In a bid to break all ties with the past and make the population dependent on the state, ex-President Ceausescu had made it an offence to repair of traditional buildings. As a result, many were abandoned and in a state of decay. Colin went to the embassy, was given a train ticket and a wad of cash and told to go round for two weeks, see what he could find out and say how he might be able to help. What he found was a beautiful country with many places and practices unchanged since medieval times. As he travelled, a Chinese Whisper spread. It was put about that he was an EU official bringing monetary gifts and he was embarrassingly feted as some sort of honorary dignitary! Amongst the buildings most urgently in need of restoration were ancient fortified churches in Transylvania. As a result of his findings and recommendations Shropshire Council moved forward with a significant project to contribute to the regeneration of Romania. Under his leadership and funded by various grants a huge team of craftsmen from the UK (including 85 from Herefordshire and Shropshire) travelled to Romania and, with local people, embarked on a successful traditional building skills exchange project with Colin and his team endeavouring to understand and use their technologies not to impose ours.

This was just the start of his work in Romania which came to the attention of the then Prince Charles who was and still is actively involved in the regeneration of the country. Colin continued to visit Romania twice a year. In Slovenia he worked alongside local people to build traditional hay wains out of naturally curved timbers taken from trees that had grown on steep slopes. The return of their ancient technologies was a cause for celebration among the people.

In 2006 Charles provided funding which enabled Colin and local workers to build a permanent kiln for firing traditional tiles and bricks for restoration projects.

Under Prince Charles’s continued patronage he went to Poland to revive the ancient technology of making building blocks from clay slurry and straw.

In 2007 Colin was awarded an MBE for services to building conservation, or, as he put it “for bringing traditional skills back”.

Colin left Shropshire Council in 2014. Television work ensued for programmes such as Edwardian Farm, where, on one occasion, he was challenged to make an old ambulance run on coal (he succeeded!) For Top Gear’s Grand Tour he was tasked with building a number of eco vehicles using Landrover chassis covered with various materials including wattle and daub, bricks, clay, and straw bales! And then to China for the Discovery History Channel tasked to make strong grey bricks the same as those used in the Great Wall. He was able to demonstrate that the characteristic colour was achieved by cooling the traditional kiln quickly, thus driving out the oxygen and changing the colour of the bricks from red to grey. There were other challenges aside from the technical ones: fuel for the kiln had to be gathered from surrounding hedges and fields, which, he discovered were full of treacherous snakes; he didn’t go prepared for treading clay and the largest Wellington boots in China come in a size 7 so as a size 11 he really struggled! In China, nothing started on-site until prayers had been offered to the gods of fire and forest.

Summing up, Colin said that one of the joys of his career has been all the people he has worked with. The best part of his ‘career in ruins’ has been the sharing of knowledge, friendship and camaraderie.

VS/EC