National Monuments Record (England) - History

History

The English Heritage Archive has been part of English Heritage since 1999, but its roots go back to 1908 and the foundation of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (RCHME) which was set up to compile and publish an inventory of all ancient and historical monuments up to the year 1700 by county and by parish.

The National Buildings Record (NBR), an independent body, was set up in 1940 under the inspiration of Walter Godfrey, its first Director "to meet the dangers of war then threatening many buildings of national importance". Between the declaration of war in 1939 and the first London air-raids in 1940 many moveable works of art, archives and antiquities were evacuated to the relative safety of the countryside. For example, the contents of the National Gallery were taken to country houses, slate mines and quarries in Wales However, buildings could not be protected in this way, so steps were taken to collect architectural plans, drawings, photographs and other records. The RCHME worked closely with the NBR to carry out the extensive photographic recording of the towns in the eastern and southern counties at risk from enemy action.

Although there were other voluntary and academic bodies at the time that collected some architectural records, e.g. the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, Royal Institute of British Architects and the London Survey Committee, they were apparently deemed to be too small or out of scope for the sort of venture that appears to have been envisaged in the chaos of wartime Britain.

The initial core of the collection was formed by the Conway Library of architectural photographs held by the Courtauld Institute of Art; the negatives of the Victorian photographer Henry Taunt of Oxford; items from the University of London and by quickly setting photographers to work recording buildings in London and other vulnerable areas. Over the next few years the NBR attracted donations from amateur photographers, people who possessed drawings and owners of collections of negatives.

By the end of the war the collection had grown to such as size and importance that it was continued and was funded by the Treasury. The 1944 and 1947 Town and Country Planning Acts were important for the NBR as it meant that lists of buildings of architectural and historic importance were started, and the NBR had to be informed before an historic building was demolished.

The recession of the late 1940s and early 1950s presented a different challenge from bombing, but no less severe. This time the destruction of significant buildings was due to deliberate demolition because the owners (through new inheritance taxation and shortage of building materials) could no longer afford to maintain them. In 1946 the RCHME work was extended to include the recording of 18th and 19th century architecture.

In the 1950s the NBR archive acquisitions included the collections of Sydney Pitcher (medieval architecture and vernacular buildings); Helmut Gernsheim (photographs of tombs in St Pauls Cathedral and Westminster Abbey) as well as continued recording of architectural details such as glass, fixtures and fittings, woodwork and sculpture. The 1950s also saw the start of aerial photography to discover and record ancient sites, as more intensive agriculture, forestry and gravel extraction threatened historic remains on ‘marginal land’.

The NBR was merged with the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (RCHME) in 1963. The name was then changed to the National Monuments Record (NMR) to denote the inclusion of archaeological and photographic records. During the 1960s, the importance of photographic records grew, and the archive acquired the surviving negatives of architectural Harry Bedford Lemere (1864–1944) of houses, public buildings and interior decoration. (The National Maritime Museum holds another large section of his work.) The demolition of the Euston Arch and City of London Coal Exchange demonstrated the lack of regard there was at the time for (then) unfashionable Victorian architecture and the importance of keeping records of their existence.

During the 70s and 80s the NMR increased its recording of industrial and commercial building records as well as ‘country’ houses. The expanding breadth of the archive is shown by the acquisition of Rev Denys Rokeby’s collection of railway photographs, and H E S Simmons' negatives of water and wind-mills, and John Maltby’s collection of photographs of Odeon cinemas.

In 1983 the Ordnance Survey Archaeology Division was transferred to the NBR/RCHME which greatly expanded the records available. These are now digitised and available through the Pastscape website. In 1984 the NMR took over the responsibility for the National Library of Aerial Photographs from the Department of the Environment, together with two million RAF and Ordnance Survey oblique and vertical aerial photographs.

A further acquisition was the Industrial Monuments Survey, transferred from the Department of the Environment (DoE)in 1981. This was followed by the RCHME taking on responsibility for the Survey of London following the abolition of the Greater London Council.

In 1992 the Commission’s terms of reference was extended to include responsibility for creating a central national record of historic wrecks and other archaeological sites within the 12-mile coastal limit.

The RCHME, including the NMR, merged with English Heritage in April 1999. In April 2012 the NMR was renamed the English Heritage Archive.