Posts Tagged Conservation
Letter: Janet Gnosspelius obituary
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 12, 2010
Lionel Burman writes: To be guided round Woolton Hall, Liverpool, by Janet Gnosspelius (Other lives, 11 October) was an enthralling experience. Her massive report on it is a model of architectural and historical analysis, and her dramatic appearances at the Liverpool Planning Department's heritage bureau were met with admiration and delight by all present.
Janet Gnosspelius obituary
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 10, 2010
Despite her roots in the Lake District, my cousin Janet Gnosspelius's heart was in Liverpool. Janet, who has died aged 83, trained at the Liverpool School of Architecture in the 1940s, and was one of "an elite bunch of students" that included only a few women. She built a reputation in church architecture and restoration, working for a time for the church architect Francis Xavier Velarde.
From the late 1960s, she developed a new life in local history and conservation. In 1972 the threatened demolition of Woolton Hall (Janet's report led to it being listed Grade I) stimulated the founding of the still flourishing Woolton Society. Janet's The History of Much Woolton (1975) is still in demand. Working with her close friend Sylvia Lewis, Janet was a formidable force in Liverpool planning inquiries, authoritatively challenging attitudes on conservation and even road planning. She would regularly deliver to the city planning office chunks of masonry, neatly labelled with provenance and date, asking that they be replaced.
Janet came from an unusual background. Her mother, Barbara, the daughter of WG Collingwood, John Ruskin's secretary, was an artist and sculptor; Arthur Ransome had once proposed to her and although he was unsuccessful still dedicated Old Peter's Russian Tales (1916) to her. Janet's engineer father, Oscar, Swedish by origin, worked in mining and railway construction in southern Africa before returning to the Lake District, where he designed and built seaplanes and where Janet was born, in Kendal. Between the wars, Oscar prospected on the Coniston fells with Collingwood, mining for copper and later slate. Ransome drew on Oscar's mining expertise in his 1936 book Pigeon Post; Oscar was the model for Timothy (Squashy Hat) and Janet modelled for the drawing of Nancy.
Janet was meticulous in everything she did – and eccentric. She was known for her jodhpurs, collar-and-tie, handmade tweeds and elegant cigarette holder, her cats (who signed off many letters), 1939 Sunbeam Talbot car, prodigious workload and caustic red pen. She carried on an extraordinary range of correspondence, all hand-typed on a battered Imperial.
She was widely consulted as a source and authority on local history, Ruskin, Ransome, Icelandic saga-sites, Lake District artists and history, church architecture, and the work, life and ideas of her uncle, the philosopher and historian RG Collingwood. For the past 15 years she had been amassing material for WG Collingwood's biography.
I and another cousin survive her.
Corinne Bennett obituary
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on August 4, 2010
Conservation architect who specialised in English cathedrals
Corinne Bennett, who has died aged 75, devoted her long career to repairing many of Britain's best-loved buildings and to promoting the profession of conservation architect. She became the first woman to be appointed consultant architect to an English cathedral when, in 1974, she took on responsibility for the restoration of Winchester Cathedral.
Corinne oversaw a 15-year programme of works at Winchester, including the repair and releading of the roof, and the restoration of much of the stonework in the eastern half of the cathedral. The misericords in the choir stalls were restored and a programme of lighting was implemented, combining the romance of candles with discrete artificial light for the choirboys to read their scores. She became a popular local figure whose roof tours of the cathedral were legendary, thanks to her inspiration, her depth of knowledge and her verve. She was always wonderfully collaborative in her work and sure of herself without ever being overbearing.
Born Corinne Wilson, she spent much of her early life in Montreal. Her mother, Lucile, was French Canadian. Her Cumbrian-born father, Gilbert, was professor of geology at Imperial College London and inspired her love of building stone. On her return to Britain in 1944, she went to school at the Sacred Heart convent in Hove, East Sussex, and by the age of 12 was intent on a career in conserving old buildings. An arrangement was made for a male tutor to enter the convent to give her drawing lessons, and Corinne prepared to become an architect. She entered the Bartlett School at the University of London in 1952 and qualified in 1957. She then worked for the avant-garde architects Powell & Moya.
Corinne turned to historic building work, first with the London county council and then, in 1963, with the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works, which later became English Heritage. The conservation movement was emerging, and she was at the vanguard of new principles and techniques. She undertook pioneering studies in stone preservation and cleaning with the Building Research Establishment, near Watford, Hertfordshire, and applied these techniques at the Tower of London, Audley End House in Essex, the Jewel Tower at Westminster and Bolsover Castle. She was always at home in a quarry or discussing stone and carving with masons.
In 1968 Corinne was invited to join the London office of the architects Purcell Miller Tritton. There she had her first experience of repairing a cathedral, Ely, under Donovan Purcell, surveyor to the fabric, who became an important mentor. Corinne was made a senior partner of the practice and opened its office at Sevenoaks in Kent, where she was appointed consulting surveyor to the diocese of Rochester. Her repairs to Kent churches led to her being made an MBE in 1988.
She also worked on many National Trust properties nearby, including Chiddingstone, and Alfriston Clergy House in East Sussex. It was in Sevenoaks that Corinne met Keith Bennett, also a conservation architect. They married in 1979.
In 1980 she became consultant architect for repairs and alterations at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. In 1989 she produced a report on the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens, London, which needed challenging repairs to its iron and mosaics. Among the buildings under her care in the 1980s were Wilton House in Wiltshire, Charleston Farmhouse and Cowdray House in Sussex, and Ealing Abbey, along with further work for the National Trust across southern England.
She was appointed to the Roman Catholic Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem in 1979 and rose to become a dame commander. She continued to champion conservation, and to pass on her vast knowledge, as co-founder of the Hampshire and the Islands Historic Churches Trust in 1989. In 1991 she postponed her retirement to return to what was now English Heritage, becoming its first cathedrals architect. Her deep Catholic faith, and understanding of its liturgy, was particularly valuable in her re-ordering of the English College in Rome and St John's Seminary in Wonersh, Surrey. In 1996 Corinne became English Heritage's representative on the Church of England's Cathedral Fabric Commission, a post she held until 2006. She was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1997.
Corinne and Keith restored the Victorian rectory at Michelmersh, near Romsey, Hampshire, to make it their home. She is survivied by Keith and her brother, David.
• Corinne Marie Gillian Bennett, conservation architect, born 3 March 1935; died 10 July 2010