SPAB Brick Conservation Working Party 2024
Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, Castle Bromwich, Birmingham
What a great way to start my adventure in the UK! I spent the weekend at the 17th-century Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens, learning all about brick conservation with The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, an organisation that has been dedicated to conserving buildings since 1877. SPAB hosts working parties during the Summer, open to all skill levels and people with an interest in heritage conservation. I met people who were architects, students, people looking to learn how to repair brick walls in their own homes, and other heritage tradespeople.
This was a great learning environment, with experts Lynn Mathias, Kate Longworth, Lewis Hobbs, and James Osborne guiding us through the process of raking out and reporting joints using lime mortar, as well as how to carefully replace bricks that have deteriorated beyond repair. Hands-on learning is the best way to understand materials, how they work and why they fail. I can’t wait to come back again to another SPAB working party the next time I visit the UK.
