Director's Notes February 2009

Social inclusion remains an important part of our mission, and our latest initiative with Changeworks and the Lister Housing Cooperative takes important steps in learning how to address fuel poverty and address the challenge laid down in the Stern report on Climate Change. The existing building stock has a huge role to play in the reduction of CO2 emissions and the challenge is how we can adapt it with the utmost care, and ensure that people are aware of the simple and non-intrusive measures that they can carry out – Historic Scotland’s excellent research demonstrates, for example, the huge difference that closing your shutters makes in terms of keeping the heat in and cold out. As so often in the world of historic buildings and conservation, common sense often leads to the most effective solutions.

Our conservation funding programme, with its relatively high level of repayable grant (up to 70%) allows all sections of society to access high quality repairs to their buildings. The Well Court restoration project is a fine demonstration of this, where we have assisted the 55 separate owners in the repair of their wonderful building. As the project nears completion, we have raised extra funds to re-guild the weathercock and restore the clockfaces – the weathercock is resplendent but we still have a little way to go with the clock.

In terms of fundraising for other projects, however, we have been hugely cheered by the generous donation from the Marquis of Bute towards the restoration of the Burns Monument on Regent Road as a part of the Twelve Monuments project. The scaffolding is due to go up around the Nelson Monument soon as our joint project with the City Council proceeds.

We were delighted to welcome a number of friends and supporters at No 5 Charlotte Square for an evening of Burns with Prof David Purdie, while our continuing programme of sharing expertise and best practice with colleagues has continued, with a visit from a group involved with the conservation of Visby in Sweden

Last but not least, we are turning our attention to the burial grounds within the World Heritage Site: these have tremendous potential as public spaces at the heart of the World Heritage Site and represent an incredible but underused and in cases abused resource.