Heritage of Transport and Communication

Railways

Rail transport is an area where change is taking place rapidly: Crossrail, the extension of railway electrification and the proposed High Speed 2 are all part of the largest investment in railway infrastructure since Victorian times.

This level of change has an impact on the historic infrastructure of railways. Overhead electrification means changes to bridges, trains carrying larger containers mean clearances have to be increased, and the sheer volume of passengers now using trains means alterations to stations to enable them to cope with the demand for rail services.

Change is inevitable and our job is to make sure that change is managed so as to minimise the impact on the stations, bridges and other structures, many of which date back over 150 years, that are of special historical or architectural interest.

To enable us to do this, we commissioned a report from RPS Group on historic railway buildings and structures which summarised the consultant's view of the likely impact of increased railway investment on the historic railway infrastructure, and gives the their view on the significance of a great range of different types of railway buildings and structure and considered how well these were protected.  

One aspect of railways that we are focusing on is goods sheds and warehouses. These were once vital to the country’s economy, fulfilling the same function as the big shed warehouses that are located by motorway hubs today. Most of them went out of railway use about 50 years ago and today are used for a variety of purposes, from dentist’s surgeries to supermarkets, from garages to museums or homes.

Despite their importance, they are not well understood and we do not even know how many still exist. John Minnis, who wrote the research report on Signal Boxes in 2012, worked on a project to identify the survivors (over 500 have so far come to light). He is also co-wrote a book, published by Historic England as part of the Informed Conservation series in 2016, about their history which includes a gazetteer (see below). To complement the book you can also view a separate spreadsheet of the goods sheds that formed the basis for the gazetteer. The spreadsheet includes extra details than were not possible to include in the format of the book.

We have also commissioned Sir Neil Cossons and David Gwyn to produce a review and summary of recent research on early railways in England. This report includes research on early mine railways and wooden waggonways as well as early iron railways.

As part of our work to inform heritage led-regeneration in the Stockton and Darlington Railway Heritage Action Zone, we have analysed thousands of aerial photographs of the line to map its heritage. You can read a summary of this work in our research report 

Roads

The motor car probably changed the face of England more than any other factor in the 20th century, yet that story remained largely unwritten. Our recent research and resulting publications about the heritage of 20th century road transport have had an immediate impact on the study of twentieth century England. We hope that they will now inspire and enable others to build on this with their own research.

• We recently carried out a major project on the impact of the motor car on England over the past 120 years which led to two books being published: Kathryn Morrison & John Minnis, Carscapes: the Motor Car, Architecture and Landscape in England (2012) and John Minnis, England’s Motoring Heritage from the Air (2014).
• In addition, there were two research reports published on different aspects of motoring, one by John Minnis on Sir David Salomons’ Motor Stables, near Tunbridge Wells and one by Pete Smith on the motor car and the country house, both of which are available to download.

Canals

Change is less evident on the canals and river navigations but there has been a major shift in the way they are managed with the change in ownership from British Waterways to a charity, the Canal and Rivers Trust.

This offered an opportunity for an overview of the current state of the network and we commissioned a report and gazetteer from industrial heritage expert Keith Falconer, which surveys the historic structures of the canals and reviews the research that has been published on canals over the past 60 years. You can download the report on the national overview of canals.