Conservation Group

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Knowledge Transfer Traditional Skills for the
Future

• Conservation Group
• Traditional Skills
• Materials Section

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Traditional Building Skills The Vision
Our vision is a world leading system of
traditional skills training that meets the needs
of a modern, innovative and competitive
construction sector to ensure that it is equipped
to fulfil its role in creating and maintaining
the Scottish built environment of the future, and
making a significant contribution to the economic
recovery.
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Traditional Skills Materials

• Scotlands historic environment is a vital part
  of Scotlands culture and its economy.
• Scotland has around 450,000 traditionally
  constructed buildings
• Enhancing our historic environment cannot be
  adequately achieved without the appropriate
  skills and materials to conserve and maintain our
  traditional buildings.

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Delivery

• Encourage better repair and maintenance of the
  current building stock and by demonstrating the
  vital role traditional building skills have in
  the construction sector to accomplish that.
• Improve the standard, consistency and
  availability of skills training to ensure the
  supply of skills, training and qualifications can
  meet and is responsive to what is needed for
  future success.
• Lead the world in achieving a better
  understanding of and the capability to
  demonstrate the relevance of traditional skills
  to our current building stock in terms of energy
  efficiency, sustainability and conservation gain.

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Main Issues
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On-going

• National Progression Award in Conservation of
  Masonry HLF Bursary Scheme
• 1st Qualification of its kind in the UK
• 250 plus individuals
• Valued by the outside world, industry
  recognised.
• Telford, CoGC, Moray College, Orkney Colleges
• Great progression into employment

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Skills for the Future Bursary

• Funding from Heritage Lottery Fund
• Partnership with Historic Scotland
• National Trust for Scotland
• Angus College
• Dundee College
• Supported by Learn Direct Build and
  Construction Skills
• Stand alone bursary with Knockando Wollen Mill
  Trust,
• Funded through HS Craft Fellowship Programme

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Skills for the Future Bursary

• Placements will be for 12 months duration
• A bursary of 14,500
• An allowance for travel, tools and any Personal
  Protective Equipment required.
• Funding to achieve Qualifications
• Gain experience on different work sites through
  out their placement.
• Encouraged to plan for the end of their placement
• Support moves into the heritage sector as either
  employee or starting up a small business.

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Skills for the Future Bursary

• Heritage Engineering ( 5 Bursary Places)
• Laser Scanning of Traditional Buildings (4
  Bursary Places)
• Traditional Skills in Angus. ( 6 Bursary Holders)
• Energy Saving Carbon Reduction in the Heritage
  Sector (4 Bursary Places)

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Heritage Engineering

• Partnership to preserve traditional skills at
  risk of dying out.
• Developed jointly by NTS and Historic Scotland,
• New training programme to excite people from
  diverse backgrounds to gain and develop heritage
  engineering skills through work based training.
• Acquire a broad range of practical skills through
  placements at project partner sites.
• On the job training alongside skilled staff will
  enable apprentices to gain hands on experience of
  operating machinery, together with its ongoing
  maintenance, conservation and repair.
• Relevant external courses will support wider or
  accredited learning when necessary.

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Heritage Engineering

• Acquire knowledge and practical expertise in the
  following heritage engineering processes
• woollen and linen handlooms (maintenance, repair
  and operation of original working hand looms,
  ancient crafts of weaving, spinning and dyeing
  wool using natural dyes)
• printing press machinery (typesetting,
  imposition, printing, machine maintenance and the
  conservation of the equipment and skills required
  for a letterpress printing works)
• watermill structure and machinery (waterwheels
  and turbines mill shafting, gears and bearings
  metal / timber hurst frames millstone
  reassembly.

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Heritage Engineering

• Heritage engineering relies on older people
• Strong interest in previous craft fellowships
  offered in this field
• Demand for people to move into this field.
• Small Numbers
• But significant increase in capacity

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Barry Mill, Angus

• Working Category A Listed Watermill
• It is owned and operated by the National Trust
  for Scotland as an educational tourist
  attraction.
• It is a three floor building, containing a meal
  floor (basement), a milling floor and a top (or
  "bin floor").
• A site for several mills since at least 1539,
  Barry Mill was commercially operational until
  1984 it was then restored, and has been operated
  by the Trust since 1992.

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Robert Smails Printing Works, Innerleithan

• A fully functional Victorian era letterpress
  printing works, acquired in 1986 by the NTS
• Opened in 1990 showing visitors the operation of
  a local printer around 1900
• Still carrying out orders for printing and
  stationery.
• The firm was established in 1866, carrying out
  print jobs for the local community as well as
  operating a stationer's shop, and between 1893
  and 1916 published a weekly newspaper.
• Remained in the ownership of the Smail family,
  who made little effort to keep up with
  twentieth-century advances in technology,
• Visitors are shown the process as well as try
  hand typesetting, and the opportunity to print
  their own work.

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Knockando Woolmill, Speyside

• A-listed group of buildings in the Spey Valley.
• Contains original textile machinery acquired over
  the centuries.
• At the heart of the local community listed as
  the 'Wauk Mill' in parish records from 1784, the
  mill has since maintained its traditions of
  spinning and weaving through generations of
  families.
• Knockando Woolmill grew gradually as the
  mechanisation of textile production developed
  elsewhere in the UK.
• Product of 18th and 19th century farm
  diversification.
• When times were good, the Woolmill tenant would
  buy a new (usually second hand) piece of
  machinery. He would extend the Mill building just
  enough to keep the weather off the machine being
  a thrifty farmer, he reused doors and windows
  from elsewhere. This has resulted in the
  surviving tiny, ramshackle building stuffed full
  of historic machinery and redolent of the labours
  previous generations.
• Spinning and weaving went hand in hand with
  agriculture at Knockando. There would be little
  work carried on in the Mill during sowing or
  harvest time but after shearing, local farmers
  would bring in their fleeces to be processed and
  take them away as blankets and tweed cloth. Many
  communities had their own local district woollen
  mill, but the majority of these disappeared
  between the two World Wars.

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Knockando Woolmill, Speyside

• Restoration was planned quicker than the new
  Bursary Scheme could be brought on-line
• Funded through our Craft Fellow Programme
• Nathaniel Havinden, Knockando Craft Fellow
• Recording, stripping back and dismantling the
  machinery
• Supervising the moving of the machinery to a new
  storage building
• Reconstructing the machinery in restored Mill
• Making in operational to enable production of
  textiles to begin again

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Skills for the Future Bursary Heritage
Engineering

• Good way to support projects and small
  enterprises
• Provide training that the mainstream cant or
  wont address
• Building Capacity providing opportunities
• Passing on Skills and Expertise before they are
  lost
• Small numbers but hopefully a big impact

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Skills for the Future Bursary Heritage
Engineering

• The Way Forward?
• What else is out there?
• What skills are at risk?
• HLF already looking at the development of the
  next programme
• HS interested to hear about other areas and
  crafts that may need our support

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