Welcome | The Architectural Heritage Fund

This is, sadly, my last Annual Review as Chair of the AHF. However, I feel enormously privileged to have been able to spend almost a decade helping the organisation and those that it funds to regenerate some of the UK’s most wonderful historic buildings.

I became involved with the AHF because I believed passionately in helping charities and local communities find new and sustainable uses for historic buildings. The organisation has done some great things to achieve this core objective and I am proud to have been able to play my part in supporting such a diverse array of projects.

Looking back over my time in office we have managed to launch an extraordinary array of new products and projects, in particular the Heritage Impact Fund, and a number of Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport funded programmes, including the £15m town centre and high street programme Transforming Places Through Heritage. We have also increased the funding streams for our activities in all four countries in the UK. All these initiatives have led to more historic buildings back in use - AHF’s core purpose - but also a wide variety of social and economic benefits through the variety of activities being delivered from within these buildings.

This past year we have been focusing efforts on diversifying both the staff and governance of the AHF and also ensuring that our funding and finance reaches into all parts of the UK. We see this as essential to the delivery of our charitable purposes: historic buildings are located in every part of the UK, but they are particularly at risk in economically deprived areas. It is therefore imperative we support people and organisations in these places to find a new future for their heritage assets.

Liz Peace CBE, Chair

All these initiatives have led to more historic buildings back in use - AHF’s core purpose - but also a wide variety of social and economic benefits through the variety of activities being delivered from within these buildings.

Liz Peace CBE, Chair

I’d like to thank the trustees that retired this year, Kate Dickson and Eleanor McAllister. Kate has particularly contributed a huge amount of time to the AHF over her three terms with us. Her wealth of experience has provided incalculable amounts of advice and guidance to the projects we fund, especially at the early stages of projects.

I will miss the AHF enormously, but I am very pleased to be able to hand over the reins to the hugely experienced Ros Kerslake, former Chief Executive of the National Lottery Heritage Fund. I know Ros will bring her knowledge and passion for heritage to the next chapter of AHF’s work, particularly as it moves towards its 50th anniversary in a few years’ time.

Elizabeth Peace CBE

Chair

It is imperative we support people and organisations to find a new future for their heritage assets.

Welcome from our Chief Executive

Although the past year has felt slightly more stable than 2020-21, there are still significant aftershocks emanating from the aftermath of COVID-19 - and the ‘cost of living’ crisis is going to dominate the forthcoming year ahead and beyond. Permanent crisis mode is not one anyone wants to get used to living with, but it does, unfortunately, feel more like the ‘new normal’.

In these circumstances, ‘Cathedral thinking’ - thinking and planning in decades and centuries, as the architects, masons and church authorities did when commissioning cathedrals – will be an essential mindset shift for our current and future challenges; lifting our view to the longer term, beyond the inevitable pull of short-term crises. Adopting a longer term time horizon will form part of our thinking around the development of our new strategy, to be launched in early 2023.

In the meantime, we have been helping organisations to continue to access our funding and you can see just some of the many examples of projects we have funded this past year. Projects like the Woolstore in Caledon, funded as part of the Village Catalyst scheme in Northern Ireland, is an excellent example of how a heritage asset can catalyse the longer term thinking we need around communities and place - including within rural areas. A long-term empty building, with an ageing population around it, the project team helped this community in County Tyrone to think about the services and assets they needed to retain young people and families in the area. The end result is both architecturally impressive and the saving of a heritage asset: but it’s also the creation of a key service and business that will help Caledon to keep younger people in the area. Supporting more visionary projects like this will be central to our new Strategy.

I’d like to take this opportunity to say an enormous thank-you to Liz Peace for her three terms at the helm of the Board of Trustees. She has been an incredibly important Chair of the AHF, raising our profile and helping demonstrate to the property sector and government the potential of the not-for-profit sector in complementing public and private sector efforts to regenerate heritage buildings. She will be much missed, but I am very much looking forward to working with Ros Kerslake, someone we know well, and who I know will help build on the huge legacy of good work left by Liz.

Matthew Mckeague

Chief Executive

I’d like to take this opportunity to say an enormous thank-you to Liz Peace for her three terms at the helm of the Board of Trustees.

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