Photo credit: Historic Environment Scotland

Historic Environment Scotland (HES) is the lead public body concerned with protecting, understanding and sharing Scotland’s historic environment, for today and for the future. HES looks after 350 historic sites in Scotland from all periods in history; these range from castles to cairns, brochs to bothies, ironworks and much in between. They have a formal role in the planning system, with the protection of buildings of architectural or historic importance.

Ensuring the development of traditional skills is essential to look after Scotland’s historic and traditionally built heritage, HES is engaged with a training programme for apprentices in various trades such as stonemasonry, joinery and slating.  The focus of HES is not just on well-known historic structures, but on the wide range of traditional buildings that makes up 20% of Scotland’s housing stock.

HES also gives advice on repair to homeowners and organisations on appropriate repairs to buildings of all types and research and publish best-practice guidance. The changing climate is obliging Scotland to review many aspects of its operations and work is ongoing to reduce energy consumption, adopt climate change risk assessments, develop energy efficiency improvements for buildings, progress resource minimisation and sustainable procurement.

Annatt Road, Perth, Scotland

This is a single-storey house on the edge of Perth, set in a 1920’s ‘garden city’ development.  The home was of good build quality and design, and was popular with residents, but the thermal performance was not to modern standards.  The landlord wished to trial a series of upgrade measures for subsequent adoption on the remaining 70 dwellings on the estate.  The renovation works were supported by HES with a technical research grant.

Local contractors were used to generate a skills base for the next phases of work.  Wood fibre insulation was used under the timber floor and in the roof.  A new vapour-open blown foam was used to insulate the walls, retaining the original plaster linings.  Clay paint was used to help manage internal humidity and prevent condensation.  Infra-red heating was installed in the bathroom.

A Green Apple Award was given in 2015 for this refurbishment.

 

Principal Characteristics of the Renovation Works:

Ownership type: Private
Year of construction: Circa 1920
Energy performance: 63% improvement in the insulation performance of the solid external wall
Cost of works: € 18,27

Historic Environment Repair Grant information from Historic Environment Scotland website: https://www.historicenvironment.scot/grants-and-funding/our-grants/historic-environment-repair-grant/