This visual essay is based on a poster that was presented at the 14th Annual Illustration Research Symposium, Illustration & Heritage: Sharing Histories to Draw Out Futures. At that same event, keynote speaker Dan Hicks discussed Pitt Rivers’s concept of ‘realistic degeneration’ and how visual forms deteriorate over time through repeated copying (). Attending this talk encouraged me to reflect on preservation as an act of remembering. If this is the case, then is throwing an object away an act of forgetting?
Initially established as a master’s enquiry and presented as a poster at the 14th International Illustration Research Symposium Illustration & Heritage: Sharing Histories to Draw Out Futures , this practice-based research evolved as a response to the bicentennial of the first passenger railways in Britain. This visual essay summarizes a wider investigation into illustration as a conduit for the nostalgia of British railways and as a tool for legitimizing hidden stories.
This article addresses the role of illustration and reportage drawing in capturing temporality in heritage, focusing on the demolition, redevelopment and refurbishment of social housing. I discuss how a building and its relevance for listing or conservation change over time and how the values of a building regarding its potential listing should be assessed with these changes in mind. The architectural case study is the East London housing estate Robin Hood Gardens (1972), which was refused heritage listing in 2009 and 2015, and its demolition began in 2017 as part of a regeneration scheme. As part of my doctoral research (2015–22), I made reportage illustrations of everyday life on the estate during the time spent waiting before demolition, which is often disregarded by heritage decision-making processes. Through drawing I engaged with specific agencies and audiences – governmental bodies, architects, residents. Writing in 2025 coincides with the completion of the demolition as well as the exhibition of a segment of the building at the newly opened V&A East Storehouse in London. In this new context, I ask what relevance do the drawings hold, beyond documentation for posterity, for future architectural and conservation practices?
Review of: Illustration, Narrative and the Suffragette: An Illustrative Enquiry , Mireille Fauchon (2024) London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 256 pp., ISBN 978-1-35029-752-4, p/bk, GBP 20.69, ISBN 978-1-35029-753-1, h/bk, GBP 70.00, ISBN 978-1-35029-754-8, e-book, GBP 20.69
‘Some Chingford Walls’ is a community research project about everyday heritage and the value we place on seemingly mundane things. The project centres around a specific type of residential wall in Chingford, a suburban town in the London Borough of Waltham Forest. These walls, known as ‘burr’ walls, are constructed from reused ‘waster’ bricks – discarded from the brickworks that were once prevalent in the area.
