In Britain, the badge of distinction awarded to historic buildings is unheroically called ‘listing’. This may not sound impressive, but it is a serious matter for the owners of listed buildings who are required to preserve whatever features make the buildings special, and face an array of sanctions if they fail to do so.

Owning a listed building can sometimes seem like a burden, not a reward. The idea for assisting owners of listed buildings by assembling information on the building’s significance in a ‘Conservation Plan’ was dreamt up in Australia in the 1980s and migrated to the UK in the mid-1990s.

CAR completed its Conservation Management Plan for the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, in 1999. The original Museum, a competition winner of the 1830s, was the main high profile, prestige building of its generation in Cambridge. Inevitably the Museum outgrew the original building, and extensions were added between the 1920s and 1970s, but as the status of the existing building has inexorably increased with time, the scope for change has narrowed. The Conservation Management Plan attempted to identify clearly the opportunities for development to meet the Museum’s desperate shortage of space.

The Conservation Management Plan was well received by the local planners and English Heritage, and should help the Museum protect its heritage and modernise for the future. This is hardly a unique objective: it applies to the whole of the University and City of Cambridge, and to historic buildings round the world. We can expect a lot of Conservation Plans to be written in coming years.