Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings
of 20, Buckingham-street, Adelphi, London W.C.2.
The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) (sometimes known as Anti-Scrape) was founded by William Morris, Philip Webb and others, in 1877, to oppose what they saw as destructive 'Restoration' of ancient buildings then occurring in Victorian England.
Morris was particularly concerned about the practice, which he described as "forgery", of attempting to return buildings to an idealised state from the distant past, which often involved the removal of elements added in their later development and which Morris saw as contributing to their interest as documents of the past. Instead, he proposed that ancient buildings should be repaired, not restored, so that their entire history would be protected as cultural heritage.[1]
1926 By the end of 1926 they had made considerable progress in making a survey of ancient British bridges with a view to forming a complete record of the old bridges which remain. Although the work had only begun in the summer of 1925, no less than 500 bridges had been visited in the southern and western counties, of which nearly 200 were measured and recorded.[2]