Traditional farm buildings are an important contributor to the character of all but the most remote landscapes of England. Like the landscapes in which they sit, historic farm buildings provide a wide range of benefits to modern society:

• They hand down messages from our past - to this and to succeeding generations - telling us how our ancestors farmed and lived, thought and built;
• They are critical to our understanding of settlement patterns and the development of today’s countryside;
• They are an essential, if often undervalued, contributor to local distinctiveness in the countryside and to the sense-of-place enjoyed by rural communities and visitors alike;
• They provide an important economic asset for farm businesses or - through adaptive re-use where they have become redundant – a high-quality environment for new rural businesses.
• Through re-use, they can alleviate pressure to build on green-field land and reduce the demand for new buildings which may otherwise compromise the character of the countryside.
• They are irreplaceable repositories of local crafts, skills and techniques, in harmony with their surroundings and using traditional materials sometimes not available or too expensive for new building projects.
• They represent an historical investment in materials and energy that can be sustained through conservation and careful re-use;
• They may provide important wildlife habitats

These traditional farm buildings are under great pressure for change. This pressure originates in the mechanisation of farm processes in the 19th century, accelerated by the post-war intensification and restructuring of farming and further exacerbated by changes in traditional patterns of farm management, the merger of farm holdings, rising animal welfare standards, shifting patterns of tenure and, latterly, the decline in farm profitability. The result is the redundancy and disrepair of many historic structures and large numbers of conversions to new uses which are often insensitive to the architectural and historic interest of buildings and their landscape setting. This pressure for change is likely to accelerate further over the next few years as global influences on farming increase.

In response to these pressures, in July 2006 English Heritage and the Countryside Agency, in association with the Countryside and Community Research Unit o the University of Gloucestershire, published a joint policy statement Living buildings in a living landscape: finding a future for traditional farm buildings.

This statement provides advice from English Heritage and the Countryside Agency to those involved in planning, grant-aid, management or policy decisions affecting the traditional farm building stock or individual farm buildings in England. It also contains a national overview of the importance of traditional farm buildings, the drivers of change that affect their management and regional summaries of their character.

The statement is supported by eight Preliminary Regional Character Statements that provide more detailed information on the characteristics of traditional farm buildings on a region by region basis.

This statement is also available as a short version, which sets out the policy alone.

To supplement the policy statement English Heritage has published in October 2006 The Conversion of Traditional Farm Buildings: a guide to good practice. This publication provides detailed guidance for owners, designers, builders and conservation officers on how to achieve high quality conversions which respect the farm building’s historic significance and are in keeping with the character of England’s countryside. The guidance includes a ‘toolkit’ to help guide and inform decisions when conversion is being considered.

With Defra, the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group and Association of Local Government Archaeological Officers, English Heritage has also published Farming the historic landscape: caring for farm buildings which provides advice to land managers and others on the maintenance and repair of these important structures.

In addition English Heritage and the Countryside Agency have also commissioned the University of Gloucestershire to undertake the first national survey of the state of the historic building stock Historic farm buildings: Constructing the evidence base. This work and additional analyses are reported in Heritage Counts 2005: the State of England’s Historic Environment.

English Heritage and Defra, in partnership with the Lake District National Park Authority, are also carrying out an evaluation of the social, economic and public benefits of the long-term programme of repairs to traditional farm buildings undertaken through the Lake District Environmentally Sensitive Area grant scheme between 1998 and 2004. The headline results of the project are published as Building Value: Public Benefits of Historic Farm Building Repair in the Lake District.