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New preface to the 2004 edition of

Measurement and Recording
of Historic Buildings

Peter Swallow, Ross Dallas, Sophie Jackson and David Watt

There are several types of survey relating to land and buildings which may be undertaken, and the following are just a few examples:

• Measured surveys of land to show topographical features, boundaries, buildings, roads and other development infrastructure.

• Valuation surveys of land and buildings for acquisition, compensation, disposal, investment, insurance and mortgage or rating purposes.

• Visual surveys of the structure and fabric of buildings to assess their condition and to prepare structural survey reports, schedules of condition, schedules of dilapidation, or specifications for programmes maintenance and repair.

• Measured surveys of buildings to provide drawings of their layout construction and appearance.

This book confines itself to measured surveys undertaken to enable accurate scaled drawings to be prepared of buildings and their immediate surroundings for any of the following purposes:

• To provide a physical record for legal purposes, for example deed and lease plans.

• To supply information about the construction and layout of buildings, together with their associated facilities and services, to assist property managers and others to utilize and maintain their physical assets efficiently.

• To form the base drawings for proposed programmes of work involving repairs, alteration, adaptations or extensions.

• To record the relationships of buildings to their sites, for example a country house to its formal garden and surrounding parkland.

• To record the plan, structure and chronological development of a building in order that its history might be interpreted and understood.

• To record historic built fabric before repairs, alterations or demolition lead to obliteration or complete loss.

The aim of this book is to provide a practical guide for those responsible for commissioning or executing measured surveys as a means of recording buildings and their associated sites. Two distinct processes are identified: surveying, which involves measuring and recording the dimensions of land and buildings: and computation and plotting, a process which subsequently translates survey sketches and notes into finished drawings.

Starting with the basic principles of surveying, the subject is developed, step-by-step, to a level that will enable an accurate measured survey to be executed using traditional ‘hand survey’ techniques, low-cost equipment and traditional draughting methods. Later chapters outline current professional practice using sophisticated modern survey instruments, photogrammetric equipment and computer-aided draughting systems

Whilst the procedures and techniques described here may be used to measure land and buildings of any description, because of the growing concern to protect and conserve our architectural heritage there is an emphasis on the recording of historic buildings and their settings.

Extensive use has been made of illustrations as an aid to understanding the essential principles of measuring and recording, and to help those new to the subject to conduct surveys and produce accurate drawings with confidence. The authors hope that readers, be they architects, builders, conservation officers, building archaeologists, planners or surveyors, will find this book of value.

In the ten years that have elapsed since the publication of the first edition, surveying instruments and photographic based recording methods have become increasingly more sophisticated. To reflect these changes Ross Dallas, who has spent most of his career measuring historic buildings, provides two new chapters dealing with modern survey practice using instruments and photographic techniques respectively.

Additionally, information on locating early maps and plans, aerial photography and its uses, documentary research, procurement of surveys and conventional photography has been incorporated at various points where appropriate.

Whilst this new edition concentrates, as did the first, on measured survey and photographic recording techniques the opportunity has been taken to present a wider view of building recording projects. Drawing on their extensive experience of historic building and landscape projects, Sophie Jackson, Jonathan Godfrey and Andrew Westman of the Museum of London Archaeological Service (MoLAS) building recording team, describe in a new final chapter, linked to a case study, some of the other techniques in the building recorder’s ‘toolbox’.