Callum Morrison, a 21-year-old carpenter from Croydon in south London, has spent his day working atop the 919-year-old roof of Lincoln Cathedral, repairing rotten rafters which have been eaten away by worms and deathwatch beetles, in a bid to preserve a piece of history. “Not many power tools here, just hard graft,” he says, when he’s finally able to come down off the roof and talk. “We need to replace the rafters in keeping with the original roof, to keep the rot at bay and keep the roof in working order. The last time this roof was worked on was hundreds of years ago, by someone with even fewer tools than I have now. And now I’m working on it – that’s an incredible feeling.”

But it’s not only ancient cathedrals which need repairing. In 2008, English
Heritage warned that the future of the country’s old buildings, including
more than five million homes, was at risk because of a severe skills
shortage in traditional “heritage” building methods, including
stonemasonry, glazing, lead working, joinery, plastering and carpentry
(Morrison’s specialist area). At one time, these skills would have been
passed down through generations, but they now risk dying out because there
aren’t enough new entrants joining the specialist heritage trade. “An
old or traditional building is typically one built before 1920,”
explains John Edwards, who is senior buildings surveyor in the conservation
department at English Heritage.

“Of all the buildings which we classify as ‘traditionally-built’ in
England, 90 per cent of them are people’s homes, which is why it’s so
important to make sure they are looked after properly.”

According to the most recent statistics from English Heritage, there are less
than 30,000 properly qualified, skilled craftspeople, out of a workforce of
90,000 in the construction and building trade.

Over 60 per cent of repair jobs done on houses built pre-1920 are carried out
by workmen who do not have the right skills or materials to work on
traditionally-built homes – which is why there’s now an urgent need to pass
heritage building crafts on to future generations, or else risk millions of
homes falling into disrepair.

“Unless we supplement the existing workforce with younger people before a
generation goes into retirement, then we risk losing our traditional,
English crafts, and we won’t be able to repair our old homes,” says
Edwards. “We’ve got the oldest building stock in the western world and
it needs to be maintained. This isn’t just about preserving Georgian
mansions, it’s about preserving any traditional building. Our definition of
a traditional building is one with solid walls, made with porous materials,
built with stone and brick and bedded in lime mortar, so it applies just as
much to an old Victorian terrace or a flat in a Victorian conversion as it
does to a country estate.”

Edwards says many homeowners often aren’t aware of the specialist maintenance
their property might require, which is why they end up consulting general
builders rather than heritage ones.

“Listed buildings are protected, but we shouldn’t forget all the unlisted
properties that still require the same care. A Georgian mansion will get
treated in the right way because of its Grade-listing, but a Victorian or
Edwardian terrace or townhouse will end up getting treated by mainstream
builders, who apply modern techniques and modern materials, like concrete,
to old buildings,” he says. “This inappropriate use of skills and
materials in repairing old buildings leads to more problems which ends up
being costly for the homeowner.”

Morrison, who worked on maintaining period homes in London before his stint on
Lincoln Cathedral, says that one of the worst mistakes made by builders –
who aren’t specialised in heritage skills, or indeed by extreme DIY
enthusiasts – is to cover cracks in brickwork with concrete or cement,
instead of using lime in the form of a wash, mortar or render, which gives
natural protection against weathering. Lime needs to breathe, but if it gets
covered with concrete, it no longer can, which leads to more cracking.

“When we say lime breathes, we mean it takes in air and water,”
Morrison says, who advises homeowners to seek specialist building craft
advice on lime washing, rather than attempting it themselves. “Cement
is our modern-day version, but it fails over time. You can lime wash your
property every year in bad weather, but it all depends on the way in which
your house is placed with respect to the weather and wind direction.”

Similarly, the notion of a building “breathing” applies to
timber-framed houses, too. Morrison explains that if you’re doing a modern
loft conversion in a pre-1920 property, you must ensure the timber has
enough ventilation, or else it will dry out, leading to the homeowner’s
nightmare of dry rot. “If you smother the timber’s air source, it’ll
crumble,” he says.

Morrison is one of 12 apprentices on The Prince of Wales’s building crafts
apprentices programme, which aims to offer young people within the building
crafts trade a chance to specialise as a “master craftsperson”
with expertise in traditional building and construction skills. He hopes to
work on repairing oak-framed homes next.

He says: “With old buildings, it’s about working with care to deal with a
problem in a way that respects the building’s history. That’s what
restoring, repairing and conserving is. Even if your home isn’t a listed
building, it’s important not to get too carried away and start changing the
original details.”

But even protected properties are at risk of losing the skills required to
maintain them. The average age of the National Trust’s 150 building
contractors – employed to look after its tenanted homes as well as its big
country piles – is over 50 and approaching retirement, which is why the
Trust launched its own building apprenticeship scheme, aimed at 16 to
19-year-olds, last year.

Josh Dalton, 18, is one of them and is following in the footsteps of his
grandfather, who worked as a carpenter. Dalton is training in general
property maintenance for traditional houses, while also studying for a NVQ
in carpentry. “I like being able to feel that I’ve worked on a bit of
history,” he says. “Even when I’m working in a small house, I’m
still using old-fashioned skills and techniques, such as making joints
myself and not relying on prefabricated ones.”

But while there is a shortage of new entrants in the heritage building crafts
sector, there is still considerable interest in it from young people – the
National Trust says it received 200 applications for just one of the
apprenticeship places advertised last year. Meanwhile, the Prince’s
Foundation, which runs the Prince of Wales’s building craft apprenticeship,
says it has seen a “real enthusiasm amidst young people to learn
traditional crafts”.

A Cambridge graduate in architecture, Nancy Peskett, deliberately changed her
career path to take up stonemasonry, taking an advanced diploma in the skill
at the Building Crafts College in East London. She is now coming up to the
end of her apprenticeship on the Prince of Wales’s building crafts programme.

“I wanted to do something that would use my hands and my brain,” she
says. “Stonemasonry is very logical and practical, but also creative.”
As a stonemason, Peskett repairs old homes where stonework has been damaged
or broken by cutting stone (often by hand) and fixing it into place.

She says the biggest problem facing pre-1920 homes are cracks in the brickwork
and external facades, since older buildings are especially susceptible to
water and weather damage.

“Buildings move with age and when cracks begin to appear, you have to
replace and repair them in a way which is not just aesthetic but also
practical,” Peskett explains. “It’s important to replace cracked
stone with similar natural material. A lot of people replace stone window
ledges with concrete ones but that’s just not compatible with an old
building.”

Replacing external stone window sills is one of the most common stonemasonry
jobs for old homes, says Peskett – but there is also an aesthetic side to
the job, as homeowners doing a restoration job often approach stonemasons to
restore intricate stone carvings, usually found above doorways.

It’s this part of the job that reminds her that she is working with homes
which are part of history and which are so important to look after.

“Working with old buildings teaches you so much about the way every
building, including modern ones, work. You learn about building materials,
and about how a property can decay – and this is what you need to know in
order to be able to build better buildings. It’s literally like learning
from history.”

To find a specialist heritage builder, visit www.english-heritage.org.uk.

National Trust Building Apprenticeships, www.nationaltrust.org.uk.For the
Prince’s Foundation, visit www.princes-foundation.org