News across the Commonwealth

The CHS Training Programme has now awarded 6 Hamish Ogston Foundation Commonwealth Traineeships to fund the attendance of 6 UK-based participants on the course. They will join 6 local participants for the start of the two week programme in Hyderabad on Thursday, 6 October. Based at the spectacular Osmania Womens’ University College, (the former British Residency), they will develop hands-on heritage skills helping to repair and restore the three monumental gateways and the central mall of one of India’s most important buildings at risk.

Having secured statutory protection for over I200 historic buildings in the city, the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan (HFP) has organised a major initiative in Karachi. Under expert supervision, local community volunteers have been mobilised to clean the facades of the city’s fine historic buildings. Starting with the Victorian Gothic Denso Hall (above), built in 1886, […]

The Ghana Museums and Monuments Board (GMMB) is one of the sovereign institutions established when the Gold Coast colony became independent of British rule in 1957. Its mandate of preservation of the material cultural heritage...

Marking Her Majesty The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, the biggest-ever Commonwealth heritage project was recently announced at the HQ of the Barbados National Trust as part of a Conference of the Islands.

The first recorded watercolour in Australia was made by surgeon Arthur Bowes Smyth on 11th February 1788.

We welcome supporters and membership from the UK Overseas territories, which share a common heritage with Commonwealth countries. Following the completion of the Grytviken Conservation Management Plan by Purcell Architects in 2018, the Government of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands has been implementing several of the recommendations.

The use of heritage lodging as a means of sustainable tourism using the example of the Serena Shigar Fort located in the Northern Areas of Pakistan.

Nicky Sugar, Archivist, summarises the remarkably rich collections held at Bristol Archives which reveal perspectives on the Commonwealth in unexpected detail…

Ann Coats, Chair of the Naval Dockyards Society, reveals an eleventh-hour attempt to save the last workers' housing in Bermuda Dockyard from demolition...

All interested in the work of the Commonwealth Heritage Forum should be aware of the existence of The Watercolour World (TWW) project.

The Commonwealth Heritage Forum is interested in all aspects of the built heritage of the Commonwealth. In the late 1940s and 50s there was a resurgence of interest in ‘tropical architecture’ by some of the leading modernist architects of the day. Jessica Holland highlights the work of Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, who left a fascinating heritage of important buildings in West Africa and India...

The British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia (BACSA), founded in 1977, was the first organisation to address the built heritage of the British Empire in the East.