Adventures in architectural history

When I talk to political people and tell them that we need more architectural historians, they disagree and try to tell me that we need more doctors and nurses and teachers (but never more real estate agents or property developers, strangely enough).  In future I shall warn them of the dreadful fate that has befallen Liberal England, an estimable blog  about Liberal Democrat politics, old buildings, trains and Jenny Agutter.

You see, the estimable Mr Calder - who writes said blog - read an item in the Shropshire Star which began "an inquisitive family have uncovered a bizarre church which has been hidden under their Victorian home in Shropshire for 100 years" and wrote a post about it. Had Mr Calder ready access to an architectural historian, he probably would have been informed that the existence of a cross on the floor of a room is not necessarily an indication that said room is a bizarre church. Further, he would almost certainly have been informed that people in churches, even bizarre ones, do not sit facing one another like passengers on the London Underground.  Further still, he would have been disabused of the notion - put about by the newspaper - that Catholics were illegal in the 18th Century and were forced to build their churches underground. Finally, he would have been told that a space under the floor of a building is usually a cellar.

I do realise that the General Election campaign has already started, but it is not too late for the Lib Dems to adopt a policy for the government employment of architectural historians in numbers large enough to prevent this sort of thing happening again.