Paul Holden

Academic profile

Mr Paul Holden

Visiting Research Fellow
School of Society and Culture (Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business)

The Global Goals

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. Paul's work contributes towards the following SDG(s):

Goal 11: SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and CommunitiesGoal 15: SDG 15 - Life on Land

About Paul

Paul Holden was born in Southampton, the son of Bill Holden an international speedway rider in the 1950s. Unlike his father (and cousin Kevin) Paul, despite trying, had little talent for motorcycle racing so channelled his energies into his job as a heating and service engineer for British Gas. After redundancy in 1995 he became a senior tradesman at Winchester College where he first discovered architecture − he later wrote his MA dissertation on the life and works of William Wynford, the retained master mason to William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester. Part of this work was published in Hampshire Studies (2008) and Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society (2018).

In 1999 he moved to Cornwall where he took up a post, first as House and Collections Manager and then Project Curator, for the National Trust at Lanhydrock. During that time he published and lectured widely on a wide range of architectural, curatorial, heritage, cultural and social history topics and was fortunate to lecture in America, the Czech Republic, Scotland, Ireland and throughout England. He was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 2010.

Paul is now a freelance heritage professional and architectural historian. He is chairman of Truro Diocese Advisory Committee and the Church Uses Committee, vice-chair of Truro Cathedral Fabric Advisory Committee, member of the Cornwall Design Review Panel and President of the Cornwall Family History Society and the James M MacLaren Society.

After five years as commissioning editor for Architectural Historian for Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain he has taken up the editorship of the Journal of Historic Buildings and Places and Heritage Now, the journal and magazine of Historic Buildings & Places. 

Teaching

External lecturer on Heritage Management MA course at Plymouth University 2019 -

Contact Paul