Buildings and Industrial Survey

RCAHMS records many aspects of Scotland’s built heritage. This includes threatened buildings, listed buildings, and industrial sites. We also record architecture by area and by theme.

Threatened Buildings Survey (TBS)

RCAHMS has a statutorily defined duty to record listed buildings and buildings in conservation areas for which permission to demolish or part-demolish has been granted.

Industrial Survey

RCAHMS records the wide variety of structures and processes relating to Scotland’s industrial development ranging from railways to expolosives factories, paper making to sand extraction and textile mills to drinking water provision. New survey material augments our existing collections of historic photographs, trade catalogues, specialist reports, drawings and copies of privately owned industrial collections.

Recent work has focused on:

• The coal industry, working in collaboration with the Scottish Mining Museum. This resulted in the publication Scottish Collieries: An Inventory of Scotland's Coal Industry in the Nationalised Era
• Glasgow Waterworks Loch Katrine Scheme which has provided Glasgow’s water since the 1850s.

Thematic Survey

Our thematic approach concentrates on particular building periods or types such as farms, schools, and 20th century defences from both World Wars and the following Cold War period.

Our survey of defence sites includes:

• Present day active military installations such as RAF Leuchars
• Long abandoned military sites from airfields to prisoner of war camps