The big list

To describe a building as ‘listed’ is a way of saying it is important, but what does it mean? Roger Bowdler looks at how listing came about and how it has changed

- Roger Bowdler

IT’S a staggering fact that there are about half a million listed buildings —the precise number is impossible totally and it changes anyway—on the National Heritage List for England. Notionally, this is a list of all buildings of special architectural or historic interest in this part of the UK. ‘Special’ is a high test—and is distinct from the curious. There are also degrees of listing, with the most important identified as Grade I or Grade II*. Conferring ‘listed’ status triggers the demand for extra planning consent, so listing carries clear implications for owners.

There is a political aspect to this act of heritage recognition as well: Historic England recommends listing and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport—almost always—agrees. Now and then, however, the minister does overturn a recommendation. The new Culture Secretary, Nadine Dorries, for example, recently did so with a 1950s concrete tower in Redcar, North Yorkshire (Athena, October 6). As in this case, it is her opinion that ultimately prevails if listing is contested.

John Ruskin and William Morris laid the intellectual foundations for an interventionist approach to the preservation of historic buildings in the late 19th century with their foundation of SPAB, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. It was, however, concern at the sheer pace of modernization between the wars, as well as the need to know what buildings mattered when reconstructing Britain’s blitzed cities, that catalyzed government action: the present system of listing was brought into being by two Town and Country Planning Acts in 1944 and 1947.