What Makes a Listed Building?

This brief description of the process and reasons for listing a building as being of special architectural or historic interest is adapted from English Heritage’s March 1997 leaflet on the subject. Pavilions of Splendour has contributed some additional information and commentary in this colour leaflet. The same situation obtains in Wales, where the statutory body is Cadw (which means ‘Keep’ in Welsh) and in Scotland, where it is Historic Scotland, while the Ulster architectural Society looks after Northern Ireland’s built heritage. In Scotland and Northern Ireland Grades I, II* and II are replaced by the more logical Grades A, B and C.

Listing began in Britain on January 1st 1950, under the austere post-war Labour government; a surprise to many who believed that conservation and conservatism went hand-in-hand. Sadly we were not pioneers in the field; the French had been classifying historic buildings for the previous hundred years, while we in Britain had to rely on pressure groups such as the Georgian Group, formed in the 1930s to prevent the wholesale destruction of our Georgian architecture, perceived at that time as dull and lacking in merit. How opinions change. Over to English Heritage: