15th-century school among sites added to Historic England’s heritage at risk list
In April 1913, two women broke into the 15th-century Old grammar school in Kings Norton near Birmingham with the intention of burning it to the ground in a protest for the cause of women’s suffrage.
After decades of campaigning for votes for women without success, the tactics of the suffrage movement had become more militant, including a campaign of arson attacks.
What the women saw inside, however, was enough to change their minds. Instead of torching its ancient mullioned windows and 17th-century panelling, they wrote on a blackboard: “Two suffragists have entered here, but charmed with this old-world room, have refrained from their design of destruction.”
What the women declined to do, however, time and rainwater are increasingly taking care of. The Grade II*-listed school, built 600 years ago as a priest’s house, is now rapidly deteriorating as external panels are detaching from its timber frame, allowing in damp and rain and putting the entire building in peril.
The Old grammar school is one of 155 sites that have been added to Historic England’s heritage at risk register, amid what the body describes as a particularly challenging period for heritage conservation.
They include sites of international importance, such as the Heighington and Aycliffe railway station in County Durham, which dates from 1826 and is considered the oldest in the world. Originally designed as a pub, it has been empty since 2017 and is now derelict.
Also needing urgent attention, according to Historic England, are a rare working Victorian six-sail windmill in Waltham, Lincolnshire, Tamworth Castle in Staffordshire, considered one of the finest Norman motte and bailey castles in England, and Hurst Castle, which was built by Henry VIII on a spit of shingle near Lymington in Hampshire and is now threatened by beach erosion and rising sea levels.
Historic England says the register – which now includes 4,891 buildings and other sites – offers “an annual snapshot of the health of England’s valued historic buildings and places”, in a sector that contributed £44.6bn to the UK economy in 2022.
According to Duncan Wilson, the chief executive of Historic England, the outlook is a “mixed picture”. While 124 sites were removed from the list year this year after being stabilised, “overall it is a difficult environment – especially for small community groups looking after buildings that are in need of repair – to find the money”.
He said: “Local authority support is difficult at present because of the financial situation of many local authorities, and our budget is not going up.”
Building and sites added to the register become eligible for grants, but Wilson said: “Our grants are very, very thinly spread”. He said the organisation could offer advice and help, however, “and that’s what we’re very anxious to do, because the best people to [look after sites at risk] are local people with a commitment and a passion for a particular building”.
Wilson said he had a particular personal interest in one site, the Roman painted house in Dover, which was built with elaborate painted frescoes around AD200 and which is now at risk.
“I used to be an archeologist, and the Roman painted house was relatively newly excavated when I was [working],” he said. “And so I’m certainly interested in trying to help save that.”
Among the sites that have been removed from the register this year are the art deco Saltdean Lido in Brighton, brought back to life thanks to community efforts, the historic town centre of Hexham in Northumberland and the medieval Calverley Old Hall in West Yorkshire, which has been restored as an unusual holiday let.
Abney Park cemetery in Stoke Newington, north London, one of the so-called “magnificent seven” Victorian cemeteries built in the capital in the 1830s and 40s, had been on the at-risk register since it launched in 1998 but was finally removed this year after a £5m restoration.
