Saving the day for 20 years
WHEN the Heritage at Risk Register was launched two decades ago, in 1998—originally Buildings at Risk—it was confined to Grade I- and Ii*-listed buildings and Scheduled Monuments. Ten years later, its scope was expanded to include registered parks, gardens, battlefields and protected wreck sites, as well as Conservation Areas.
Its aim has ever been to spotlight sites most at risk of neglect, decay or inappropriate development and to direct funding to the most urgent or needy cases. Entries now total 5,160.
One of England’s oldest purposebuilt museums, the Wisbech and Fenland Museum in Cambridgeshire, is among the most notable additions to Historic England’s 20th annual Heritage at Risk Register. Opened in 1847, the museum, whose collections relate to the local flora and fauna of Wisbech and the surrounding fens, is described as ‘an almost perfect example of a Victorian museum’, but its leaking roofs are causing serious internal damage.
Also now at risk is Wool Bridge, Dorset’s best-preserved Elizabethan bridge, which collapsed after heavy rains at the start of the year. The Grade Ii*-listed structure crosses the River Frome and featured in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’urbervilles. Coventry’s Holy Trinity Church, where George Eliot was a parishioner and which withstood the Blitz thanks to a doughty vicar who slept in the church to be on hand to put out fires, and the striking Whitacre Waterworks at Shustoke, near Birmingham, are other additions.
Now off the list, but with still unresolved issues about the future of the site, is the Rothschilds’ Large Mansion in Gunnersbury Park, Ealing— a hugely evocative location with west London views described by Daniel Defoe. However, the landscape and eight other buildings remain at risk. Visit www.historicengland.org.uk/har for more information. Jack Watkins