'To stick it to one side and let it rot is such a waste of a valuable resource': The buildings most at risk, according to the Victorian Society
The Top Ten Endangered Buildings list is endorsed by the charity’s president Griff Rhys Jones.
Murals featuring classical figures and seasonal allegories by Elizabeth Arkwright adorn the ceilings, doors and wall panels of Grade II-listed Parndon Hall, Essex, and yet, despite their historical significance and the fact that they are rare large-scale survivors from the period by a female artist, the building housing them has been allowed to fall into a state of disrepair.
The hall, situated within the Princess Alexandra Hospital campus in Harlow, is on the Victorian Society’s new Top Ten Endangered Buildings list, prompting the charity’s president Griff Rhys Jones to comment: ‘Grrr. Come on Harlow! This is a worthy building. To stick it to one side and let it rot is such a waste of a valuable resource… This could be an asset instead of derelict — and it should be.’
Pardon Hall houses murals by Elizabeth Arkwright.
Faenol Mausoleum in Pentir, North Wales.
The hall was built in 1867 for Loftus Arkwright, great-grandson of the industrial pioneer Sir Richard Arkwright and husband of Elizabeth, who is believed to have honed her artistic skills through Sir Edwin Landseer. For a while, the hall was a distinctive family home, before it was used as a school and offices, then a training centre, library and skills facility for the nearby hospital, which saved it from demolition. It is now empty and there are no plans for its future.
The fate of Elizabeth’s bewitching paintings has been equally precarious — certain ones having been concealed beneath whitewash and paint over time; some are still covered over. The other nine Victorian and Edwardian buildings on the society’s list (with two out of the total Grade II*-listed and eight Grade II-listed) are London’s Hackney Borough Disinfecting Station (1901); the Tees Transporter Bridge, in Stockton-on-Tees, Co Durham (1911); New Market Buildings, Bridgnorth, Shropshire (1855–59); the Former Strand Railway Station and Railway Men’s Club, Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria (1863); Oakes School in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire (1885); St Michael’s RC Cemetery Chapel, Sheffield (1898); Derby School of Art (1876, with additions in 1899); the former Library and Mechanics Institute, Devonport, Devon (1843–44); and Faenol (Vaynol) Mausoleum, in Pentir, Gwynedd, North Wales.
The Derby School of Art is another building worth noting.
New Market Buildings in Bridgnorth.
The architecturally significant Henry Kennedy-designed mausoleum, which has a bell tower and a hammerbeam roof, is one the rarest funerary buildings of its type in Wales. It was built in the late 1870s with French Gothic elements for the wealthy Assheton-Smith family, owners of the 36,000-acre Faenol estate, who made their fortune from slate. Still showing evidence of its glorious past, vandals and graffiti ‘artists’ have, however, damaged its walls and stained glass and left it in a vulnerable state, prompting Griff to state: ‘The tangle of ownership needs to be cut aside by a latter-day perfect gentle knight, so this sleeping beauty, this unique monument, can come back to life.’
The Victorian Society is hoping that these new Endangered Buildings listings, as with many buildings on its past lists, will be saved from their cycles of neglect through a combination of public pressure, partnership and investment. ‘They are each part of the character and quality and history that made Britain and can continue to make Britain,’ adds Griff.
Oakes School is also endangered.
As is Tees Transporter Bridge.
This feature originally appeared in the April 29 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.
