The latest Buildings at Risk List from the Twentieth Century Society (C20) is an intriguing mix of Modernist gems, pre-Premier League football architecture and the first designs of the Millennium.
Sunwin House department store brought Bauhaus flavour to the streets of Bradford, West Yorkshire, in 1936, but it’s been empty for 14 years and is at risk of ‘creeping neglect’. C20 hopes Bradford’s 2025 UK City of Culture status might spark a revival of interest. Much interior detailing, including brass Art Deco handrails, survives.
In Lancashire, Blackpool’s Grand National Rollercoaster (1935), one of the last and ‘most innovative and evocative’ of pre-war wooden rollercoasters, is under threat of demolition. Newcastle United’s Brutalist east stand at St James’ Park, built in the 1970s, is also vulnerable, with the club’s owners looking to redevelop or rebuild.
When it opened in 2000, the National Wildflower Centre, Knowsley, Merseyside, was an expression of Millennium-era optimism, but its operating company went into liquidation in 2017. With no alternative use, the council wants to demolish; C20 director Catherine Croft describes it as ‘the product of an era where unprecedented public funding delivered some ambitious and extraordinary projects’.
More positively, in the 80th-anniversary year of the liberation of Auschwitz, C20 is celebrating Historic England’s award of Grade II-listed status to Brighton and Hove Reform Synagogue.
The Society had long championed the building, with its stained glass windows that the National Portrait Gallery’s chief curator Alison Smith describes as ‘one of the great religious artworks of the 20th century’, but which had faced demolition. No longer thought to be at risk, it becomes only the second post-war listed synagogue in England.
-
Living on the edge? A lighthouse for sale on a clifftop on one of the most remote islands in BritainBressay Lighthouse was built by the father and uncle of the 'Treasure Island' author.
-
'A phenomenon that has shaped Britain’s landscapes and wildlife for millennia': A five minute guide to mast yearsThe ground is already littered with acorns and beech nuts, notes Florence Allen, thanks to a phenomenon called mast years, or mast seeding.
-
Living on the edge? A lighthouse for sale on a clifftop on one of the most remote islands in Britain
Bressay Lighthouse was built by the father and uncle of the 'Treasure Island' author.
-
Alan Titchmarsh is selling his Hampshire home (and the garden that comes with it): Exclusive pictures and interviewAfter many happy years in Hampshire, the writer, broadcaster and national treasure Alan Titchmarsh is selling up and looking to move. He spoke to Penny Churchill about his years at Manor Farm House.
-
A Lake District escape with views that will make you feel like the king of all you can seeMellguards's many guest rooms and dual staircases make this property perfect for people who love to host, but tire of their guests quickly.
-
One of Yorkshire's great houses, burnt to the ground three generations ago, is back on its feet and on the market for the sixth time in a millenniumPenny Churchill looks at Riseborough Hall, a great house, rich with fascinating history and beautifully apportioned, which burnt to the ground but rose again.
-
Seven magnificent homes from Cumbria to Devon, as seen in Country LifeOur regular look at the best homes to come to the market via Country Life in the past few weeks takes in a breathtaking Lake District house and a superb home in Northamptonshire.
-
'Unquestionably one of the most distinctive and stylish homes in the Cotswolds' is for sale, just across a field from Soho HouseWith a staircase upcycled from a Spitfire machine gun factory and , and suspended lights came from a Dutch cargo ship. Every element in this room — and indeed throughout the house — tells a story Annabel Dixon peeks inside.
-
The world of super-super prime homes, where £100 million is barely even the starting pointA spectacular mountain retreat coming to the market in Colorado offers a glimpse into the very top end of the global property market. Toby Keel takes a look.
-
Elderly Salcombe residents were promised a home for life inside this listed villa — but now the charity it was gifted to want to sell itAge UK claim that Woodcot in Salcombe, Devon, is too costly to run, but are they right to sell up and cash in?
