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.
Sunwin House has been empty for more than a decade and is now at risk of 'creeping neglect'.
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’.
The National Wildflower Centre in Merseyside (2000) is at risk of demolition because of cost and safety concerns.
Sheffield's National Centre for Popular Music was cited as 'extremely vulnerable' following news that the previous occupants, Sheffield Hallam University's student union, was relocating.
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.
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10 outstanding British gardens from the Country Life ArchiveWith Chelsea Flower Show is on the horizon, we've mined the 128-year-old Country Life Archives for 10 inspiring gardens from across our Isles.
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The National Gallery rehang: 'It is a remarkable feat to hang more with the feeling of less', but the male gaze is still dominantAlmost everything on display at the National Gallery has been moved — and paintings never previously seen brought out — in one of the the biggest curatorial changes in the Gallery's history.
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Lutyens's last masterpiece comes up for sale in Oxfordshire, with 27 bedrooms and a cricket pitchMiddleton Park in Middleton Stoney is a vast country home that must surely be among the nation's best
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A 10-bedroom manor house in the heart of the Cotswolds with all the trimmingsWaterton House sits on the edge of Ampney Crucis, and is as elegant as can be.
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A seven bedroom Buckinghamshire rectory that might be a little hauntedGrade II-listed the Old Rectory is a home of astounding charm and beauty, and comes with a friendly visitor.
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Over the Hills and Far Away: Robert Plant's Welsh hideaway is up for saleOther notable residents of The Argoed in the Wye Valley include George Bernard Shaw and Beatrice Webb.
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Period charm and contemporary tastes collide in an eight-bedroom listed home in DurhamMorton House is a rare example of a home where you can have the best of both worlds.
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A charmingly unspoilt 17th century farmhouse for sale in the Cotswolds' 'Golden Triangle'Finstock Manor was once part of the Cornbury Park Estate and is now an elegant family home.
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Tasburgh Hall: From a Buddhist centre to a seven-bedroom family home in 23 acresThe property, in Norfolk, was once four separate apartments, but has been lovingly re-stitched back together.
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Old homes in new lights: A look at contemporary property photographyAttention is at a premium. Having the right image that will draw the maximum number of buyers has never been more important.
