Really disappointed to receive negative responses on the Society’s listing applications for two of Ryder and Yates’ buildings in Killingworth: the unique Norgas House and Norgas Computer Building. Both structures are part of the architects’ significant legacy in the Stephenson Industrial Estate that has been recently documented in detail in Rutter Carroll’s monograph for the Twentieth Century Architects series, co-edited by the Society, RIBA Publishing and English Heritage. Sadly, both buildings have been stripped of a number of their original features and therefore considered by English Heritage of insufficient intactness for statutory listing. 

Some brilliant news, though, just arrived to the C20 office to compensate for some of the disappointment: a listing application for St Raphael the Archangel RC Church, in Millbrook, Stalybridge, supported by the Society, went through and the building is now listed at Grade II. Remarkably unaltered, the church building has an interesting pre-Vatican II plan form, Byzantine references and is particularly notable for its art work. This includes a dalle de verre screen by Pierre Fourmaintraux of Whitefriar’s Studio, and ceramic stations of the cross and holy water stoops by Alan Boyson. Alan Boyson is well known to the Society’s members by the recent joint day event by our NW Group and TACS last June, and also the listing success for the ‘Tree of Knowledge’ mural in Salford two years ago.