Casework is at the heart of what C20 is all about. We campaign to save irreplaceable buildings we love and think are outstanding.
Read about our latest Casework news here.
Below are more reflective articles by our Caseworkers.
Our expertise is recognised by our official role in the planning process. The Twentieth Century Society has to be consulted about any application for listed building consent involving demolition, anywhere in England. Although we don’t have the same legal role in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, we are often asked to give our views on the future of important buildings of our period there.
We get to hear about threated buildings by lots of other routes too, and our members and supporters are always alert to threats and quick to let us know about them. Most societies like ours (such as the Victorian Society or the Ancient Monuments Society) can reckon on almost all the buildings of their period that should be listed already being safely included on the National Heritage List for England, which is run by Historic England. That’s not the case for us, and putting buildings forward for listing is a big part of what we do, and often a crucial early step in a campaign. We’ve called for much wider recognition for groups of C20 buildings, by designation of conservation areas, but generally our resources mean that we can only lend support to individual buildings if they are already listed, or we think they deserve to be.
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We have recently had plenty of positive publicity for our campaign to save the bus station. Five other heritage organisations also signed our letter to The Times, calling on the Council to re-think their demolition plans; and we have also taken part ...
Of main concern at the moment is the fate of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce Building (John Madin Design Partnership 1958). This fine example of a 1950’s office building, is still largely intact and with office accommodation planned in such a wa...
I am sorry to say that I was misinformed about the fate of the Post and Mail building by the John Madin Design Group, a leading firm of Birmingham architects, which makes an important contribution to the street scene. Despite a failed attempt to get ...
The former Ambassador cinema, Salford , has finally been demolished. This ends a sorry tale that revealed the apathy and small-mindedness of Salford City Council planners and saw a u-turn on the part of the DCMS that makes a mockery of the listing pr...
The new Bullring Shopping Centre has now been open for a few weeks and the Selfridges building by Future Systems has received wide publicity in the national press: it has also brought visitors to Birmingham , which, of course, was the intention. Whet...
Pool Court was one of those cases that come to us not through official notification but by word of mouth, when it was threatened with complete demolition. It’s a small 1970s house designed by Francis Pollen and located in the historic Thames-side...
The current proposals to alter St John’s church Waterloo (Francis Bedford, 1829, Grade II*) are extremely damaging to its post-war interior. After a direct hit by an incendiary device in 1940, the church required substantial reconstruction, and lit...
Over the summer we submitted a listing application for ‘Underhill’, a house whose name only modestly hints at the sort of building it is. It was designed in 1969 by Arthur Quarmby for the architect and his family; it was completed in 1975 and the...
We are used to seeing C20 buildings used as film locations, but one of our current cases involves a house in Kensington that’s not just the setting for Joanna Hogg’s movie Exhibition – it’s integral to the plot. Hogg has described it as the...
No building that has crossed my desk in my first three months as Conservation Adviser has captured my eye in quite the same way as a house by the remarkable Irish architect Ernest Trobridge; Swedenborgian, militant vegetarian and architectural vision...