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.
If you found this useful, please give what you can afford to help us identify and save irreplaceable C20th buildings and design.
This is an excerpt of the recording of our AGM 2020 where Catherine Croft gave a round-up of our Casework highlights from this year....
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 ...
A living and shopping complex that showed the promise of high-tech in the 1980s In recent years a slow trickle of listings has recognised the exceptional high-tech factories, office buildings and private houses built in the late 1960s, 70s and 80s...
Every year Richmond House appears on TV as the backdrop to the Remembrance Day ceremony at the Cenotaph. It’s an unusual building – Grade II* listed for its C20 architecture which is far more ambitious and interesting than the retained Georgi...
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...
Wherever possible, we encourage appropriate adaptation as a principle of conservation. Sometimes we see original clients applying to adapt a purpose-designed building to allow its continuing use, but we also see many applications for change of use, w...
Recently we have been considering the importance and significance of designed landscapes in the 20th century, and the role that hard and soft landscaping play in creating the setting for buildings of our period. Landscaping and open spaces were o...
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...