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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Catherine Croft recently took part in a panel discussion organised by the New London Architecture forum, at which the competing pressures of heritage and development were debated. Also on the panel were representatives from the South Bank Centre, a...
Despite our best endeavours and those of the Friends of Birmingham Central Library, the City’s planning committee has passed major plans for a city-centre redevelopment scheme that includes the demolition of John Madin’s monumental Birmingham Cen...
Although English Heritage supported our opposition to the granting of a Certificate of Immunity (which guarantees a building against listing for five years), the Culture Secretary rejected heritage advice and granted a COI for the parts of Phase 1-4 ...
Claimed to be the largest building of its kind in Britain upon its completion in 1969 and recently called a ‘baroque cathedral for buses’, Preston Bus Station is certainly the largest building ever designed by Keith Ingham - working at the time...
by Henrietta Billings We have recently been to look at one of Dorothy Annan's few surviving murals, in Cayley Primary School in Tower Hamlets, East London. Still fixed in its original location, the large textured glass and plaster panel, concealed u...
Since January this year the Grade II-listed Elliott School in Putney has become a major case for the Society. Plans to convert it into an academy have brought a wave of proposals, including an upgrade of indoors sports facilities, Disability ...
You might not notice the Old Gym building, nestled into a sloping site by the grand red-brick late Victorian Aston Webb buildings on the University of Birmingham’s Edgbaston campus. At first glance, this three-storey brick building next to ...
A totally unexpected treat awaits visitors to the Edwardian commercial premises of 39-42 New Bond Street. Initially designed for the tailors Cooling Lawrence and Son, no 40 has been occupied since 1910 by Mallett and Son and then by Frank Smythson Lt...
Aldington, Craig and Collinge’s Mechanised Letter Office in Hemel Hempstead was commissioned by the Post Office in the early 1980s in response to the newly-introduced mechanised letter sorting. The complex comprises three dramatic white she...
Dawson’s Heights, an important but little-known postwar housing estate in East Dulwich, has been turned down for listing by the Secretary of State, despite a strong recommendation from English Heritage. Built in 1964-72, the striking design takes ...
Just a few months after our very popular visit to see the work of Leonard Manasseh and Partners in London, an early house by this fascinating architect came under threat of total demolition. Designed and built in 1952-53 for Philip Manasseh ...
It is now more than three years since the Society submitted a second spot-listing application for Preston’s ‘Central Bus Station and Car Park’. I remember spending endless hours going through the building’s massive case file and sub...
The Society has dealt with numerous London cases over the past few years where it has defended or tried to protect space. The space between, in front of and around buildings is usually significant for heritage assets, regardless of their date. The id...
Widely appreciated as probably the second-best surviving church in London by William Butterfield, St Augustine's church at Queen's Gate, Kensington hides a special surprise for C20 fans. Alterations and re- ordering in the late 1920s and then...
The Society's involvement with R W H Jones' elegant lido in Saltdean, probably the best Lido in the UK, stretches back to the publication of our pivotal Thirties Society campaign report, Farewell My Lido, in 1991. The first document to seriously as...
Completed just five years ago, in 2005, the clean stonework of the tower of Bury St Edmunds cathedral can easily be mistaken for a meticulously executed conservation job on a late medieval building. Although the history of the site dates back to the ...
I’m sure most C20 members don’t need convincing of the merits of the Royal National Theatre, perhaps the best-known ‘Brutalist’ building in London and worthy recipient of a II* listing only eighteen years after it was completed. But Sir Denys...
The Society has been fighting to save a pair of unique steel-framed houses in Camden, designed by Robin Spence and Robin Webster for their families. 2C and 2D Belsize Park Gardens have been the subject of an application to demolish since February 200...
Distinctively marked by the three pawnbroker’s gilded spheres, a symbol probably originating from the balls on the Medici coat of arms and generally adopted in England in the mid-C18, Sutton House quietly tells its 75-year history on its site at 15...
The DCMS has chosen—once again—to disregard English Heritage’s advice and refused to list Slough Town Hall, which was recommended at Grade II in 2008. Revealingly, the Secretary of State was ‘persuaded by the evidence provided by others’, i...
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