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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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...
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...
I was intrigued when the BBC asked me to take part in a programme filmed at the Red House in Bexleyheath; this Arts & Crafts masterpiece designed for William Morris is not usual Society territory. As part of a series on C20 council housing presen...
Last December I spoke at a Historic England conference on 19th and 20th century parish church interiors. These come up in our casework surprisingly often, so I had plenty of examples to share with the conference. The main aim was to highlight the var...
This was how the American critic G E Kidder-Smith described Alton West, the development in Roehampton, SW London on the edge of Richmond Park, designed by the London County Council Architects Department in 1955-59. It has become an enduring exemplar ...
‘The No 1 Poultry site posed an overwhelming question at the level of representational form in three ways’, wrote Colin St John Wilson in 1998. ‘Firstly the primacy of its location in the city required that an exceptional statement should be ma...
This was the title given by an impressed Observer to Charles Holden’s new headquarters building, 55 Broadway (1925-29) for Underground Electric Railways of London Ltd. It was the tallest office building in London when it opened, and for nearly 90 y...
In March this year, we submitted an emergency spot-listing application to save the former Western Morning News building in Plymouth, after we were alerted by local campaigners to plans by its then owners, the Daily Mail and General Trust, to demolish...
Welcome to C20 Society’s annual Buildings at Risk list. The following have been selected as our top ten threatened buildings for 2015, and have already helped draw attention to some very worthy cases. Keeping a list like this helps us demonstrate ...
Hyde Park Barracks has been making headlines since before its construction began, so we were ready to react as soon as press reports indicated that its occupiers, the Household Cavalry, were moving on. Sale and redevelopment will be almost inevitable...