Campaigning for outstanding buildings

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Casework

Casework is at the heart of what C20 is all about. We campaign to save irreplaceable buildings we love and think are outstanding.

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.

Most churches in England and Wales do not need to apply for listed building consent and changes are managed through a separate system. C20 Society has to be consulted on these too, and has a specialist caseworker who does this.

We encourage architects, developers and owners to consult with us before they put in planning applications, so that we can explain why we think a building is important and try to help them find solutions which meet their needs and preserve what’s special about it. Sometimes that’s not possible and we end up lobbying hard against the granting of permission. The caseworkers present cases at the monthly meeting of our expert Casework Committee, who guide them and can also advise on lobbying press, working with local groups and coming up with positive suggestions for alternative design approaches, or more radical lateral ideas.

In the last resort, if an application we’ve fought against gets permission, we can sometimes reverse the decision at a public inquiry or consistory court hearing, chaired by a planning inspector, or lawyer, who will make a recommendation to the Secretary of State. We have to think very carefully about whether to do this as it is very time consuming and can be expensive.

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51 Campden Hill Road: what lack of interim protection can mean

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 ...

Preston Bus Station: a happy ending?

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...

Dawson’s Heights: the ‘Italian’ hill town in Dulwich

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 ...

Hemel Hempstead MLO: ‘It’s like a bloody cathedral’

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...

40 New Bond Street: an Italian grotto in Mayfair

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...

St Augustine’s Church, Queen’s Gate

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...

Saving London’s Modern Spaces

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...

New Life for the National

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...

Twentieth Century Gothic: St Edmundsbury Cathedral

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 ...

Saltdean Lido

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...