Heritage Applications

15/10/2026

This made me so upset this week. I have no words to describe the incompetence and lack of vision of the council. Truly shocking.

08/10/2026

A worthy winner...

Ending the week on a big high with our recently-completed 'Hampstead Town House' winning the Architects’ Journal Retrofit and Re-use Award (for private homes over £800k). The judges said; “The quirks of this previously unloved home have been transformed so that it sings. It was ripe for demolit...

22/07/2026

I have been undertaking some research for my forthcoming book and found something very interesting.....
Water Newton, a small village near Peterborough sits near the site of Durobrivae, a major Roman fortified town and pottery production center.
In 1975, a hoard of 4th-century silver vessels and plaques (known as 'The Water Newton Treasure') was discovered and is widely regarded as the earliest group of Christian silver found in the Roman Empire!!
The collection is currently housed at the British Museum in London.

Incredible!! I shall go and have a look at it when I am next in the British Museum.

17/07/2026

Mission church, later converted to studios.
c1900 and 1911-1912.
By John W Simpson and Maxwell Ayrton for Clare College, Cambridge.
MATERIALS: ferro-concrete wall; shallow pitched roofs of tile, with broad eaves and gable facing to short ends.
STYLE: Italianate.
HISTORICAL NOTE: the mission was staffed by undergraduates from Clare College, Cambridge, and run by the Church of the Epiphany Mission in Bermondsey. One of the earliest reinforced concrete churches in London, the structure was converted into artists' studios in the late 1960s.

05/07/2026

On my way home to Stamford, Lincolnshire last weekend I stopped off to photograph some buildings I had been wanting to visit for some time.....the perfect day with the dogs in tow!

05/07/2026

18/01/2026

I've always wondered which came first although it would be highly unlikely to abut a building to a.monument...
No.42 Buttercross, Wi******er (the 4 storey timber framed building) dates from the 14th century.
The Buttercross Monument was erected in the
early 15th Century (circa 1400s). It was where butter, cheese, and eggs were historically sold.
It was saved from removal by angry citizens in 1770 and later restored by Sir George Gilbert Scott.

15/01/2026

Grange Barn, dating back to c.1240, is one of the oldest timber-framed structures in Europe. The massive building stretches 120 feet in length, 45 feet in width, and rises 35 feet to the roof’s apex. Originally constructed by the lay-brothers of Coggeshall Abbey, the barn was used to store the harvest from their vast lands as well as the tithe, one-tenth of the produce, paid by tenant farmers. Following the dissolution of the Abbey in 1538, the barn transitioned into private ownership.

St. Leonards Barn, Beaulieu is the ruins of a massive medieval structure once considered the largest barn in England. It was built in the 13th or 14th century by the Cistercian monks of Beaulieu Abbey to serve as a grange- an outlying farm and storehouse for the abbey's vast agricultural produce.
At its peak, the barn was approximately 70 meters (230 feet) long and 33 meters (108 feet) wide. It featured a seven-bay aisled design with a capacity of roughly half a million cubic feet to store wheat, barley, and wool. It also included a small 13th-century chapel for the lay brothers who lived and worked on the farm. When King Henry VIII dissolved Beaulieu Abbey in 1538, the St Leonard’s estate was surrendered to the Crown. Much of the original stonework was salvaged and used to build coastal forts like Hurst Castle and Calshot Castle.

15/01/2026

The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913 are worth a read. They provide very interersting historic accounts of Georgian and Victorian London....
https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/

14/01/2026

Fiddleford Manor's spectacular timber roofs were built to impress...