The 20th century saved the country houses, and we can celebrate that, but the
effects of our long obsession with the countryside have been a neglect of
our unique industrial heritage. Ditherington Flax Mill, one of my top 10,
was rescued from collapse by English Heritage in 2005 and is only now
finding a new use. Another on my list — Liverpool Road Station, Manchester,
the earliest surviving railway station in the world – faces the prospect of
its original viaducts being demolished by Network Rail. This would never be
contemplated if a line involved the demolition of part of Highclere Castle
(where Downton Abbey is filmed). We need to accept that our unique
contribution to the world was not cucumber sandwiches, however nice they
are.

This year will be important for our nation’s heritage. In 2013, we celebrated
a century of heritage protection by the state, allowing us to enjoy our
countryside. In 2014, all three national heritage agencies — Historic
Scotland, Cadw (in Wales) and English Heritage — will be under review, and
the outcome will affect their ability to continue to do their jobs into the
next century. Each agency will have its work cut out, but I predict that
facing the consequences of deindustrialisation will be somewhere at the top
of their lists.

1. Westminster Abbey (c.960)

Coronation church and mausoleum, Westminster Abbey has been a royal foundation
since the 960s, and money was lavished on it by successive monarchs.

Although only a few Saxon fragments survive, it was here that Edward the
Confessor developed the style that we call Norman. It was also here that
Henry III began his lavish Gothic rebuilding, a project that continued,
after his death, for nearly three centuries. The nave today demonstrates the
rich taste of English medieval monarchs and their masons, with large-scale
sculptures and carved and painted heraldic shields.

The abbey set the standard for aspiring builders for centuries.

2. Rievaulx Abbey, North Yorkshire (1147-67)

Rievaulx Abbey is England’s most beautiful ruin. Deliberately built in a
remote valley by Cistercian monks, it was originally a virtually
self-sufficient community.

Like 839 other monasteries, friaries and nunneries, Rievaulx was suppressed by
Henry VIII in the 1530s, but its remote position meant that much of its
stonework still stands. It is easy to forget what a big role monasteries
played in medieval society, and the Cistercian houses of Yorkshire were
responsible for developing a style of building with pointed arches that we
call Gothic.

This spread to become the dominant architectural style of Britain for 300
years.

3. King’s Bench Walk, Temple, London (1677)

In James I’s London, a new type of house was developed. It was then known as a
“row house”, but today we call it a terrace. These houses, built of brick
from the 1620s, became the backbone of the city after the Great Fire of
London.

Not many early examples survive unaltered, but the pattern developed in the
1670s became the blueprint for a huge proportion of urban housing even
today. Uniform on the outside, but individualistically decorated within, in
many senses they encapsulate the characters of the people who lived in them.

4. The Peckwater Quadrangle, Christ Church, Oxford (1707)

Although Inigo Jones and a small group of other architects in the 17th century
had conceived buildings that were rigorously faithful to ancient Roman
buildings, it was not until after 1700 that patrons and architects became
obsessed with designing buildings using the ancient orders of architecture
precisely. An early example of this was the courtyard built at Christ Church
by Dean Aldrich in 1707-14 to house rich undergraduates. The courtyard was a
startling new look, and when the style was taken up by the circle of the
royal court, it was adopted for houses, public buildings and churches
everywhere.

5. Ditherington Flax Mill, Shrewsbury (1797)

During the late 18th century, British manufacturers revolutionised the
production of cotton, using machinery powered by waterwheels. By 1800, there
were 900 cotton mills employing 400,000 people. Vast new mills were built —
but there was a problem. Brick and timber construction was vulnerable to
fire, and many mills lit by oil or gas burnt down.

Ditherington Flax Mill was the world’s first incombustible iron-framed
building. It was also the ancestor of every large building with a steel
frame today, from supermarkets to skyscrapers.

6. AG Murray Mills, Ancoats, Manchester (1801)

Britain’s industrial revolution entered a new phase after 1830. Instead of
waterwheels, new coal-fired steam engines were used to power both the mills
and other new types of manufacturing. As Britain became the dominant power
in the world, success was built on urban factories. AG Murray’s mills
were the first in which manufacturing processes were all powered by steam.
Started in 1801-2, these hulks look, at a distance, like a Georgian street,
but behind the iron casements, they drove the largest economy the world had
ever seen.

7. Liverpool Road Railway Station, Manchester (1830)

The world’s first passenger railway station is a modest but reassuring-looking
building. Reassurance was at the forefront of the minds of the early railway
engineers and architects: both passengers and investors needed to believe
that railways were safe and profitable ventures. Avant-garde engineering
mixed with reassuringly familiar architectural styles created an atmosphere
of confidence.

8. No 6 Slip, Chatham Historic Dockyard (1847)

After the defeat of Napoleon, the Royal Navy became the most powerful fleet in
the world. Underlying its power were its dockyards, huge state-owned
factories with thousands of workers.

Naval engineers pushed the limits of technology to build and equip the Navy,
and one of the most important advances was the construction of massive
free-standing iron sheds called “slips”, under which ships were built.

These were the first wide-spanned metal structures in the world.

9. All Saints, Margaret Street, London (1849)

It was at a church, rather than at an industrial site, that architecture and
engineering first fused to create a new language for the Victorian era.
William Butterfield saw the possibilities of coloured and engineered brick
for making modern buildings that were both decorative and functional.

Subsequently, this polychromatic brick style was adopted by house builders and
came to dominate Victorian streets all over the country.

10. Bedford Park, London (from 1877)

Sir John Betjeman, the poet and admirer of Victorian architecture, called
Bedford Park the most important suburb in the Western world. He was probably
right, in that the easy mix of brick-built semi-detached and detached houses
in wide streets with deep gardens became the aspiration of millions. The
houses that looked back to the 16th and 17th centuries were individually
designed and carefully built, but used a very limited stock of motifs.

Such suburbs — and cheaper imitations of them — were built all over England
from the 1880s.

Dr Simon Thurley is the head of English Heritage

‘The Building of England’ by Simon Thurley (HarperCollins, £35) is
available from Telegraph Bookshop for £25 + £2.10 pp. To
order, call 0844 871 1514 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk

OTHER KEY LANDMARKS

Thirty buildings that also shaped England (listed in roughly chronological
order):

1. All Saints Church, Brixworth, Northants

2. The White Tower, Tower of London

3. Westminster Hall, Houses of Parliament

4. Dover Castle keep

5. Canterbury Cathedral

6. The Wheat Barn, Cressing Temple, Essex

7. Lincoln Cathedral

8. The Divinity School, Oxford

9. Wollaton House, Nottinghamshire

10. Canterbury Quad, St John’s College, Oxford

11. Forty Hall, Enfield

12. The Radcliffe Camera, Oxford

13. Chiswick House, London

14. St Martin-in-the-Fields, London

15. The bridge at Ironbridge, Shropshire

16. The Royal William Yard, Plymouth

17. Albert Dock, Liverpool

18. Gower Street, London

19. St George’s Hall, Liverpool

20. Cromford Mills, Derbyshire

21. Windsor Castle

22. The Houses of Parliament

23. The Palm House, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

24. Newcastle upon Tyne railway station

25. The Bass Maltings, Sleaford, Lincolnshire

26. Boundary Estate, Bethnal Green, London

27. Selfridges, Oxford Street, London

28. Battersea Power Station, London (pictured above)

29. Speke Airport, Liverpool (now Liverpool John Lennon Airport)

30. Letchworth Garden City