The spectacular stretch of lacy wrought iron along Brighton’s seafront – the backdrop of many movies and innumerable holiday snaps but now mostly a rusting wreck closed to the public – has been judged among the most important Victorian structures in England and Wales in danger of being lost for good.
It joins a pier, swimming baths, two derelict stately homes, a flax mill, a church and a brewery on the Victorian Society’s dismal roll call of the top 10 endangered buildings. All the buildings and structures, nominated by members of the public, are in poor condition.
But Christopher Costelloe, the director of the Victorian Society which revealed its top 10 on Wednesday, pointed out that the buildings were officially judged valuable and important enough to achieve listed status. Grade I, II* or II status is awarded by the government, on the advice of experts from Historic England, to buildings and structures officially considered among the country’ s most architecturally or historically interesting. The Victorian Society’s expertise on buildings of the period is also officially recognised by the government.
Kinmel Hall, in north Wales, with a facade almost 150 metres (500ft) long, has the highest listing of Grade I and has been dubbed the Welsh Versailles, but the property, owned by company registered in the Virgin Islands, is now empty and vandalised. An 1850s boat store in Sheerness, Kent, is also Grade I listed, while the Birnbeck Pier at Weston-super-Mare, closed since 1994; the large red brick Hunslet and Victoria flax mill in Leeds, and St Luke’s Church in Wolverhampton all share the second-highest Grade II* listing.
“These buildings illustrate Britain’s history in tangible form. The Grade I-listed boat store at Sheerness has worldwide importance. All of them deserve better than their current situations,” Costelloe said.
Madeira Terrace, until recently one of the glories of the Brighton seafront, was built in the 1890s as a promenade above tall arches incorporating shops and cafes, and is said to be one of the longest cast iron structures in the world. Its entire length has now been closed and businesses forced to leave. The council’s website said surveys had established that it was beyond repair: “Engineers recently advised that the entire length of the structure should now be closed. The temporary fencing will be replaced with a more permanent anti-climb fence in the autumn or winter following the busy summer season.”
In the last decade Brighton lost its most beautiful pier, the Grade I-listed West Pier which was designed by Eugenius Birch, who is regarded as the greatest of the seaside engineer-architects. Birch was also responsible for Weston-super-Mare’s Birnbeck Pier, the only one in the UK which was built leading to an island. It has been closed since 1994.
Kinmel was built in the 1870s by Hugh Robert Hughes, nicknamed HRH not only for his initials but for his spectacularly ostentatious lifestyle: the house originally had 52 main bedrooms, further accommodation for 60 servants, and one room kept just for ironing the newspapers. It hasn’t been a family home since 1929, and plans to restore it as a hotel have not been realised. The other mansion on the list is Overstone Hall in the East Midlands, now owned by a church. Technically, it was ahead of its time when it was completed in 1860 with 114 rooms, gas lighting and central heating. However, its owner, Lord Overstone, hated it, describing it as “an unmitigated disappointment”, and never lived there. It was gutted by a fire in 2001.
Many of those on the list are regional buildings that have lost their original function, like the Central Plaza hotel in Carlisle, boarded up since 2004, or the Tolly Cobbold brewery in Suffolk, closed in 2002. The Ladywell Baths opened in Lewisham in London in 1884, complete with an 82-metre-deep well to avoid paying water rates. The building is owned by the local authority but has lost almost all its decorative details and has been vandalised.
There was better news, however, for some buildings on last year’s list, including the Hammerhead Crane at Cowes on the Isle of Wight, where repairs have started with funding from a Historic England grant.
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