Civic Heritage is an independent publication about the historic fabric of British towns: the town halls and municipal buildings, the conservation areas, and the local heritage that most people walk past without a second look.
The history of this domain
This address did not start as a magazine. In June 2009 the Civic Society Initiative was launched at Covent Garden, with an appeal for £50,000, to rebuild the network of more than a thousand voluntary civic and amenity societies — some 250,000 members — left without a national body when the Civic Trust closed earlier that year. It was hosted by the North of England Civic Trust (company 1654806, registered charity 513055) and was launched by the broadcaster Griff Rhys Jones.
The initiative was always meant to be temporary. In April 2010 it became Civic Voice, which is today the national charity for the civic movement in England (registered charity 1134476). If you are looking for the civic society movement itself, or for your local society, Civic Voice is where to go — not here.
The domain stayed behind and, for a while, was used for things that had nothing to do with any of this. Civic Heritage picked it up and put it back to work on the subject it came from: buildings, streets and places.
What we are not
Civic Heritage is not connected to Civic Voice, to the Civic Trust, to Historic England or to any local civic society, and it does not speak for them. It is not an official register: the statutory list of protected buildings in England is the National Heritage List for England, and Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland keep their own. Nothing here is a substitute for advice from your local planning authority.
What we cover
Town halls and civic buildings. Every borough built one and no two are alike. Architects, opening dates, designations, and what each building is used for now.
Conservation areas. What designation actually changes, how to find out whether you are in one, and which works still need consent.
Heritage Open Days in England, Doors Open Days in Scotland, Open Doors in Wales and European Heritage Open Days in Northern Ireland — the rooms that open once a year and are shut the rest of it.
Listed buildings, for people who own one or are thinking of buying one.
How we research
This publication has no famous byline and does not want one. What it has instead is a method, and the method is the thing you should hold us to.
Every entry about a building carries the same four facts — architect, opening date, designation and current use — and says so plainly when one of them is not known. Claims about protection cite the building’s entry in the National Heritage List for England, or the equivalent register in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. Anything about consent names the system it applies to, because the four nations run separate ones and an answer that is right in Manchester can be wrong in Glasgow.
Anything that can change — opening arrangements, access, what a building is currently used for — carries the date we last checked it. Civic buildings get sold, closed and converted, and a page that does not say when it was written is not much use.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, we would rather know. Corrections are made on the page itself, with a note of what changed and when — not quietly.
Who writes this
Articles are published under the name The Clerk of Works. On a Victorian building site the clerk of works was the one engaged to check that what was going up matched the drawings — not the architect, not the committee, but the person who verified. It seemed the right name for a publication whose job is checking what a building actually is against what the record says it is.