These eminent Victorians deserve our respect
By Kate Simon
How do you get access to a blocked cellar for your surveyor? This is just one of the questions occupying my mind as we attempt to buy our next home, a pretty Victorian end-of-terrace.
As the house has been standing for about 130 years, I don’t expect it to fall in the hole under the kitchen, but ensuring all’s well with the old structure is one of the responsibilities of being a custodian of an historic building, large or small.
The Victorian Society knows this well. The charity, which fights to preserve Victorian and Edwardian heritage, has just published its Top Ten Endangered Buildings List for 2023 in its ongoing attempt to find new owners or funding, start urgent repairs, and prevent careless alteration or demolition.
It’s a varied selection across the country, from sewage pumping stations in Norwich to a Poor Law Union office in Walsall, and Turkish baths in Carlisle (pictured, the subject of a campaign by the Friends of Carlisle Baths). There’s also a pub. The Grade II-listed Coach and Horses in Wallsend, built for the brewers WB Reed and Co, went, like much around it, into decline when the shipyard shut. The former hotel is now a neglected eyesore just begging for its Jacobean-style fancy gables and brick mouldings to be spruced up once more.
As well as championing the need to safeguard our cultural heritage, the Society also puts an important argument about reusing rather than razing historic buildings to help tackle the climate emergency. A case in point is Rockwell Green Water Tower in Somerset, a typical Victorian brainwave for solving the problem of delivering a safe public water supply following a typhoid epidemic in the early 1870s.
The Society is urging the current owner to sell the red-brick tower with its conical hat to someone seeking to sensitively reimagine the place as a residence. Should your wallet stretch to it, this potential quirky home comes with fine views of the Wellington Monument and the Blackdown Hills.
Heritage and holidays go hand in hand. Our most-visited attractions, from museums to stately homes, are steeped in history – that’s what generally attracts us. But sightseeing can be just as much about what should be as well as what has been saved. And the work of the Victorian Society, which also acts as a statutory consultee, has been crucial to the preservation of landmark buildings, not least St Pancras Station in London.
So, it’s worth checking out the places on its 2023 list as you travel about the UK appreciating the British landscape. And with no entrance fee to pay, you could always donate to the charity’s work.
Phil’s Beer Notes
Looking over the Coach & Horses in Wallsend might give you a thirst, and fortunately you’re on the right side of the city to drop into Newcastle’s craft beer hub beside the Tyne. Among the cluster of breweries there, Full Circle, with its glass-fronted tap room with a view of the gleaming tanks, is arguably the pick.
While in Rockford Green it would be wrong not to nip into the Blackdown Hills and savour a pint of local ale in one of the pubs. The York Inn in Churchinford, dating back to the 16th Century, will more than do the job.
Elsewhere on the Victorian Society’s list, near Temple Grafton you’ll find the Broom Tavern, another 16th Century number, and Shakespeare himself is reputed to have drunk there. These days you might catch a pint from Purity Brewing, just up the road.
And a couple of suggestions if you’re in Lincoln to inspect the Constitutional Club. The Strait & Narrow has a fantastic beer list (alongside the cocktails), while the city is also home to the BeerHeadz chain’s flagship micropub with an equally impressive selection on cask and keg.
Photo © Craig Charters Cinematography