Grade 1 listed building

[hapagirl]

Hi again,
Does anyone here live in a Grade 1 listed building? We are thinking of buying one which needs lots of refurb and I'm wondering if its worth it. My MIL lives in Grade 2 listed and is always complaining about the bureaucracy of it all. Would love to hear from someone who owns one.
Thanks!

I'd say take it on at your peril. We live in listed building of the lowest level and already when we bought it, the fact that permission papers for a conversion performed in the 1970s were not in order held up the conclusion of missives. Grade 1 listed will mean getting incredibly expensive specialist tradesmen in to do anything, I would think. You will not be able to touch the windows, even if the house is freezing.

I guess it depends on how you are thinking about the refurb - do you want to rearrange rooms or add/move bathrooms? If so, this is next to impossible in a Grade 1. If you want to return the building to its original glory, you'll be ok.

First post here! We recently moved to Edinburgh and live in the New Town in an A listed flat. I did a lot of research on quite a few houses over the course of a year or so and must admit it has been hard to shake the habit and I still check RM...

As well as looking at recent house sales I used the council planning portal to check the layouts of the properties and to see what sort of changes had been approved or rejected. This might give you an idea if what you might like to do is in line with current policy. You may come across some where retrospective applications are approved and others where the new work has to be removed following a rejected application. There is a lot of information on the council website and they were very friendly and helpful when I spoke to them on the phone.

It will also depend on what type of property you are planning to buy eg knocking down walls in a basement is different from doing it in principal rooms on the ground or first floors. I know there are a number of flats on our street that have created internal kitchens and bathrooms recently - you just can't put the drainage on the front of the building.

We love living here. For us the location more than makes up for the single glazing!

Hi,
Sorry for the late response. We just moved (to our rental) and didn't have internet access. Thanks to both of you. The house we are interested is a townhouse that really hasn't been touched so its still in its "we have a butler, cook, maid etc" mode - ie, kitchen in basement, dining and living upstairs and that doesn't really work out for a modern family. I want to retain as much of its period features etc (its why I want to live in a period house) as possible but if we can't move the kitchen to the ground floor its a real deal breaker for me. Imagine trying to get your kids ready for school while you are in the basement and they are on the third floor! Also, the only way we could make this financially feasible for us is for the house to pay its way a bit and make the basement a self contained flat. I'll check out the planning portal you mentioned Alisted. And I love love love living here too, but have yet to experience winter with single glazing ;)

That doesn't sound like it would cause a problem unless you were thinking about removing any original features.

Fwiw I live in an a-listed new town garden/ ground floor house. Our kitchen is in the basement/ garden level and it works perfectly. We have just built a large glass box style garden room with sliding glass doors on to the garden.

Planning was fine (it is a-listed internally and externally) but it helped that a) there was a precedent on the street and b) we had an architect who drafted our planning application.

You could call the council planning dept and they will give you an idea of feasibility. Some of their restrictions can be quite arbitrary but fwiw I found them pretty reasonable.