Listed building

[DIYQueen93]

We have been to view a plot of land which has a listed building (grade 2) and we love the area but before committing, we are looking seriously at what that listing means in terms of future development etc.

The building is essentially, some very dubious walls and has evidently been left to rot for decades. It was a very tiny cottage so even if we were to put the property back in its original state, it would be far too small for a modern young family.

Is it a non-starter? We would happily bring the property back to its original state but with a very large extension (essentially, we would need to build an entire house and bolt that on to the tiny cottage).

It’s a massive risk, there’s no guarantee you would get permission to do anything that you would be happy with and the process of obtaining permission for something like this will be long and costly.

In that sense, we need to be content to renovate this property to its original state and potentially sell on/ rent it out. They would at a minimum need to provide us with the consent to renovate it. It doesn’t have a roof, windows, doors etc. It is rubble at the moment. Such a shame that buildings like this are left to rot!

It will be expensive and time consuming. Probably only chance of approval would be for a very contemporary extension.

www.spab.org.uk/search-our-knowledgebase?field_category_type_target_id=70

Definitely expensive and time consuming and you may not even get planning for what you want.

It doesn't work like that.
You can pay for a pre-panning application at this stage and have an onsite meeting with the conservation office, that will give you an indication or what is feasible or not. Alternatively engage a freelance heritage consultant and take them for a viewing and seek their opinion, this would be quicker and probably offer more advice but more expensive. Nobody is going to give you consent to do anything without one or both of planning permission and listed building consent applications. there is no charge for the later but you will need a specific and detailed proposal. Doing anything without LBC is classified as causing criminal damage.

I'm not sure why you would conserve what's there to sell on - that is guaranteed to loose you money. This is a proper heritage project that needs framing in those terms - a labour of love not a financial project. Ultimately if you got permission for your massive extension and live there some time it makes sense, it just won't be easy, quick or budget friendly. Or if you did what you say and lived there ok. but to do and sell is not the way forward. or are you thinking you will divide off some of the land and build separately? That will still be complex as any new building would be in the curtalige of the listed property and come under heritage and conservation guidance too.

Sounds like an expensive nightmare, you may be 'forced' to rebuild it with original or approved materials which could be hugely expensive. If you want to extend or modify it you need all sorts of approvals and you may not be able to do what you want even then. Unless you are absolutely in love with it or very rich I would just walk on by. How big is the plot? If you are wealthy would you be allowed to build another property on the plot and renovate the cottage as a guest house?

It would have to be restored with approved materials eg the lime mortar analysed, matched and made to order, bricks sourced and matched, (every aspect will need to be detailed in the LBC application), that's non negotiable. It probably won't be rentable either as EPC's don't take into account Listed Properties.

They don’t need to approve anything, the process of a full renovation is still slow and costly. Basically every details needs to be approved, from the windows, the materials, the technique, inside and out. It’s not an easy process but it’s also to stop people from totally destroying heritage buildings all together.

What is bonkers to me is that there are all these loopholes for someone trying to restore it! The owners who have let it rot for decades don’t seem to have any restrictions.

Lime pointing and slate roof, wooden windows etc are all things we would expect to reinstate but it almost becomes unfeasible to do this for a cottage which the size of a pig sty with no scope for extending because it would be very limiting in terms of someone who could live in a one up one down type setting. I’d question how you can truly reinstate a building in this condition to its original state nowadays. How would anyone know what materials were there and what it looked like?

because an amount of it will be recorded and photographed and found using libraries and historical records. And the missing bits from specialist knowledge.

if you want to share a link to it (privately if you prefer) I am happy to give further advice.

We live in a grade 2 listed cottage that was extended after being listed.

Everything had to either be the exact match to the original or as close as possible. And everything has to be approved. Ours was only approved as the quarry that the original bricks came from was still in operation. It is not anymore as we’d have liked to extend further now but permission won’t be granted. If we want change the colour of our front door we have to apply to listed buildings for permission. It’s not just approve once and be done like normal planning permission.

It will be a huge financial cost to bring something so derelict back to liveable.

Grade 1 and 2 listed building are restored all the time.
You clearly aren’t the right person for this property and it’s not going to go how you want so find something else.
It will be priced cheaply to compensate for the admin and costs that go with listed properties, you’re letting the cheap land price run away with you.
You can’t knock it down and build something modern and you need to restore it with sympathetic materials and techniques to the original build. You can feel however you want about it, but it’s the reality of a grade 2 listed building so it is what it is.

The fact that you’re asking how would anyone even know what materials it was built from shows how little you know, there’s a whole industry around architectural restoration.

Its hard to know and there's no guarantee you would get permission. You could try to speak with your local council's conservation officer, ours do a 15 minute free chat, written advice with a site visit is £500. A listed buildings surveyor with local knowledge might have an idea. Likely to need original materials. A lot here are extended but that's a huge extension. On the other hand you would have thought they would be keen for it to be restored. We have not found the cost too bad but depends what you are doing. It can be slow getting permission - straightforward like for like is normally easy and within a month, changes can take 6 months or so and several back and forths.

One step at a time. We have been offered this land because we have always expressed an interest in it.

I have never suggested we would knock it down although, it is literally some rubble so a gust of wind would flatten it at this stage. There are no images of this property in its original state. It’s been left derelict for at least 40 years.

I have had some good suggestions on here so I’ll speak to a some local experts. Knowing the area means we know the house would have had wooden sash windows, a slate roof, and walls will have been stone with lime pointing. I wouldn’t be able to guess the type of staircase or internal features though so we will need some more help on the finer details.

There will be. In the archives, in sales/auction details, and so on. it may not be easy but photos and data will exist. It's almost always possible to find written descriptions back to the late 1800s and photos from the 1920s forward.

It sounds like you are interested in the land and not the building. On that basis, and the fact you are continuously pushing back at all the comments on here, this is not the project for you. If you take it on and continue to think you know best you will end up with enforcement action, a criminal record and some very large bills.

An extension should be just that and not dominate the original building
Responsibility lies with the owner to protect and preserve a listed building.

You can check the listing in the Historic England website and talk to the local Conservation officer regarding what you need and want to do. They will be able to advice

In terms of what you want re a large extension whilst conservation officers accept listed buildings need upgrading with electrics and bathrooms etc remember you are the guardian of an old building in their eyes. If you need a large extension for you as a family now it’s not really their concern. They are there to protect the building, as it is ( was st point of listing ) going forward, and after you have left.

My aunt bought a cottage (not sure if listed) and wanted to reinstate some of the older buildings on the land. I think she did one or two. Her DH is a builder so they did the work themselves plus she had a tile company for tiles. It was still expensive and time consuming. They’ve moved now onto another project.

agree

Wrecked listed properties are always cheap because the cost of restoration is so high
It’s not the land being sold it’s a listed property that you will be forced, legally, to restore.

Conservation isn’t about reinstatement. It’s about understanding the building and what special importance it has that meant it has been listed.

it no doubt fell into disrepair as it’s too small for modern life and its purpose and function are divorced from what you would consider necessary for a modern home

that said conservation officers recognise the best way to ensure a historic building survived is to find a sustainable use for it.

yes it’ll cost more than a standard project, yes there will be hoops to jump through but if you try to understand the legislation and role of conservation officers and local planning authorities (not least that their budgets have been slashed leaving them wholly under sourced and that’ll mean longer timescales for you and associated additional costs) it’ll smooth the path. Many applications for extensions and repair on listed buildings get approved.

But it’ll cost you, as the previous poster alludes to, the hoops are there to ensure the preservation of what is important to culture and history, not to facilitate your wants or needs.

Exactly

As an example OP
We are currently 6 months down the line getting advice on how to remove paint from wood.
We’ve had to have experts in analysing every layer of paint re historical value etc so they can record it and then the method of removal that least damages the wood. We would leave it as it is but the idiots before us applied non breathable paint which clearly has to go.

Then a door was papered over. Again different experts analysing the layers etc etc
and on and on it goes.

We are Architects involved in this area so we know who to tap into and can reduce costs because a lot we can do ourselves but one slip up and Youre in contravention.

There's the listed property owners club - you would need to join (£72 a year unless direct debit when £58) - but they then have an advice line and details of specialists.
https://www.lpoc.co.uk/

Agree
We’ll worth looking at

also worth joining
SPAB

Their lectures, visits and working parties are a great way to pick up advice and skills.

Lots of great advice on here which we will look into further. It is an early 1800s property from what we are told but I’ve searched the listing etc and it’s all very vague. It was part of a larger farm estate.

It will be interesting to be told all about how it used to look and what its significance is to the local village. I can’t find anything online about it other than it appears in an early map but it’s simply a square within a patch of land rather than any meaningful image. I imagine it’s simply the age of the property that makes it listed but lots more research needed.

It also makes a difference where it is. Whether it is in a protected area that makes pp far less likely .
What is the G11 listing for ?

We recently restored a grade 2 listed Tudor house- it was hugely expensive and complicated and there's no way that we'd make back the money we've put into it in the short term. That's good with us- it was a labour of love and we plan to live there indefinitely- but it would be a disaster if we'd done it as an investment.

Our experience was that the listing people were cautious even where we were happy to match to original materials etc- for example, we wanted to extend a wall (just a garden wall not part of the house, but within the listing) but they refused permission on the basis that, even with suitable materials, extending the wall would make it harder to appreciate the extent of the original work. (FWIW I've also known situations where someone has been refused permission for an extension which blends in with the original building but allowed something completely contrasting eg modern glass extension on an older house, because that preserves the distinction between old and new. But which way your authority will go isn't something you can know without quite a lot of work.)

You also need to think about the interaction between building regs and LBC- we had quite a few points at which the building regs and listing people were in dispute with one another (for example, regs wouldn't allow us to remove lime render without committing to modern insulation underneath but listing wouldn't give permission for the insulation.)

In terms of proving how things would have been originally, we had to commission a heritage report on original materials and building practices from a specialist- this considered both what was present in the house and historical records about building practices in the area- for example, other houses of a similar age within a certain distance.

Based on what you've said, I don't think this is the project for you.