Buckinghamshire's Local Heritage List
Our Local Heritage List Officer takes a brief look back over the creation of Buckinghamshire's Local Heritage List.
As the Local Heritage List Project Officer, I had the privilege of scouring the far-reaching corners of Buckinghamshire to find suitable nominations for the newly formed Buckinghamshire Local Heritage List.
In my quest to find buildings and sites worthy of ‘the list’ I have found myself being bustled in Metroland, creeping from cottage to cottage through bodger’s woods, marvelling at architectural detail in Rothschild influenced villages, wandering and wondering through leafy parklands, tripping around WWI practice trenches, and getting frequently lost following many a HS2 diversion as I crisscrossed the county.
Amersham railway station and an Avery Hardoll 101s petrol pump in central Bucks
In addition to my keen and supportive colleagues on the project team, on my travels I gathered a band of enthusiastic volunteers who have joined me in my quest to recognise and protect those special places that help to make up our past and give us grounding in our modern world.
It has proved a popular and successful public project, which has now seen over 2230 heritage assets locally listed, with more to follow next year. Nominations, which have included wychert walls and village pumps, ornate mosques and railway stations, hidden Ha-has and earthworks, fingerposts and cobbled squares, have been acknowledge as being of special interest and of local importance by our communities. And by including them on the local heritage list we have ensured that those heritage assets that have previously failed to make the grade for National Listing, or have simply gone unnoticed, are now being recognised for their contribution and given better consideration within the planning system.
A wychert wall in Haddenham and WWI practice trenches at RAF Halton
Mine has been an intriguing and educational working journey around the historic sights and sites of the county, but I am very aware that we have only been able to record a fraction of the wonderful heritage assets that beautiful Buckinghamshire holds. However, for now my travels must halt as funding for this fantastic ‘people’s project’ has ceased, though the appetite for cherishing our historic surroundings lives on, and therefore so too will the recording of assets as and when they come to light through the planning process.
Although the public can no longer make nominations, the local list and current nominations can be found here: Home - Buckinghamshire's Local Heritage List