Crooked House’s demolition highlights a major deficiency in the UK listing system

On Saturday 5 August, a fire gutted the wonkiest pub in Britain, in Himley, near Dudley, with the building being demolished two days later. The building was not a protected structure and had not been formally identified as a building of local significance. Its demolition represents a major failure in this country’s approach to spatial planning and levelling up.  

There is an ongoing and real threat to the identity of all UK villages, towns and cities that comes from the planning process and building regulations. Supporters of the planning process would argue that it is sensitive to place, but this sensitivity fails to protect what can be labelled as the essence of a place.

Himley’s essence was directly linked to the presence of The Crooked House, and yet the planning process failed to protect this structure or even to formally recognise its importance.  

The UK’s levelling-up agenda is driven by a concern with economic growth. Its outcome will be the destruction of the essence of many places because levelling up too often means that places are levelled down. New buildings that meet current approaches to planning, architectural style and building regulations replace highly distinctive local structures yet frequently fail to make a positive and distinctive contribution to a place’s essence.

The Crooked House might be replaced with a modern structure that adds nothing to Himley’s unique place-based identity. A highly distinctive building would then have been replaced with a conventional structure that could be found in any town or city. It is also worth noting that it is unlikely that building regulations would permit the Crooked House to be reconstructed since any such reconstruction would not meet current regulations.  

There is a need for a new grading category that could be allocated to all buildings that make a special contribution to the essence of a place

It is time to revisit the UK’s approach to protecting the essence of place. Currently, buildings are listed that are considered to have special architectural and historic interest so as to ensure they are protected for future generations. But this listing process is too focused on a building’s age and architectural interest and fails to take sufficient account of the contribution that a building makes to a place’s essence.

Usually, all buildings built before 1700 that survive in anything like their original condition are listed. However, this excludes buildings that have experienced alterations over the centuries even if this has resulted in a building that adds to a locality’s sense of place. There is too much emphasis placed on the purity of the surviving architectural form and on some subjective assessment of what defines great architecture. But in architectural terms, there would be no justification in listing the Crooked House.  

There are currently three categories of listed buildings in England. Grade I buildings are deemed to be of exceptional interest, Grade II* are particularly important buildings of more than special interest and Grade II are buildings of special interest. There are many problems with this system. Listing does not provide full protection, but the key issue is the overemphasis placed on architectural significance rather than place-based significance.  

There is an urgent need for a new grading category that could be allocated to all buildings, collections of buildings or streetscapes that make a special contribution to the essence of a place. There should be no sub-categories to this new listing as all buildings irrespective of age or architectural significance would have the same level of protection as a Grade I building. One could argue that the level of protection should in fact be even greater as this new category tries to protect a place’s distinctive essence.  

Buildings and streetscapes be included in this new category should reflect the concerns of local communities informed by a narrative regarding what differentiates one place from another. The Crooked House is an excellent example of such a building as its demolition has removed an important part of Himley’s place-based identity.  

There are important implications for the architectural profession. New buildings must be sensitive to place and try to enhance the essence of a place in some positive and distinctive manner. Too often clients force architectural practices to design buildings that meet a commercial rather than a place-sensitive logic. This is unfortunate as buildings that enhance the essence of a place may come with greater commercial benefits.

The case of the Crooked House highlights the role that buildings of limited architectural importance can play in creating a distinctive place-based identity. It is important that the role architects play in creating and shaping place is acknowledged.

The planning process is at fault here as it must enable architects to design buildings that add to a place’s identity. There is a tendency for planners to be too conservative with architectural novelty being treated as suspect compared to more conventual approaches to building design. The outcome is a loss in place-based identity that is part of the process of levelling down place rather than levelling up based on enhancing the essence of place.   

John R Bryson, professor of Enterprise and Economic Geography, Department of Strategy and International Business, Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham