A Local Heritage List - TrustNews Dec 19
Winchester does not have an official local heritage list, nor does the City Council have the staff or the funding to complete the task. To do this officially is quite a time-consuming and expensive process. Some progress has been made by staff in the planning department acting as volunteers who have assisted the Conservation Officers by identifying some such assets. However the City of Winchester Trust also needs to have an informal list of ‘non-designated heritage assets’. These are places that are not listed but which have special local significance. The recent case of the demise of Meadowlands in Weeke brought this painfully to light. Our Planning Appraisal Panels cannot be expected to know every locally significant building if we haven't got them on a list which also tells us why they might be thought significant.
The Trust belongs to Civic Voice, which is a national organisation. They have recently published a Local Heritage Listing Toolkit. The Trust is not at present in a position to carry through all the steps required to make the list official as this requires consultation and finally approval by the City Council, but we could at least start to construct our own list for use by Planning Appraisal Panels. The documentation from Civic Voice includes a sample nomination form which we can adapt and make available to members on our website. Crucially however we need members to volunteer either by sending in information using the form, so that we can construct a long list. And then a smaller number of people who might be willing to meet to subject these to further scrutiny, which could involve engaging in a bit of historical research. For specially significant sites it might also be worth considering proposing them for listing, but only if we had people willing to go through the process.
Clearly this project can only be undertaken if there are enough members willing to volunteer a bit of their time. So this short piece is really just testing the water to see what the response might be. lf you know of places that you think we should include on a local list or if you would be willing to help with further scrutiny of suggestions please contact our Secretary (secretary@cityofwinchestertrust.co.uk).
The Trust web site has a list of the listed buildings in Winchester (www.cwtarchive.co.uk/archive/core/buildings.shtml). The images were provided by Trust volunteers working on the Future50 project, including also the images for non-listed buildings of faith. If you look at this list you will see that no buildings have been added within the recent past, so there is a case for making additions if they are of sufficient merit.