English Heritage looks after more than 400 historic sites across England — prehistoric monuments, Roman forts, medieval castles, abbeys, industrial sites and country houses — and opens them to the public.
What it looks after
The collection is deliberately broad, and skews towards ruins and monuments rather than furnished houses:
- Stonehenge — the best known by a distance.
- Forts along Hadrian’s Wall, including Housesteads and Birdoswald.
- Dover Castle, with the wartime tunnels beneath it from which the Dunkirk evacuation was directed.
- Whitby Abbey, Rievaulx, Tintagel, Kenilworth, Osborne House and hundreds of smaller sites.
A great many are unstaffed and free — a ruined chapel, an earthwork, a Neolithic long barrow — simply open to anyone who finds them.
Not the National Trust
The two are constantly confused. The National Trust is a much larger membership charity owning country houses, gardens, coastline and farmland, founded in 1895. English Heritage was created by government in 1983 and became an independent charity in 2015, caring for the state-owned national collection.
As a rule of thumb: English Heritage has the ruins and monuments, the National Trust has the houses and the landscape. Membership of either gives some reciprocal access to the other, and to Cadw and Historic Environment Scotland.
The blue plaques
The circular blue signs on London buildings marking where notable people lived are run by English Heritage, and the scheme is the oldest of its kind in the world, begun in 1866.
The rules are strict:
- The person must have been dead for at least twenty years.
- The building must be the actual one they lived or worked in, still standing — not a replacement on the site.
- They must be regarded as eminent by their own profession, and have made an important contribution to human welfare or happiness.
- Anyone can propose a name, and the public does.
There are around 1,000 in London, from Mozart and Marx to Jimi Hendrix and Ada Lovelace. Similar schemes run in other cities under different bodies, which is why the colours and designs vary outside London.
The listing system
Separately, English Heritage’s former statutory functions passed to Historic England in 2015, which advises government on which buildings are listed — legally protected from alteration or demolition.
- Grade I — exceptional interest. About 2.5% of listed buildings.
- Grade II* — particularly important.
- Grade II — special interest. The vast majority.
There are around 400,000 listed buildings in England, and owning one means needing consent for changes as small as replacing a window — a genuine and frequently expensive constraint that British homeowners discuss at length.