Context 146 - September 2016

C O N T E X T 1 4 6 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 6 43 have an answer much sooner than before. And when certainty is required, such as in advance of purchasing a site or submitting a planning application, that is seen as a real benefit of the new offer. As before, sometimes a COI applicationwill result in listing,when special interest is present.We remind owners that it is about providing certainty rather than necessarily an automatic refusal to list. One COI case under EAS has resulted in listing, but any new listing will always make it clear where the special interest lies, and where it doesn’t. We were asked to assess the HorizonTobacco Factory in Nottingham, 1969–71 by Peter Foggo of ArupAssociates, for a COI. The buildings fall within the Nottingham enterprise zone. While we had previously assessed and recommended not to list, with which the DCMS agreed, the owners sought the absolute certainty of a COI, which is valid for five years.TheTobacco Factory is an interesting buildingwith some claims to innovation, but where notable features had been removed.The high threshold for listing post-war architecture meant that it did not meet the test and a COI was issued. We also carefully considered five buildings of the 1960s and 1970s on the Calthorpe Estate in Birmingham, and recommended COIs in each case.As part of this package of Calthorpe work we also revised the list entries for three listed groups of buildings: an 1830s house and stable block, a pair of early 19th-century houses, and a Regency terrace, which extraordinarily had been rebuilt behind the facade in the 1970s, an intervention that did not diminish the interest of the characterful frontage, but which deserved to be legally excluded from the new list entry. We have been struck by how varied the scale of EAS applications has been. This gives an indication of how the new service is helpful to a wide range of customers: from individual home-owners to managers of major developments and infrastructure. Our consultation with the sector indicated that owners of houses listed some decades ago might desire an updated list entry for their house to help inform listed building consent applications. These listing enhancements can be a very cost effective way of understanding the building better and helping to inform the management of change. A list entry from the 1970s or 1980s will inevitably be shorter and less precise than a modern one, and the kind of clarity that listing provides as a matter of course with new ones can be helpful. Enhanced listings do not just add length, they add clarity about where special interest lies (and where it doesn’t, including within the curtilage). That can be a helpful starting point for discussions about significance and managing change.We have seen a few of these kinds of applications and anticipate more. This kind of clarity can be especially important at major sites in public or private ownership where master plan- ning or development is proposed. Historic England has reassessed a few of these under our new services already. Perhaps the most noteworthy – for its extraordinary AlfredWaterhouse terracotta design, not to mention the rather remarkable skeletal contents – has been the Natural History Museum in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. First listed at Grade I in 1969 – nearly 50 years ago – the list entry for this much-loved museum was only nine lines long. Such brevity, not uncommon for earlier listings, shows that early list entries were intended primarily for identification; but it was hardly sufficient for a vast complex with multiple phasing and functions, and a complex management regime and vision for the future. Responding to an EAS application,we comprehensively updated the 1969 list entry following a full inspection and wide-ranging consultation.As part of this we excluded the deferential modern PalaeontologyWing,while reinforcing The whale hall at the Natural History Museum