Living in glass houses

People who live in Protected Structures are like those in the proverbial glass-houses: they simply must not throw stones. The cost of replacing a window, a door, even a roof-slate or a garden wall can be so much more than that involved in repairing an ordinary semi-detached home that it is best to behave with a certain amount of caution. Prevention, in the case of old houses, is always better than cure.

Recent legislation places extra responsibilities on the owners of what are usually described as listed buildings. Their owners by and large accept the restrictions gladly where they make sense especially as there is some help available to meet the costs of maintenance.

Although cut-backs in the country-wide application of the national Conservation Grants Scheme are officially justified on the grounds that the total allocation was not taken up for the year 1999-2000, the very existence of the scheme takes some of the terror out of the responsibilities which are now part and parcel of owning a property worthy of preserving. Or at least of such a property where the local authority has decided that it is worth preserving. In other words, defining it as a Protected Structure