Ben Lowry: We need tough preservation laws for historic buildings in Northern Ireland as much as England does

​​The destruction and demolition of the 18th century Crooked House in the West Midlands has led to calls for protections for historic pubs.
By Ben Lowry
Published 19th Aug 2023, 05:52 BST
The burnt out remains of The Crooked House pub near Dudley in the West Midlands. A fire gutted the 18th century pub just days after it was sold to a private buyer. Northern Ireland has few buildings from the 1700s, and weak planning policies and enforcement. Photo credit should read: Jacob King/PA WireThe burnt out remains of The Crooked House pub near Dudley in the West Midlands. A fire gutted the 18th century pub just days after it was sold to a private buyer. Northern Ireland has few buildings from the 1700s, and weak planning policies and enforcement. Photo credit should read: Jacob King/PA Wire
The burnt out remains of The Crooked House pub near Dudley in the West Midlands. A fire gutted the 18th century pub just days after it was sold to a private buyer. Northern Ireland has few buildings from the 1700s, and weak planning policies and enforcement. Photo credit should read: Jacob King/PA Wire

(This article was first published in the print edition of Saturday August 12 2023).

I would go further than that and call for laws with severe penalties to protect historic buildings. As someone who edits the world's oldest English language daily paper, 1737, and who has serialised those first surviving papers from the 1730s I am particularly aware that there are few buildings from the 1700s left. In Ulster we have hundreds of them, many of them fine churches. But hundreds of buildings is a tiny number in a society of two million people.

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We have many more buildings from the 1800s – at a guess many thousands. In central Belfast alone there are hundreds of fine Victorian buildings. And then we have thousands of Edwardian buildings from the early 1900s. But after the Great War build quality plunges. So many buildings, from homes to offices to shops, built in the century since are ugly.

Why the sudden change? Partly because of material shortages after that disastrous conflict. And post the trenches people would no longer work for a pittance, and rightly not. But it means we need to protect fine old buildings, which are not being replaced with equivalently good ones. And NI is bad at that, with weak planning policies and enforcement.

Related topics:Ben LowryEnglandNorthern IrelandWest MidlandsUlsterVictorianBelfastEdwardian