Contested Heritage in Listing

England has a very rich but complex history. Our buildings, monuments, and places sometimes bring us face-to-face with parts of our history that can be painful or shameful by today's standards.

When assessing a building for listing or amending an entry for an existing site that has become contested, we will re-examine our understanding through careful research and assess what action to take. These actions might include amending the list entry to add additional context or explaining how research has changed our knowledge of a person, group of people, event, or place, adding new layers of understanding.

Many older list entries, added to the National Heritage List for England before the 2000s, may include a description but no contextual information. We therefore recognise that some of our older list entries may not include references to aspects of contested heritage that are now widely understood.

Research projects such as the Slave Trade and Abolition project have helped us address connections to the enslavement of people, such as buildings funded through the economy of transatlantic slavery. As part of the project, list entries were updated to make these connections explicit, and some sites were upgraded in recognition of their connection to the abolition movement.