Wakefield Missing Pieces

Are you interested in historic buildings? Have you ever searched for information about a historic place or building in your local area, only to be disappointed with the lack of photos or local detail? Now you can do something to help change that. Historic England are calling for local people to help them to improve their national list of historic places by sharing photographs, stories and local knowledge, as part of their ‘Missing Pieces Project’ (previously called Enhancing the List).

Historic England are the Government’s body for Heritage in England. They manage a database of the historic places in England that are protected by law, known as ‘the List’. If a historic building is on the database, it is ‘Listed’. This means that, by law, certain things cannot be changed (or removed) without permission from either Historic England or the local council. This includes making alterations like replacing windows and removing internal walls. Most listed buildings are listed grade II. Around 6% are considered of particularly special interest and are listed grade II*. The top 2.5% are considered exceptional interest and are listed grade I. Wakefield District has 26 grade I listed buildings, including Horbury Hall, St Mary’s Bridge Chapel, Stanley Ferry Aqueduct and Wakefield County Hall. These are among the most important, and most highly protected historic buildings in the country.

Historic sites that are nationally important, including archaeological sites, historic battlefields, and historic wrecks are also included on the national database. These sites have their own specific legal protection and it is a criminal offence to damage them. The database also includes historic parks and gardens. Find out more about listing and protection for heritage sites on the Historic England website here.

The database of protected historic sites is publicly available and can be found by searching the List via the Historic England website. The information on the List is used by many people involved in making decisions about historic places, including architects, archaeologists, developers, conservation officers and planners. However, one of the problems with the national list is that often the listing descriptions were done years ago and haven’t been updated. The formal descriptions also focus heavily on architectural or landscape detail and rarely include information about things that are important to local communities (with some notable exceptions). This is where the Missing Pieces project comes in.

Historic England are asking local people to post photographs, memories and additional historical information about buildings and sites on the national List, to add to our collective knowledge of these special and unique places. Sharing your photographs and stories will help to paint a fuller picture of each place, improve understanding about why our historic places matter, and help them to be better protected in the future.

Case Study: Missing Pieces for Pontefract Museum

A good example of how adding information to the list can really help us to understand why a building is so special and valued by the local community is Pontefract Museum, formerly Pontefract Free Library. The formal listing has recently been added to by the Wakefield Museums and Castles team.

The formal listing description is relatively short (one paragraph) and describes the building as ‘Carnegie public library, now museum, 1904.’  It describes the outside of the building and mentions that it has some decorative tiles inside on the floor and walls of the entrance. However, the short description gives very little sense of how striking and unique the building is, how many of the original external and internal features still survive, and the role it has played as a community hub and centre for learning in the town over the past 120 years.

The museums and castles team have been able to add to the formal Listing by sharing historic drawings, photographs and a more detailed history of the building. Although building work started in 1904, the new library wasn’t formally opened until September 1905, by J G Lyon, the first freeman of Pontefract. It was funded by two grants of £2250 and £338 from Andrew Carnegie (who funded four other public libraries in Wakefield) and was designed by local architects Samson Garside and George Pennington. The building originally had a Lending Library, Reading Room, Reference Room and a Ladies Room on the ground floor, and (unusually) also housed the town Magistrate’s Office on the first floor.

When the Magistrate moved out in the 1930s, a children’s library was established on the first floor, and this is still fondly remembered by many local people who visited as children in the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1970s the library building was becoming too small for its growing membership, and in 1973 work started on a new library building virtually next door on Salter Row. The old library building closed as a library in 1975 and reopened as the Pontefract town museum in 1978. The museum is still run by the Wakefield Council Museums and Castles team. The building still retains many of its original internal features, including a beautiful, tiled entrance and floor mosaic, parquet floors, original internal doors and the original wooden library counter screen carved with the Pontefract town crest.

The comments also highlight the stories of individuals connected with the building, including memories from former and current staff. This brings to life the social history of the building and its importance to local people. For instance, during World War One and World War Two the library held the Roll of Honour for local servicemen from Pontefract who had been killed in the conflict. In her short account of Pontefract Library, written in 1948, the librarian Miss Gregson noted that the war years had seen a boom in visitors to the library, including many of the military personnel who were stationed in the local area.

This new information not only gives a better picture of how the building has changed over time and its historic character today, but also demonstrates why it remains an important place for local people as part of the historic and social landscape of the town.

You can read the new Pontefract Museum List entry here.

How to get involved

There are over 760 historic buildings and sites on the national List for Wakefield District. To post a photo or a story about any of these to the Missing Pieces Project, you just need to register on the Historic England website. This is free and quick to do. Once you are registered you can post pictures or stories about any of the places included on the national List.

Before you get started there are just a few things to remember. Please be mindful that anything you share will become part of a public record and will be available for anybody to see. Please make sure that anything you post is backed up by proper research (obviously if you’re posting your own memories then that doesn’t apply) and that you either own the copyright in any images that you share (e.g. they are photographs that you have taken yourself) or have permission to share them from the copyright holder. If you are taking photographs of sites and buildings, please make sure you are not trespassing, and that you are on a public road or right of way. If there are any people in the photograph, please also make sure you have their permission to share the image. See the Missing Pieces terms and conditions for more information.

If you add your Missing Pieces to any of the historic places in Wakefield District we would love to hear about it! You can email us at heritage@wakefield.gov.uk