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00:01This is what happens when people build for more than just shelter.
00:07When they build for love, for passion, for hope, for faith.
00:13When they build in taste, when they build with imagination and craftsmanship.
00:17When they build out of hope that what they're doing will outlast them
00:22and speak through the generations.
00:24And how do we reward these people?
00:27Well, we reward them and their buildings by listing these places, by making them a grade one.
00:35By ensuring that they will continue to release their energies through the centuries.
00:44I'll tell you what else this building says.
00:46It says we like quite a lot of gold leaf and we like a low level of intimidation.
00:55Actually make that a high level of intimidation.
01:07So...
01:19So...
01:25remembrance ofćŖćć»ć© belt
01:27If you want to know just what human beings are capable of, look at what they build.
01:32It's a magnificent thing.
01:33It is.
01:34Throughout this series, I'm looking at those buildings we've chosen to protect.
01:39Across the UK, the very best of our built heritage gets a special kind of protection.
01:45In England and Wales, they call it Grade 1.
01:48In Scotland, Category A. In Northern Ireland, Grade A.
01:52Different names, but the same idea.
01:55These are the buildings we've decided we can't afford to lose.
02:00131-year-old, Grade 1, listed steel moving through the air.
02:06I'll be looking at structures people had to fight for,
02:10and buildings that changed the way we think about heritage.
02:13So much passion and love for so many of these buildings at the heart of communities.
02:21This time, I'm looking at what power left behind.
02:26Castles, cathedrals, and fantasies.
02:30It does look like something right out of Rapunzel.
02:34These are the status symbols built to impress, dazzle, and dominate.
02:42And yet, long after the money, the influence, and the ego have vanished,
02:47the buildings remain to tell their story.
03:02This is Chatsworth, home to the Dukes and Duchesses of Devonshire.
03:07One of the most politically powerful families in the land.
03:10A family which overthrew a king.
03:13One of them was Prime Minister.
03:14Another was asked to be Prime Minister three times and just turned it down.
03:20This is where power lived.
03:24And Chatsworth was built expressly to convey that idea.
03:35It was finished in 1707, and it is gargantuan.
03:40126 rooms, 105 acres of garden, and 1,000 acres of parkland.
03:47They even moved an entire village out of sight just to improve the view.
03:52It is, of course, built to communicate power.
03:55True on the outside and in.
04:10So, this is the Grand Hall.
04:13The Painted Hall.
04:13The Painted Hall.
04:15For obvious reasons.
04:16Not surprisingly, because it is.
04:17Yeah, exactly.
04:19To what extent, then, looking at the painting, is it, then, one grand vision?
04:25It's completely one grand vision.
04:29The hall was painted between 1692 and 1694 by the French artist Louis Laguerre, realizing
04:37the first Duke of Devonshire, Sir William Cavendish's single, audacious vision.
04:44So, this was designed to be a kind of viewing bucket, a sort of a basin in which you kind
04:50of would admire and gawp at this.
04:52Yeah.
04:53It's meant to overwhelm.
04:54This is the first room that visitors would arrive in.
04:57And so, it's really, it's making that statement.
04:59It's meant to be kind of, you know, 360 painting, overwhelming messagery that really tells you where
05:06you are and something about the power of the person who's built it.
05:09And you see the paintings, you see the artworks, the console tables, you see the lamp brackets.
05:16It's all part of the same idea, that projection of power.
05:24Chatsworth was built to intimidate even the elite.
05:27Now, it's one of Britain's most visited houses.
05:31Although the Cavendish family still live here in a set of apartments firmly separate from
05:37the public areas of the house.
05:39And I'm trying to break in.
05:43So, what am I looking for here?
05:45So, you are looking for the secret door.
05:48And this door was placed in the 1960s by the Duchess.
05:53I know, you can't tell.
05:55You can see the tiny keys just there.
05:57Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
05:58Which you can open and then you get up into the galleries above.
06:01So, all fake books.
06:02They're not only false books, but the titles are rather hilarious.
06:07Oh, yeah.
06:07So, you can start.
06:08Oh, yeah.
06:09Dipsomania.
06:09Yes.
06:10Must have a swig.
06:11Yes, yes.
06:12If you see here, Knick-Knack by Paddy Wack.
06:16Yes, you can read that one out.
06:18Consenting Adults by Abel and Willing.
06:24Gloucester in All Weathers by Dr. Foster.
06:27It's great, isn't it?
06:28Can you imagine how much fun the family had thinking about the titles?
06:34We dare.
06:35Shall we go, please?
06:37And low.
06:37Have a look.
06:41The door hides stairs leading to the gallery above.
06:45It was installed by the late Duchess, Deborah Mitford, the youngest of the Mitford sisters who lit up high society
06:53in the 1930s.
06:54She was appropriately eccentric.
06:57And it was she who also opened Chatsworth House to the public in 1950, securing its future.
07:04We're up to over 650,000 visitors who pay to come here, up to a million who then enjoy the
07:10free park and the Standwoods.
07:13We want Chatsworth to be seen as a place for everybody.
07:16It was built to express status, to impress.
07:21So, how do you make somewhere like that democratic and open?
07:26And you do it through the people that work here.
07:35Keeping a place like Chatsworth alive is a vast project.
07:40And few things here demand more care than the Cascade.
07:44It is a 23-step Baroque waterfall, European in style and scale,
07:50and powered by a lake up on the moors to send water rushing down these stone terraces.
07:57But it's not working.
08:00How long have you been without water here?
08:02Nearly two years now.
08:04Oh, wow.
08:04So we had to turn it off.
08:05It just got to the point where we understood the damage it was doing and the deterioration of stone work.
08:10So the water, which is the big enemy of buildings, is working its magic on all the stones.
08:17And here it's just leaked its way, leached its way out.
08:21You can see how many cracks there are in between the stones.
08:27I mean, they've put bitumen and mortar and all kinds of stuff in there.
08:32And over the years, there's been different periods of restoration.
08:35So some of the stone has been replaced.
08:37The pointing has definitely been replaced repeatedly.
08:40However, we have got to that point where it's too late to patch up.
08:44We need to do a wholesale restoration.
08:46So what do you think you're going to spend?
08:47Well, the project to restore the Cascade in total is over Ā£7 million.
08:52Can you justify spending Ā£7 million, do you think, on repairing this, getting it going again?
08:57So we've been very lucky.
08:58We've secured money from the National Heritage Lottery Fund for a bulk of the work.
09:02We know our visitors love the Cascade.
09:04They love engaging with it.
09:06They love seeing it.
09:06They've been coming back here all of their life.
09:10Ā£7 million is a lot to spend on a broken waterfall.
09:13So is the spectacle really worth it?
09:16Shall I go and switch it on?
09:18Go on.
09:18Open the door and turn some fountains on.
09:20Too good to miss.
09:21Okay.
09:21Yeah.
09:23Despite the leaks, the Cascade's feeder fountains still work.
09:31Oh, my, in the sunshine, it's so beautiful.
09:35Oh, now these are starting up.
09:38These guys.
09:39Isn't it absolutely mesmerising?
09:44It's like looking at a cascade of jewels.
09:59It's so good, Steve.
10:01And it's amazing to think, isn't it?
10:03That's been playing like that since, you know, 1700 at least.
10:07Oh, it's fabulous.
10:11I want more.
10:13More water.
10:14More drama.
10:16All of which can be unlocked at the Emperor's Fountain with the help of a giant key.
10:22Oh, look at that.
10:32This fountain was built in 1844 when the sixth duke heard the Tsar of Russia was coming to Chatsworth.
10:39It was made for this one event.
10:42The Tsar never came.
10:44Although the fountain remains along with the house, which tells you something about places like Chatsworth.
10:49They might begin as statements of wealth, control, taste, and ambition.
10:55But if they're good enough, they outgrow all of that.
10:58They stop belonging only to the age that built them and start speaking to every age that follows.
11:15When you have all the power and all the money in the world and nothing left to prove, what do
11:21you build?
11:22If you're the Marquess of Butte, you build a fairy tale.
11:31This is Castell Coch, finished in 1891, five miles north of Cardiff in Wales.
11:39With the great turrets and the pointed towers, it does look like something right out of Rapunzel.
11:45I mean, the design of it is, I suppose, what you'd call Victorian Gothic.
11:51There's a banqueting hall painted floor to ceiling.
11:56A drawing room with a vaulted dome, with Aesop's fables on every wall, and all watched over by statues of
12:05the three fates.
12:07The money to pay for all of this came from coal.
12:10Cardiff docks were owned by the Butte family, headed by the third Marquess of Butte, John Crichton Stewart.
12:18He decided to spend, to enjoy the whims and his fancies, which included his love of everything historical, particularly the
12:26medieval period.
12:28He did so with an architect who shared his vision, William Burgess.
12:33He smoked opium, kept parrots, dressed in a medieval costume, and was so short-sighted he once mistook a peacock
12:40for a man.
12:41His friends called him Ugly Burgess.
12:44And Butte allowed him to let his imagination run unchecked.
12:55Every medieval castle needs a hall, and this is where William Burgess chose to build his vision of what a
13:01medieval hall might have looked like.
13:03It's extravagant, it's wild, but it does draw on some medieval sources.
13:08So, for example, the walls have got this wonderful design on it, which makes it look like they are made
13:14with ashlar stone, with little designs of flowers in the centre.
13:18Now, that's quite a common design that you come across when you actually go to real medieval castles.
13:23But then, as you go higher up, he's let his imagination run with these wonderful friezes, which show the stories
13:31of the life of St. Lucius.
13:33So, together, it brings this wonderful vision of what he felt a medieval hall might have looked like.
13:42Burgess's imagination makes the decoration in the medieval hall compelling.
13:46In Lady Butte's bedroom, he needed restraining.
13:50Around the edge, what people always like looking at are these cheerful monkeys in all sorts of different poses.
13:56Some of them have got glasses on, some of them are just looking down.
14:00And it's been said that Lord Butte was a bit concerned about the monkeys and that looking down on his
14:05wife while she slept.
14:06And he made sure that they were carefully concealed within the vines, so that it wouldn't look as if she
14:12was being stared down on by too many haunchy monkeys.
14:22Amazingly, Castelcourt survived two world wars unscathed until Clement Attlee came into power.
14:28He passed the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, in which historic buildings were protected from demolition and willful alteration.
14:38Although, Attlee's government almost destroyed the viability of so many of those same historic houses with an 80% inheritance
14:46tax.
14:47The outcome for the Butte family is that the coal money dried up, and so they gave Castelcourt to the
14:54government, who've maintained it since.
14:59My parents told me this is where the Tuft Fairy lived, and I still believe that the Tuft Fairy lives
15:05here.
15:06And it is a wonderful place, you know, the fairies, the story, the history of it, you know, the paintings,
15:13the drawings.
15:14It does feel like a truly special place.
15:22A fairy tale castle was always going to be a strong contender for heritage listing.
15:27Protecting the smaller and quieter historic buildings has always been much more difficult.
15:34When we started listing buildings, we started with the obvious contenders, the palaces, the castles, the cathedrals, yeah.
15:44And the rest of the built historical environment, well, sort of had to fend for itself.
15:48So we ended up bulldozing a load of it with things like working men's clubs, amazing factories, historic pubs.
15:56And as Liverpool went that way, it managed to lose a great number of its buildings, just by accident.
16:05Except it didn't lose this one.
16:11This is the Philharmonic Pub, also known as the Phil, in the centre of Liverpool.
16:18It got listed Grade 2 Star in 1966, before a great swathe of pub demolitions in the 1970s.
16:25And thank goodness.
16:27In 2020, it was promoted to Grade 1.
16:35Hey, Gareth.
16:36Hi.
16:37How are you?
16:37Yeah, good, thank you.
16:38Yeah.
16:39Do you look after this building?
16:40Yeah, it's probably the most unique one that I look after.
16:43Beautiful, wrought iron.
16:46Yeah.
16:46Gilded.
16:47This is with gold leaf.
16:49I mean, this is not your cheap metal leaf, and it's not gold paint for that matter either.
16:53I think it's been described as the finest au nouveau metalwork anywhere on a pub in this country.
16:58That is, for a pub.
17:00Yes, it doesn't seem much better at work like this on any pub, really.
17:04So we go in?
17:05Yeah.
17:07What delights await.
17:14There are almost too many to take in.
17:18Gareth, it's very rich.
17:20Oh, there's so much.
17:22Look at this mosaic.
17:24There's so much going on.
17:28The richness of what's been saved here is extraordinary.
17:34Historic England describes it as exceptional, not least because its magnificent interior has survived as a whole.
17:42And all this timber, and the plasterwork, and the glass, and the copper panels, and the leather, and the fireplaces.
17:51I mean, it's, it's a bar, and then there's the bar, right?
17:54It's like, let's take every detail we like from every historic building ever, and let's, let's try and put it
18:01into a pub, and see what happens.
18:04Yeah, there's so many different parts of this pub.
18:06It's great.
18:06Different areas, different snugs.
18:09What excites me is the number of hand pumps, also.
18:11Because you can...
18:12A few more than probably what it used to be.
18:13Yeah, but presumably you can't swap all these out for some modern things.
18:18No, no, no.
18:19Now it's grade one, you have to, you know, you stick with what you've got.
18:22You can, you potentially add stuff to it, but it's greening to the bar, drilling to the bar, you just
18:25cannot do now.
18:26You've got to maintain what's there.
18:31This is just everything.
18:34Yeah.
18:34It's phenomenal.
18:36It is amazing any of this is still here.
18:45During the May Blitz of 1941, Liverpool was the most bombed city outside London.
18:51St. Luke's Church, just down the road, took an incendiary bomb and burned through the night.
18:56Its clock stopped at just before 20 to 4 in the morning.
19:00It's been a ruthless shell ever since.
19:06The fill, 400 metres away, survived without a scratch.
19:14How many people understand the Brahms and Liszt reference?
19:16It being Cockney rhyming slang, right?
19:18Not many, to be honest with you.
19:20You could put Lennon and McCartney up, couldn't you?
19:23In the same typography.
19:24It's listed now, so we can't.
19:25Yeah.
19:27Not that anybody would say I'm going out to get Lennoned.
19:30No.
19:34One of the exquisite highlights of this place, though, is hidden away.
19:39Tourists come from far-flung islands to witness its incredible beauty.
19:47This place is the Sanctum Sanctorum.
19:51One of the reasons this place is in fact listed is for its urinals, all carved by hand in rose
19:59marble.
20:00It's exquisite.
20:00Bill Bryson said this is one of the most beautiful places in the world to have a wee.
20:04I would agree.
20:06I would agree.
20:06Never before have I been so architecturally uplifted by a toilet.
20:18But that is what great architecture and design does.
20:24The fill was built between 1898 and 1900 by a Liverpool brewer called Robert Kane, who decided his customers deserve
20:33better than four walls and a bar.
20:35He wanted them to feel like royalty.
20:39Do you know what, Kevin?
20:40This pub is warm and inviting, and when you walk in through those doors, it's like somebody throws a big
20:46blanket around you and says, come on in.
20:49Just kick back and just enjoy.
20:51Just kick back, enjoy.
20:52There's no pressure.
20:54It's opulent.
20:55It's grand.
20:56But it's inviting.
20:57It's warm.
20:58And it's a place to enjoy and experience.
21:01The plasterwork here wasn't thrown up by a decorator.
21:04It was modelled by sculptors and fine artists from the University's School of Art, the people who carved monuments across
21:11the city.
21:12Kane didn't commission a pub interior.
21:15He commissioned public art.
21:17He just happened to put it in a pub.
21:20Looking back, say, to 1900 or 1920 or 40s, whatever period you choose, it was built for a more formal
21:26time, a more hierarchical time.
21:29When this pub was built, it would have been built for that sort of clientele.
21:33And these days, you know, it's open to everyone.
21:35You can just be anyone.
21:36And you find here all sorts of people, visitors, tourists, academics, students, locals.
21:42It's a real melting pot.
21:46It strikes me that that view has got every ingredient that I want in my pub.
21:55Generous bar, some hand pumps, mosaic.
21:59Decoration.
22:00Light.
22:01Warmth.
22:02Yeah, warm.
22:03It is saying to you, come on in, have a drink, make yourself a hoe.
22:10That is the cleverest thing about the film.
22:14All this grandeur, but none of the stiffness.
22:17It was built for a more stratified world, yet somehow became a room that now can still absorb everyone.
22:28This beautiful, enormous room was a billiard room, not just any old billiard room, a billiard room in which you
22:37could look up and enjoy gilded floral decoration, in which you could play billiards.
22:42Under the gaze of Apollo, being crowned by the muses, Robert Cain didn't want his customers here to just come
22:51and drink.
22:52He wanted them to come and drink under the gaze of the gods amidst all this art, whether they noticed
23:02it or not.
23:05He didn't want them to drink there.
23:10The reason why this building is listed is because it isn't about the ordinary everyday.
23:15It is about the magnificent everyday.
23:19It is about the magnificent everyday.
23:33Some listed buildings scream power in an obvious way, huge walls, heavy stone, no messing.
23:41Others are less bullying.
23:44Stokesy Castle in Shropshire doesn't just shout power, it performs it.
23:50It borrows the look of a fortress, the swagger of a stronghold.
23:55Not because anyone's expecting a siege, but because power, at its best, needs a bit of theatre.
24:03So we've got something here that's very much a fortified manor house that's got the trappings of a castle.
24:11There were hundreds of these once, houses that looked like castles, built by men who wanted to look like lords.
24:18Almost all of them are gone. This one isn't.
24:21Historic England put it forward for listing as England's finest and most picturesque medieval fortified manor house.
24:29It was built mainly by Lawrence of Ludlow in the 1280s.
24:34Lawrence of Ludlow was not aristocracy.
24:37You know, he was merchant and made a great deal of money.
24:41And this is him perhaps announcing to the world that he had arrived.
24:49Lawrence got permission from the king to crenellate, that is, add battlements, as a social status symbol.
24:56The military illusions look a little shaky when you look closer.
25:03We're now in the Great Hall.
25:05I think one of the things that's most interesting about it, the windows here.
25:09These are huge, enormous windows.
25:13This points towards the idea that whilst it might look a bit like a real military defensive structure,
25:20you really couldn't get away with windows this size if you were actually trying to defend this from really sort
25:26of committed attackers.
25:28It really hints at the fact that this is a domestic structure.
25:31Lawrence of Ludlow built Stokesay to project power.
25:35In 1641, William Craven spent a fortune on a fancy new gatehouse to project taste and to show off.
25:43This fantastic, highly ornate timber frame structure is absolutely redolent of the 1640s and very similar in style to some
25:53of the buildings that you find in Ludlow.
25:55Unfortunately, this was built in 1640s, 1641, and only about a year later, the civil wars erupted.
26:04This is not a great defensive structure.
26:07And we find that the castle was besieged.
26:12The gatehouse was even less defensible than the original castle and was captured without a fight.
26:18It slipped into disuse and by the 1700s was used as a barn and granary.
26:24There were reports from visitors to the castle at that time that they described the building as being in decay
26:30and in ruin.
26:30It was in a period of decline in the early 19th century and wasn't in good condition.
26:37Then John Darby Allcroft, a glove manufacturer, stepped in to save it.
26:42While William Morris was writing manifestos about how old buildings should be gently saved, John Allcroft was attempting just that.
26:51He never intended to live here, but he was a good owner in that he repaired the castle but didn't
26:57restore it.
26:58I think if it hadn't had an owner like him, they could have lost a lot of the earlier fabric
27:02or it could have gone the other way and ended up becoming more ruinous.
27:13These timbers, the sort of main structure of the stairs, they're contemporary with the construction of the hall itself.
27:20So they're more than 700 years old.
27:24Something of this age, we're used to seeing these things in a glass box.
27:27These are remarkably old and they're still used for exactly the same purpose that they were constructed for.
27:35And so every time I go up and down there, apart from worrying a little bit about the height, I
27:39feel a real connection to the building as a whole.
27:44That connection we feel to historic sites comes from authenticity, not fakery.
27:51Listing protects that vigorously in the Palace of Westminster, where the UK Parliament meets.
27:58A royal palace stood on this site from the 11th century until fire tore through it in 1834.
28:06What rose in its place was a Victorian reimagining of what had been lost.
28:12But this great Gothic Revival landmark is now in serious trouble.
28:21The building's falling down and has been for decades to the extent that successive governments have just kicked the problem
28:29of its repair and renovation down the road.
28:33The complex network of buildings is fed by a complex network of pipes and cables and ducts which run for
28:42miles and miles underground.
28:45And they're all there and retained because actually nobody quite knows which one of them is redundant, which ones need
28:52to be kept.
28:54The Palace of Westminster is more an estate than a single building, sprawled across eight acres with over 1100 rooms
29:02and 100 staircases.
29:04The basement alone covers an area the size of 16 football pitches and is filled with a century of obsolete
29:11decaying infrastructure.
29:13The stonework is falling off the building and there is asbestos in a thousand known places.
29:20Just trying to stop it from getting worse costs up to two million pounds a week.
29:24To fully repair it could take 40 or 60 years and cost 35 or 40 billion, a staggering amount.
29:33Money that has to come from the taxpayer.
29:36Anna Key from the Landmark Trust has been campaigning all her life to save historic buildings from ruin.
29:43What happens on those great national projects, the big ones, which results maybe from a fire like Windsor Castle, for
29:52example, or from a structure, a building falling into such decrepitude and yet it's powerful in the nation's mind.
29:59How do you justify the expense of those huge projects when smaller ones are crying out for money?
30:08Well, you know, do we as a nation ascribe value to them?
30:12Let's remember about the Palace of Westminster. It's a World Heritage Site.
30:15The single biggest building on that site, Westminster Hall, was built by William the Conqueror's son.
30:20It was the biggest building in Europe when it was put up. It is an absolutely astonishing structure. Charles I
30:27was tried in that building.
30:29So you could not come up with a collection of buildings that had greater value.
30:35Putting aside, you know, how we might all feel about politicians on a Tuesday afternoon, I think that these are
30:41sacred spaces for us as a nation.
30:46But can we justify spending 40 billion pounds more than the UK spends on policing in an entire year money
30:54that would pay for the salary of every nurse in the NHS for more than two years?
31:00What do we do? What should happen? Do you want to see democracy crumble? Do you want to see all
31:07the vestiges of it disappear? Turn to a pile of dust? Or do you want to repair it? Keep it
31:14going?
31:17It's an important question and something that we as a nation have to collectively decide.
31:36Leeds Castle in Kent is a very old expression of power. Beautiful, fortified, and with just enough water to keep
31:44the riffraff at bay.
31:47It stood here for 900 years. It was first built as a wooden structure by a Saxon chief called Leed
31:56in 857.
31:58In 1119, it became a Norman stronghold. Then, in 1278, a Spanish queen, Eleanor of Castile, transformed it.
32:11When she arrived in England, she's nearly 13. She looks different. She sounds different. She would have experienced a fair
32:18amount of xenophobia.
32:21Even though she's incredibly young, she is a phenomenal businesswoman.
32:25She introduced stained glass, carpets and tapestries, and also a love of fine dining.
32:32She's also credited for introducing the use of forks into the English court.
32:39We have actually recreated or reimagined Eleanor using AI technology.
32:46She doesn't suffer fools gladly.
32:49You can now talk to her and ask lots of personal questions.
32:54Can you tell us about your love affair with your husband, Edward I?
32:57I had little time for sentimentalities when there was business to be done.
33:05Eleanor died in 1290.
33:07And the castle passed from queen to queen, five of them until it left royal hands altogether.
33:16By the 1920s, it was a wreck until it was bought by the Anglo-American heiress, Lady Bailey.
33:23She purchased it for the princely price of Ā£180,000, which was roughly the same as around Ā£14 million today.
33:32And she spent nearly another Ā£7 or Ā£8 million renovating it.
33:38She bought it for the history, but wanted modern comforts.
33:43This room is the salon in Leeds Castle.
33:46It's one of the most incredible rooms that Lady Bailey transformed in her time as owner.
33:51This is where the lavish parties took place with live music, flowing champagne, and even an ebony sprung dance floor
33:58for her guests to enjoy themselves on.
34:04Some of the biggest names of the 20th century in entertainment were here, Noel Coward, Errol Flynn, Charlie Chaplin, and
34:12the list goes on.
34:14And when the marvellous parties got too much...
34:17Of all of Leeds Castle's secrets, this one has got to be my favourite.
34:21It's the secret staircase that leads from the salon into Lady Bailey's private apartments.
34:27She would often escape up to her apartments and have a bit of a relax when the party got to
34:31be a bit too much.
34:35Lady Bailey died in 1974 and left the castle to a foundation to maintain.
34:44Their work is constant, repairing and renovating stonework.
34:48We have to keep meticulous records about the changes that we make and preferably ensuring that they are reversible if
34:55necessary,
34:56so that we can make sure that the history of the castle is as important to us as its future.
35:07Leeds holds power the old-fashioned way. High walls, deep water, sharp arrows.
35:13But near the Welsh border, there are more subtle and effective ways to do it.
35:19We often recognise power in buildings through violence, in fact.
35:26Historically, this part of our country, between Wales and England, that blurred boundary,
35:33was full of castles and defensive structures in order to try and achieve a balance of power.
35:43These structures were full of dungeons and murder holes.
35:48They had battlements and arrow slits.
35:51And you knew where you stood with them, which was usually in a ditch, wasn't it?
35:54Out of the way of the arrows.
35:56But what if I told you that the most powerful building in Hereford,
36:02in that line of castles, has no arrow slits?
36:11This is Hereford Cathedral, started in 1079, after the Normans conquered Britain with less than 10,000 soldiers.
36:21Ruling Britain was a different story.
36:23With a population of almost two million people, the Normans didn't have the manpower to physically police the place.
36:30So what do you do when you are so massively outnumbered?
36:34Well, of course, you build. You build things which are big and powerful,
36:38which make statements which represent your institutions and govern for you.
36:43They seem, of course, inevitable. They are intimidating these buildings.
36:49And what they say to the population is,
36:52we can build something better than you can.
36:55And we can make it last longer than anything you can build.
37:00And if you want to know whose side God is on,
37:04it's ours, and you'd better get used to it.
37:09The great rounded Norman arches are almost all that's left of the early building.
37:14In the 18th century, the West Tower collapsed.
37:17The years after, I saw the stone vault replaced with plaster,
37:20and the walls scraped back to bare stone by the Victorians.
37:24What's grade one listed here isn't a Norman cathedral.
37:28It's a time capsule.
37:30Its caretaker is the cathedral's architect, Robert Kilgore.
37:35Good to meet you. Very good to see you.
37:38You must adapt and survive, because if you just pickle a building,
37:43you say, right, that's perfect, we're just going to leave it as it is.
37:47It's lost its kind of raison d'etre then, hasn't it?
37:50It's a bit like the Hippocratic Oath for a doctor.
37:54You do no harm within reason.
38:00Hereford Cathedral was listed in 1952.
38:03Any change to it is, however small, a long process.
38:08Changing the door took the best part of two years.
38:10A lot of your work here involves negotiating institutions,
38:17bodies, interested parties, people like Historic England.
38:20It is a bit like designing by committee at some points,
38:24because everybody thinks that their point is the most valid one.
38:28It's moving everybody sort of glacially towards a common purpose.
38:35The door took a very long time to arrive.
38:38The argument about the font has been fomenting for decades.
38:42The font was an interview question 20 years ago,
38:45like the last trick question for the candidates.
38:48So, what do you think of our font?
38:50And I was able to say, well, it's a lovely font,
38:52but it's not in its original location.
38:55Liturgically, it would be better if it was centralised,
38:59and that got me the job.
39:01How long has it stood there now?
39:04Uh...
39:05Five months.
39:06So, it's taken your entire career here.
39:08Yes. 20 years.
39:09From the day you arrived, when they interviewed you,
39:12to get it where you wanted to be.
39:14Correct.
39:16It seems completely appropriate, as though it's always been there.
39:19Yeah.
39:20Which is usually a good sign, isn't it?
39:26Robert changes the building to keep it alive.
39:30But alive for what?
39:32Can you tell me about what the foundation of this cathedral is?
39:36In my mind, there's no doubt what the foundation is.
39:39It's a place for the community to come and see something
39:44that is not everyday, where you can encounter the divine,
39:48a safe haven, peace.
39:51So, the stones resonate.
39:53One of the glories of this place, for me,
39:55is the sense of it being a repository for the emotions
40:00and the passions and the prayers and the loves and the hates
40:03and the joys and the sorrows of 900-plus years' worth of people.
40:08Put it like that, it's a very powerful idea.
40:10And we throw these places away at our peril.
40:17You will have visited churches, redundant churches,
40:20deconsecrated places, no doubt.
40:22Is there a distinction in terms of the energy of the buildings?
40:25I mean, you can go and get a gothic-looking building
40:27if you go to the Natural History Museum, can't you, in London?
40:30But it doesn't feel like this.
40:33And you could put a carpet warehouse in here
40:36and it would be nothing more than a carpet warehouse.
40:39Yes.
40:40These places were built for purpose,
40:42and while that purpose lives, the buildings live.
40:45If that purpose dies, the buildings become something other.
40:54If the congregation is the beating heart of this building,
40:58its lungs are mechanical bellows.
41:02Sitting in front of any organ, especially an historic one like this,
41:09is like being asked to sit in the captain's seat of an aircraft,
41:13as well as the Claribel flute, we're all familiar with that one,
41:16or the Lieblich Gedacht, or the Gemshorn, or the Spitzflut.
41:21There's also some more recognisable instruments,
41:24the Concertflute, the Clarinet, the Choranglais,
41:28the Glockenspiel.
41:30Gotta try that one.
41:44It's like E.T. Go Home, that one, isn't it?
41:46And the tuber.
41:50That sounds like the Queen Mary's just arrived docking in Hereford Cathedral.
41:5832 double open bays, that means that the pipe is 32 feet long,
42:01which means that the sound it makes is very low indeed.
42:09That is a real close encounters of the third kind, that, isn't it?
42:15The organ is a very good reminder that heritage isn't meant to sit there quietly behaving itself.
42:22The places we keep are the places that still do something to us,
42:26still surprise us, still move us, still make us want to fight for them.
42:32Outside, Simon, the Cathedral Mason, is doing just that.
42:37Hello, Simon.
42:40Hi.
42:40Is suitable Mason weather, this?
42:44This is a course of pinnacles stone from right at the very top, 170 foot up.
42:50Right.
42:50When we got up there and inspected it with the architect,
42:52we could actually physically move it, which was not a good sign.
42:55There were iron cramps, tying it together, which worked, but they had rusted.
43:01Yeah.
43:01They were only quite flimsy and so they weren't doing anything.
43:04So it was very unsafe.
43:06The programme have worked.
43:07You know, when will you be done?
43:09It is perpetual.
43:10That's my legacy about training young lads now to take over from me.
43:14And it's great watching them start off at 16,
43:17coming to me with very little qualifications from school,
43:19but learning how to use tools with their hands.
43:21And as soon as you tell them to put the phone down,
43:24you usually get an idea that they're going to come back tomorrow.
43:27I mean, in the same way, a medieval kid would have done the same thing.
43:34Of course, not every fight for a place happens up a scaffold.
43:39Sometimes saving a building means raising the cash,
43:42rallying support and making enough noise to stop it being lost
43:45before anyone can repair it.
43:50I'm very aware that campaigning to try and save a building or a place,
43:56that a lot of negative energy can be expended.
44:01What's the alternative?
44:02How do we fight to protect the things we love?
44:05I think the answer might lie in something more positive,
44:09something that adds to the story of a place,
44:13in celebration, in championing the virtues of somewhere.
44:17How do we do that?
44:19Well, I mean, you could make tea on a Thursday evening for some action group.
44:24You could maybe paint the placards rather than campaigning with them.
44:29You could just say thank you to somebody when they're knocking on the door,
44:33raising funds to save somewhere.
44:35You could organise a sausage sizzle and a pop-up bar on a Friday evening.
44:40Or go on a walk with some friends to a place you love that's threatened
44:46and have a picnic there and just remember it.
44:50I mean, we make films.
44:53You could write. You could do something on social media.
44:56Actually, I suspect there's maybe a hundred thousand separate creative ways
45:02in which we could all celebrate the places we love.
45:05And here's the thing.
45:07If we don't fight, campaign, sign the petitions,
45:13do the sausage sizzle, celebrate, champion the places that we love,
45:18then eventually, with time, all of them, all of them will disappear.
45:32Next time, I'm looking for those buildings that wouldn't exist
45:35if people hadn't fought for them.
45:37Whether it's the designer...
45:39All this craftsmanship works
45:41because the architect took a meddling interest in everything.
45:45The craftsman...
45:46Are you up there, Warren?
45:47I am.
45:48Oh, what a beautiful world you work in.
45:51Welcome to my crib.
45:52Or the people who just care.
45:54If I can't help pull this off, I will personally have failed.
45:58All this world.
46:01The Acquisites
46:01And I will spend money with them,
46:02or just do phrases in a half.
46:13For me, to share in subscribe to my dish
46:13I will spend money with you back.
46:28I know I will spend time for it taking times.
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