Buildings and Monuments
The Heritage Office of the Velocity Interoperability Network records buildings and monuments of potential interest across the Network, whether or not they are protected. The record is the foundation of the Office's work: a site cannot be assessed for designation, or its condition judged, until it has been recorded on a consistent basis. Until September 2026 each member organisation recorded the buildings in its charge in its own way, and many were not recorded at all.
A record is not a designation. Being recorded places no obligation on an owner and does not require consent for works. It means only that the Office knows the building exists, what it is, and roughly what condition it is in. Designation follows a separate assessment, set out on the Proposing a Designation page, and only a minority of recorded buildings are expected to be designated.
Categories. The Office records buildings and monuments in eight categories. The categories describe what a structure is, not how important it is; a building in any category may be designated at any grade.
- Civic and administrative buildings
- Halls, exchanges, offices and court buildings from which the Network and its member organisations have been governed. The two Grade I listed buildings on the Register fall in this category.
- Industrial and transport structures
- Warehouses, goods sheds, cranes, mill races, weirs, bridges, relay towers and signal houses. These structures record the working history of the Network's sites and are often the most vulnerable, being large, specialised and hard to reuse.
- Places of assembly
- Chapels, meeting halls, reading rooms and other buildings put up for people to gather. Their interest often lies as much in their interiors and fittings as in their exteriors.
- Domestic buildings
- Houses, lodges, toll houses and terraces, including the workers' housing of Westbrook Village. Domestic buildings are recorded for their plan, construction and fittings as well as their elevations.
- Monuments and memorials
- Free-standing commemorative structures: obelisks, plaques, clock towers and memorials. They are recorded with their inscriptions, which are transcribed in full.
- Boundary markers and street furniture
- Boundary stones, milestones, railings, lamp standards, drinking fountains and post boxes. Individually modest, they are easily lost and collectively record how a site was laid out and used.
- Archaeological sites and earthworks
- Mounds, banks, ditches, ramparts and buried remains, whether visible on the surface or known from excavation or survey. Archaeological sites are recorded by the Office's archaeologists and are the usual subject of scheduling.
- Designed landscapes
- Parks, gardens, avenues and planted grounds laid out to a design. The record covers the layout, the surviving planting and the structures within the landscape, such as ice houses, walls and garden buildings.
Scheduled monuments. Six monuments were scheduled at establishment. They are set out below with the type of monument and the form in which it survives. The schedule is the part of the Register of Protected Sites that covers scheduled monuments; two further candidates, the Eastfield Boundary Bank and Westbrook Bridge, are held for assessment.
| Monument | Location | Type | Period | Survives as |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Northgate Relay Tower | Northgate Relay | Relay tower and engine house | Early twentieth century | Standing structure |
| Northgate Ramparts | Northgate Relay | Bank and ditch defences | Medieval | Earthwork |
| Riverside Crane No. 3 | Southbank Terminal | Quayside cargo crane | Early twentieth century | Standing structure |
| Eastfield Observatory Mound | Eastfield Campus | Round mound | Prehistoric | Earthwork |
| Westbrook Mill Race and Weir | Westbrook Distribution Site | Mill race, weir and sluice | Medieval | Water feature |
| Meridian Line Boundary Stones | Meridian Court | Line of eleven marker stones | Eighteenth century | Objects in a series |
The survey. The Office is carrying out the first survey of buildings and monuments across the Network on a common standard. It begins at Central Exchange on 14 September 2026 and proceeds site by site, two weeks at each, with a team of two inspectors and, at sites with earthworks or buried remains, an archaeologist. The survey records every building and monument in the eight categories above that appears, on inspection from outside, to be older than fifty years or to be of particular interest regardless of age.
| Site | Survey dates | Buildings and monuments expected to be recorded |
|---|---|---|
| Central Exchange | 14 to 25 September 2026 | About 140 |
| Northgate Relay | 28 September to 9 October 2026 | About 45 |
| Southbank Terminal | 12 to 23 October 2026 | About 110 |
| Eastfield Campus | 26 October to 6 November 2026 | About 60 |
| Westbrook Distribution Site | 9 to 20 November 2026 | About 75 |
| Meridian Court | 23 November to 4 December 2026 | About 30 |
Around 460 buildings and monuments are expected to be recorded in all. The estimates are drawn from the lists of member organisations and from map evidence and will be revised as the survey proceeds. Surveyors inspect from public areas and from the outside; they will ask an owner's permission before entering a building or private ground, and an owner may decline. Where the survey identifies a building that appears to merit protection, the Office may make a proposal for designation itself, and will inform the owner before it does so.
The record made by the survey will be published on this site in early 2027, once it has been checked. Owners who believe a building in their charge should be recorded, or who wish to know whether it has been, may write to contact@heritage.gov.vin. For the condition of protected buildings and monuments, see Heritage at Risk; for the rules on works to protected buildings, see Consent for Works; for answers to common questions about the survey, see the frequently asked questions.