Volunteers being sought for the Stour Heritage at Risk Project

The Stour Valley Buildings at Risk project is seeking volunteers to help complete its survey of the Grade II Listed Buildings in the Stour Valley on the Essex/Suffolk border.   

The Stour Valley is famous as the landscape that inspired Constable and Gainsborough. The historic market towns and picturesque villages set in a gently undulating landscape of fields, rivers, meadows and ancient woodlands form a quintessentially lowland English landscape.   The area has an outstanding legacy of historic buildings, mostly timber-framed, many of which are medieval or early post-medieval in origin.

1584 Listed Buildings (that is buildings that are considered to be of special architectural or historical interest) are recorded for the Stour Valley.  Over a third of these have been surveyed to date, but more volunteers are required to help finish the task.  The principal risk to this unique historic environment is one of gradual decay and erosion, leading to the loss of those features which so characterise the area.   Current data for Essex and Suffolk would suggest that 2% of the area’s listed buildings are at risk.

Volunteer recorders from the local community will be trained to undertake visual surveys of the historic buildings of the Stour Valley and record those that are at danger of damage or decay.    Anyone interested in finding out more about the project should register their interest with stourheritage.atrisk@essex.gov.uk  or contact Maria Medlycott on 03330-136853.