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Victorian CofE church makes 'most endangered' list

The Victorian Society has just published this year's list of the top 10 most endangered Victorian and Edwardian buildings, in a bid to raise awareness of their plight and save them from destruction and decay.

St Luke's Church in Blakenhall's foundation stone was laid in 1860, and is said to have an exceptionally well preserved Victorian interior.

However, in 2014 inspections revealed the tower has structural problems, making it unsafe, meaning parishioners have been forced to meet at nearby St Luke's Primary School instead.

The Diocese of Lichfield has said efforts had been made to get funding to repair the church but they have not been able to get the amount needed to match that offered by English Heritage to repair the church, due to the sheer scale of the repairs, with bills running to more than £1 million.

A spokesman for the Diocese of Lichfield said: "The congregation of St Luke's meet in a local school, as their building has been declared unsafe to continue worship.

"Efforts have been made to obtain funds for repair, but there have been no offers that meet the scale of the works needed. The church has now begun a formal legal procedure for the closure of the building, and there will be a consultation about its future use."

The church is joined on the list by former Christian conference centre, Kinmel Hall, Wales, a palatial house which has been dubbed "the Welsh Versailles" or "discount Downton" and Overstone Hall, East Midlands, with the earliest known cavity wall insulation, which is now half burnt out after fire.

PA Newswire

The scaffold-shrouded Central Plaza Hotel, Carlisle, the long-disused Hunslet and Victoria Mills, Leeds, and the deteriorating Tolly Cobbold Brewery, Ipswich, are also included.

Also in the top 10 are Brighton's Madeira Terrace, a seafront walk said to be the longest continuous iron structure in the world, but now closed to the public and set to be replaced, and the derelict Gothic Ladywell Baths in London.

The Sheerness Boat Store, Kent, which is the world's earliest surviving example of a kind of iron framed structure that is almost universally used in modern steel framed buildings, has made it onto the list, which is nominated by members of the public.

So to has Birnbeck Pier, Weston Super Mare, Britain's only pier leading to an island, which is close to collapse.

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