Industrial Buildings

A guide to outline the selection criteria used when listing industrial buildings.

Because of the large numbers of surviving industrial buildings, the greatest care needs to be taken to establish the precise nature of a site’s special interest prior to designation. The intention of this brief guide is to provide a general overview of industrial structures, highlighting factors that could be seen as being of special interest sufficient to warrant designation.

Various buildings and structures associated with the Industrial Revolution are considered under other selection guides including Transport (toll houses, canals, railways), Maritime and Naval Buildings (docks, warehouses), and Domestic 1: Vernacular Houses (workers’ housing). Consideration of industrial sites mainly surviving as ruins or archaeological remains is given in the Industrial Sites scheduling selection guide.

This is one of a series of guides which set out some of our approaches to listing buildings. Covering twenty broad categories of building types, they including historical overviews and special considerations for listing, plus select bibliographies. They are primarily intended to develop understanding of listed buildings and structures, and to offer insight into listing decision making.