Heritage at Risk 2026: still at risk, on the nation's own land

https://heritage-at-risk-crown.netlify.app/

Historic England has just published its 2026 Heritage at Risk Register. It lists 4,991 entries: 197 were added this year and 85 came off for positive reasons. Those headline totals look like steady progress. The picture is very different when you look at land owned by the Crown, meaning the Crown Estate, the Duchy of Cornwall and other Crown bodies.

The Crown's list is getting longer

In 2025, 97 Crown-owned entries were on the register. In 2026, all 97 are still there, and none has been rescued. Ten more have been added, bringing the total to 107. Nine of the new ones are on the Isles of Scilly, where 46 of the islands' 50 at-risk entries are Crown land, and the tenth is Warren Farm Barn at Chadwell Heath.

These are not recent problems. Sixty-eight of the Crown's entries have been at risk since at least 2013. Historic England records 79 of the 107 as declining, 20 as stable and only 8 as improving.

On our doorstep: the Marlborough Downs

Six Crown-owned monuments on the Marlborough Downs, near us and near Avebury, are still on the list. They are barrows and a farmstead on Bishops Cannings Down, Horton Down and Beckhampton, and they range from Kitchen Barrow to the Horton Down barrow cemetery. All six have been at risk since at least 2013, and all six are declining. Across the wider Marlborough Downs, 36 sites are at risk, down from 38 last year.

The National Trust and Wiltshire

For comparison, 64 entries are on National Trust land, up from 61. All four new ones are on Lundy, and one, the Quarterwall cottages on Lundy, came off. Forty-two of the Trust's entries have been at risk since at least 2013.

Wiltshire and Swindon together have 144 entries at risk, down from 150. Eight came off, including the henge and barrows southwest of Fox Covert on the boundary of Bishops Cannings and Avebury, and the Liddington Warren long barrow. That is welcome news. One genuinely new entry was added, the medieval cross in St Mary's churchyard, Purton.

What should happen

The Crown is not a struggling private owner. It is the nation's own landholder, with professional land agents and considerable income. Yet it has not removed a single monument from the at-risk register this year, its list has grown by ten, and most of its entries are getting worse.

I would like to see a simple step taken: for every Crown and Duchy entry on the register, a published plan and a target date for getting it off.

You can explore the sites yourself on my Heritage at Risk map, which has a slider covering 2013 to 2026.

Figures come from Historic England's 2026 Heritage at Risk spreadsheet and map data. National Trust figures count register sites that overlap Trust land by at least 10%.