Charlton House has been added to Historic England’s register of buildings at risk, a decade after the Jacobean mansion was hived off to an independent trust.
The 17th-century building is in desperate need of £2 million of repair work, particularly to its leaking roof.
Built for Prince Henry, the son of James I, in 1607, Charlton House was later the home of the Maryon-Wilson family, which owned much of the surrounding area. The grounds later became Charlton Park.
It was bought by the old Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich, which was considering turning it into its town hall, in 1925. Instead the building became a community centre, but was spun off by the current Greenwich Council in 2014 as part of the Royal Greenwich Heritage Trust, in the belief that this would make it easier to attract funding for its upkeep.
The trust believes that recognition of Charlton House’s problems by Historic England will finally make it easier to obtain the funding and expertise to fix the roof.
Historic England’s heritage at risk register records Charlton House as being in a “very bad” condition, which is at “immediate risk of further rapid deterioration or loss of fabric; no solution agreed”.
Janet Denne, the trust’s chief executive, said: “Charlton House is an important building, both for the community as a hub, and nationally, as a beautiful example of a rare Jacobean building. We are pleased that Historic England have recognised its significance and we plan to work with them to improve the situation. Our aim is to secure the house for generations to come.”
Charlton House joins the rest of the Charlton Village conservation area in the at-risk register, which is published every year.
The trust said emergency repairs had been carried out to the roof in the past year, meaning that the house’s main function rooms had stayed in use, while leaks were stopped. New heating had been installed and lighting repaired.
Planned works in the next year include repairing exterior stonework, improving the grand staircase and upgrading the electrics.
Since taking over the house, the trust has long wrestled with demands from locals in Charlton to keep it in use as a community centre and the need to generate an income for the house’s expensive upkeep costs.
Charlton Toy Library, which had been a fixture of the house for decades, is moving into a housing estate across the road this month after being asked to leave to make way for a commercial tenant.
The trust was also placed in charge of the borough’s archives, but lost its home in the Royal Arsenal in 2018 so Woolwich Works could move in. Greenwich Council reneged on a pledge to allow it to move back to a new building in 2023 after allowing the immersive theatre company Punchdrunk to move in instead. The archive now languishes in an industrial unit on the Charlton Riverside with limited public access.
There are 599 entries in London on this year’s list.
Those in the borough of Greenwich include the Rotunda at Woolwich Barracks, the Winter Garden at Avery Hill and the 1930s Church of St Saviours on the Middle Park Estate in Eltham.
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