Monuments

Scheduled monuments are our most valued archaeological sites and landscapes, designated because they are of national importance. They include prehistoric burial mounds, stone circles and hillforts, Roman towns and villas, medieval  settlements, castles and abbeys and the structures of our more recent industrial and military past.

Together they are a unique inheritance that tells the story of many generations of human endeavour and, indeed, they provide the only record for millennia during which we have no written history.

These evocative monuments also create a unique sense of time and place in the landscape, adding greatly to the distinctiveness of both our towns and our countryside.

Although protected by law, scheduled monuments are still at risk from a wide range of processes. Like listed buildings and registered landscapes, they are vulnerable to development. In addition, they are exposed to several intense pressures quite beyond the reach of the spatial planning system; these include agricultural intensification, forestry and wholly natural forces, such as coastal erosion.

It is the pressures which are not controlled by the planning process which pose the greatest threat to the majority of scheduled monuments.

Search for monuments on English Heritage's 2009 Heritage at Risk register.