ABSTRACT
Most people associate heritage with the historic environment. Officially this covers commercial and industrial buildings, historic houses, archaeological findings, country houses, gardens, townscapes and ecclesiastical buildings (House of Commons, 2006: 7). Houses are the most common form of building in history, 60 per cent of which were built before the twentieth century (Newman, 2001). This includes impressive town houses and ‘set piece’ country estates, originally built as displays of wealth and now in many cases major tourist attractions.
