ABSTRACT
The legal protection of historic industrial sites is a means to an end. Legal protection is usually the end result of an assessment of significance and therefore it is the veracity of the processes of identification and assessment that are crucial to the effectiveness of the protection, and these can change greatly over time. Legal protection can be used very constructively and can be the catalyst for regeneration, as demonstrated by the historic textile mills bordering the Rochdale Canal at Ancoats in Manchester. This chapter concentrates on the British experience, but hopeful with some justification. The benign management and conservation of the sites should be the primary aims, and this might involve differing levels of protection ranging from local lists and conservation areas through statutory designated individual sites at varying grades up to World Heritage Sites and landscapes. At the protection level of conservation areas, guideline manuals of permitted repairs and alterations can achieve much.
