Here at K.E. Jones & Son Building Services we do a lot of work on listed buildings and work alongside Historic England and English Heritage. But what is a listed building? We thought we’d tell you a little bit more. 

A listed building is one that has been placed on a list maintained by Historic England. They are buildings of special architectural or historic interest. The older the building, and the fewer surviving examples of it’s kind, the more likely it is to be listed. Modern buildings can be listed as well, but it’s very unlikely if they are less than 30 years old, as they have yet to stand the test of time.

In general, all buildings built before 1700 which are anything like their original condition will be listed. This also includes buildings built between 1700 and 1850. There are around 500,000 listed buildings in England, and the listed statuses are as follows:

• Grade I - only 2.5% of listed buildings are in this category. These are buildings of exceptional interest.
• Grade II* - only 5.8% of listed buildings are in this category. These are buildings of more than special interest.
• Grade II - the majority of listed buildings fall into this category and are buildings of special interest.

Listing does not prevent change to the building, but it means that listed building consent must be applied for in order to make any changes to the building that might affect its special interest. All listed buildings are collated on the National Heritage List for England (NHLE) and anyone can search the list to see if a property they are interested in is listed.

We recently completed an extension on a property in Bures, and also carried out some work on the exterior of the property which is now finished. Here you can see our before and after pictures. The client is very pleased with the work done.

We are really pleased to share with you the pictures of the completed job at Great Leighs. The property had been damaged by fire, and we have now restored it to its former glory!

A few weeks ago we shared with you some pictures of a fire damaged property that we have been working on in Great Leighs.

We are due to finish the job this week - what a difference to when we began!

This week we started a new job through Smithers and Purslow Surveyors restoring a fire damaged property in Great Leighs. As you can see, we are having to wear protective clothing and masks for this job!

Look out for more updates as the job progresses.

This week's 'Meet the Team' features Joe Waterson. Joe is an ex-engineer and has been part of the team for three years. Joe is a very loyal, hard-working man and can turn his hand to most things. He has just completed two years of a plumbing course for which he achieved a distinction. We are very lucky to have him as part of the team.

We are now at the next stage of our Newton development project. The scaffolding is now down and the windows will be going in soon.

This week, we have been installing a French drain for a Victorian property in Chelmsford. A French drain is a slightly sloped trench which is filled with aggregate, that allows surface water to drain away from buildings, walls, gardens, drives etc. Although the name suggests that it comes from France, this is not true. It was actually named after Henry French, a farmer from Massachussets, who wrote about the concept in 1859 in his book about farm drainage! 

Here is our next 'Meet the Team' blog. This week we are featuring Jason 'The Oracle' Hurd! Jason has been a member of our team for 30 years! He is incredibly knowledgeable - hence the nickname! He is also honest and hard-working. We are very lucky to have him as part of our team.

In this week's blog we'd like to share with you this stunning, purpose-made chimney stack that we built last year. We were involved with English Heritage on this project.

These shots were taken before we started.

We used locally sourced, hand-made bricks from Bulmer Brickworks to complete the job.

The next pictures were taken during the process of rebuilding the chimney.

Every brick used had a different shape, so this was a painstakingly complex job, which was rather like doing a jigsaw puzzle!

The hard work was worth it, as we think you'll agree that the end result is truly stunning!