Shipwrecks, skates and submarines: Protecting England's unusual heritage

A mysterious shipwreck, a colourful cathedral and a "birthplace of the communication age" are among the remarkable places in England that have been granted special protection this year.

Historic England has added 199 new sites to its National Heritage List during 2025, while others have had their protected status upgraded.

Listing gives places of special architectural or historical interest legal protection against certain changes, external. Anyone can recommend a building for listing.

Here are some of the most unusual places on the list that are being celebrated by Historic England.

The only shipwreck of its type known to have survived, the Pin Wreck was discovered 35 years ago.

In 2024, it was identified as a naval vessel believed to date from the mid-19th to early 20th Century.

Named after the hundreds of yellow copper bolts around it, the wreck was found by a diving charter boat skipper 27m under sea level off St Alban's Head.

The steam mooring lighter with Victorian equipment and early diving gear is believed to have been lost in 1903 while travelling from Portsmouth to Portland.

Hefin Meara, a marine archaeologist at Historic England, said paintings suggested it had been used to save another naval vessel - HMS Eurydice - off the Isle of Wight in 1878.

"It's fascinating for me to see how shipwrecks that have lain there and been dived for for years and years still have new things to reveal every time people go and dive them," he said.

"My favourite is always the beer festival," said Deacon Paul Mannings when asked about some of the less conventional events hosted at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King.

"When it first happened, on a Saturday morning, there was a queue around the block. I thought – oh, they've heard about my guided tours! When I got there, the queue was for the beer festival."

Deacon Mannings was there for the cathedral's opening in 1967. Its design broke with tradition, placing worshippers around a central altar. This year, it was upgraded from Grade II* to Grade I, which means it is a site of "exceptional interest".

Just 2.5% of listed sites in England are Grade I. Around 5.8% are Grade II*, meaning they are particularly important buildings of more than special interest. The rest are Grade II.

"We're a bit proud – not sinfully proud, but proud," Deacon Mannings said.

"The cool infinity of blue glass, where it meets the red, where it meets gold, where at the end of the day the sun is setting in the west, we can see the most amazing and dramatic features come through those windows.

"Others have said, 'I've gone into the cathedral feeling not at one with the world. Yet when I go in, it's like an oasis of calmness comes around me'."

A submarine telephone cable hauler and gantry in Greenwich lauded as "a birthplace of the communication age" has been named one of the remarkable listed sites of 2025.

According to Historic England, it laid the foundations for internet communication, helping to connect England with the rest of the world.

The cable hauler helped to load the first successful transatlantic telephone cable in 1956.

"The internet effectively is made by submerged optical fibre cables - it's a physical connection that's laid from country to country by a cable on the seabed," explains Tajinder Bhambra, managing director of Alcatel Submarine Networks UK.

"There's a high probability that if you're using a connected device anywhere in the world, you're using something that has been made in Greenwich. Your modern daily connected life would not be possible without our systems.

"Greenwich is known as the home of time, and it should also be known as the home of communication."

Adams Heritage Centre in Littleport is a place that has "stood still in time", according to trustee Nicola Power.

Now used as a community centre hosting sessions in craft, heritage and wellbeing, she said the building, which dates back to 1893, was once famous for supplying skates across the UK.

"When the weather was so cold and the fields were frozen, there was very little work to be done, so people used to go skating on the ice," she explained.

She said in the late 1800s, lots of the agricultural workers in Cambridgeshire would skate on the fens as a hobby, a mode of travel or compete in it as a sport.

The centre is "a place that has been important for lots of people who live locally, people who used it as a shop, who remember their parents going there", she added.

"Everybody appreciates it when then come in and see it and so many local community groups are involved. I think everybody feels like they belong here somehow."

An octagonal tower set over four floors, Draper's Windmill is a special place for Robin Colyer from Kent.

The 67-year-old said it had been a big part of his life from a young age.

"I was a child at the school in the 1960s," he said. "I grew up with the project of restoring the windmill."

The timber-framed mill built in Margate in about 1843 has been upgraded from Grade II to Grade II*.

Historic England said the upgrade reflected the "increasing rarity" of operational historic mills across England.

Its official list entry, external notes it is "a good representation of the highly-sophisticated late stage of wind-powered milling" before the introduction of steam-powered roller milling later in the 1800s.

The mill was threatened with demolition in 1965 and the Draper's Windmill Trust was founded to save and preserve it.

More recently, Mr Colyer has volunteered as chair of the trust, which has brought the mill's machinery back to life.

"There was no thought originally that the mill would ever grind corn again," he said.

Heritage Minister Baroness Twycross said: "Britain's heritage is as varied as it is brilliant, with each of these buildings playing a part in shaping our national story over the centuries.

"This year alone we have protected 199 heritage sites, from neolithic cairns in the Yorkshire Dales to the fabulous Catholic Cathedrals in the heart of Liverpool. I'm proud that we're safeguarding our rich history so future generations can continue to enjoy it."