St Just is home to a World Heritage Site: Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape

St Just Miners' Chapel and attached former vestry, including piers and railingsGrade II* listed

Photos from Wikimedia Commons and Geograph, copied to our own server, each credited to its photographer with its licence; names open the building’s page or its official list entry.

Historic England lists buildings in three grades: Grade I for buildings of exceptional interest (about 2.5% of all listed buildings), Grade II* for particularly important buildings of more than special interest (about 5.8%), and Grade II for buildings of special interest (about 91.7%). Listing protects the whole building, inside and out.

Every entry on the National Heritage List for England whose point lies inside the ONS 2022 built-up-area boundary. One list entry can cover a terrace or a group of buildings.

Historic England’s conservation areas layer, supplied by councils (incomplete in places, so a page fact, never graded). Hectares are the part of each area inside the built-up area.

The first 7 entries were listed in 1950. 11 came in 1973, in the national resurvey of the 1970s and 80s. Only 1 has been added in the last 15 years.

World Heritage

3 scheduled monuments

Nationally important archaeological sites and monuments, protected by law; work on them needs consent from the Secretary of State, advised by Historic England.

Two measures, each ranked against every UK town of 1,000 or more, with protected heritage counting twice as much as the age of homes. Protected heritage counts each listed building by its grade (Grade I three points, II* two, II one), each scheduled monument and battlefield two, and each registered park or garden by its grade; it is ranked both per 10,000 residents and as a total, so a village with one fine church doesn’t outrank a historic city. The second measure is the share of homes built before 1919, from the Valuation Office Agency’s council tax records. History is a character grade: it describes the town and isn’t part of the overall grade.

55% of homes are Victorian or older, against 16% across England and Wales. The busiest period since was 1973–82, which added 11% of today’s homes.

Valuation Office Agency, council tax stock of properties by build period, 31 March 2025, for the neighbourhoods (LSOAs) that make up the town, split by where their residents live. Homes with no recorded build period (4 here) are left out; 1939–44 is not a period in the data.

William Oats

Charles Luke

William Angwin

James Howard Williams

1800182518501875190019251950

Charles Luke1857–1941 · Mayor of Wellington (1857-1941)

JW

James Howard Williams1897–1958 · British army officer and forester (1897–1958)

WO

William Oats1841–1911 · Australian politician and mining engineer (1841-1911)

WA

William Angwin1863–1944 · Australian politician (1863-1944)

Everyone born in St Just → Birthplaces from Wikidata; portraits from Wikimedia Commons.

Part of Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape, a World Heritage Site, lies in St Just. All told, the list holds 21 listed buildings. Its housing is old: 56% of homes date from before 1919, against 15% in the typical UK town. A conservation area has protected part of it since 1972.

Charles Luke (1857), James Howard Williams (1897) and William Oats (1841) are among the 4 people born here before 1900. The big year was 1973, when 11 of the 21 went on the list. Otherwise the figures are ordinary: like most towns its size, it has no Grade I building; per resident it sits near the middle of UK towns; and it also has 3 scheduled monuments.