33 listed buildings, 4 of them Grade I

St Bees Priory, former chancel to Priory Church of St Mary and St Bega (Old College Hall)Grade I listedCross in Churchyard to North of Priory Church NaveGrade I listedManor Stead and House Adjoining to NorthGrade II* listedPow Bridge over Pow BeckGrade II* listed+1See all photos

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 6 entries were listed in 1967, 3 of the 4 Grade I buildings among them. 24 came in 1984, in the national resurvey of the 1970s and 80s. Only 1 has been added in the last 15 years.

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.

33% of homes are Victorian or older, against 16% across England and Wales. The busiest period since was 1955–64, which added 14% 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 (14 here) are left out; 1939–44 is not a period in the data.

Edmund Grindal

John Hawkesworth

Percy Graham Harris

1500165018001950

Edmund Grindal1519–1583 · Archbishop of Canterbury

John Hawkesworth1893–1945 · Officer in the British Army (1893-1945)

PH

Percy Graham Harris1894–1945 · Anthropologist and British colonial administrator in Nigeria

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

Old houses are part of St Bees’s character: 33% of its homes were built before 1919, against 15% in the typical UK town. In all there are 33 listed buildings, 4 of them Grade I. For its size, it has more listed heritage than 83% of UK towns. Cross in Churchyard to North of Priory Church Nave sits at the heart of it all, with 4 of the town’s Grade I buildings within 400 m.

Only 7 of the 1,974 towns nearest its size have more Grade I buildings. A conservation area has protected part of it since 1976. Of the whole list, 52% are houses, terraces and villas.