199 listed buildings, 1 of them Grade I

Church of St AndrewGrade I listedRoyal Oak Public HouseGrade II* listedChapel of St LawrenceGrade II* listedHigher Headborough FarmhouseGrade II listedTown HallGrade II listed+5See 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.

Of the 199 entries, 117 are named by a street address; the rest are named buildings such as churches, halls and bridges.

Search the rest on Historic England’s list →

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 24 entries were listed in 1951, 1 of the 1 Grade I buildings among them. 110 came in 1973, 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.

34% of homes are Victorian or older, against 16% across England and Wales. The busiest period since was 1965–72, which added 20% 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 (13 here) are left out; 1939–44 is not a period in the data.

Robert Palk

John Dunning, 1st Baron Ashburton

John Swete

William Gifford

William Bickford

Richard Carlile

Charles Tucker

170017501800185019001950

Richard Carlile1790–1843 · British publisher and social reformer

John Dunning, 1st Baron Ashburton1731–1783 · British politician

William Gifford1756–1826 · English critic, editor and poet (1756–1826)

WB

William Bickford1774–1834 · English inventor; (1774-1834)

Robert Palk1717–1798 · British priest and politician (1717-1798)

JS

John Swete1752–1821 · Clergyman, artist, antiquary, historian, and topographer (1752-1821)

Charles Tucker1838–1935 · British Army general

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

Few towns are as rich in listed heritage as Ashburton: per resident it has more than 96% of UK towns. All told, the list holds 199 listed buildings, 1 of them Grade I, including Church of St Andrew. Its housing is old: 35% of homes date from before 1919, against 15% in the typical UK town. Only 96 of the 1,162 towns nearest its size have more Grade I buildings.

East Street alone has 37 listed buildings. Its older streets lie in 2 conservation areas, the first designated in 1971. Most entries on the list, 74%, are houses, terraces and villas.