78 listed buildings, 7 of them Grade II*

Church of St John the EvangelistGrade II* listedCrawshawbooth Quaker Meeting HouseGrade II* listedLower Laund MillGrade II listedQueens Arms HotelGrade II listedHurst Farm and Hurst CottageGrade II listed+4See 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. Neighbourhood dots: the population-weighted centre of each Census 2021 output area, coloured by its neighbourhood’s (LSOA’s) share of homes built before 1919 (Valuation Office Agency, March 2025).

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 5 entries were listed in 1970. 46 came in 1984, in the national resurvey of the 1970s and 80s. Only 5 have 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.

36% of homes are Victorian or older, against 16% across England and Wales. The busiest period since was the 1930s, which added 8.5% 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 (182 here) are left out; 1939–44 is not a period in the data.

William Hoyle

Marshall Brooks

David Shackleton

George Lamberton

Joe Johnson

Hugh Hay

Ernest Blackburn

Peter Haddon

Fred Smith

Jimmy Dickinson

1800182518501875190019251950

EB

Ernest Blackburn1893–1964 · English football player and manager (1893-1964)

PH

Peter Haddon1898–1962 · British actor (1898-1962)

David Shackleton1863–1938 · British politician (1863-1938)

JD

Jimmy Dickinson1899–1971 · British footballer (1899-1971)

William Hoyle1831–1886 · Hoyle, William (1831–1886), temperance reformer

JJ

Joe Johnson1884– · English footballer (born 1884)

FS

Fred Smith1898–1971 · English footballer born in 1898

MB

Marshall Brooks1855–1944 · English rugby union footballer and high jumper (1855-1944)

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

Old houses are part of Rawtenstall’s character: 37% of its homes were built before 1919, against 15% in the typical UK town. All told, the list holds 78 listed buildings, including St John the Evangelist's Church, Crawshawbooth. Its older streets lie in 6 conservation areas, the first designated in 1974. Most entries on the list, 54%, are houses, terraces and villas.

Ernest Blackburn (1893), Peter Haddon (1898) and David Shackleton (1863) are among the 10 people born here before 1900. The big year was 1984, when 46 of the 78 went on the list. Beyond that, like most towns its size, it has no Grade I building; and per resident it sits near the middle of UK towns.