160 listed buildings, 1 of them Grade I

Dolphin HouseGrade II* listed2, Mount StreetGrade II* listedSaracens Head InnGrade II listedDolphin CottageGrade II listed11 and 12, Market HillGrade II listed+2See 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.

c. 1911

Public domain, from Wikimedia Commons, copied to our own server. Each credit opens the image’s page with its full description and history.

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).

St Nicholas Street22 listed

Denmark Street21 listed

Mere Street16 listed

Mount Street15 listed · 1 II*

Market Place9 listed

Market Hill7 listed

Fair Green5 listed

Church Street4 listed

Victoria Road4 listed

Shelfanger Road3 listed

Of the 160 entries, 110 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 15 entries were listed in 1950, 1 of the 1 Grade I buildings among them. 126 came in 1972, in the national resurvey of the 1970s and 80s. Only 0 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.

Mary Alger

James Bickerton Fisher

Ethel Le Neve

1800182518501875190019251950

James Bickerton Fisher1843–1910 · New Zealand politician (1843–1910)

Ethel Le Neve1883–1967 · Mistress of Dr Crippen

MA

Mary Alger1838–1894 · British headmistress

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

Per resident, Diss has more listed heritage than 88% of UK towns. All told, the list holds 160 listed buildings, 1 of them Grade I, including Church of St Mary. Only 96 of the 696 towns nearest its size have more Grade I buildings. On St Nicholas Street alone there are 22 listed buildings.

A conservation area has protected part of it since 1974. Of the whole list, 83% are houses, terraces and villas. James Bickerton Fisher (1843), Ethel Le Neve (1883) and Mary Alger (1838) were all born here before 1900. The rest is about typical: 14% of its homes were built before 1919, close to the 15% in the typical UK town.