122 listed buildings, 1 of them Grade I

Church of St Peter and St PaulGrade I listedEagles Close AlmshousesGrade II listedThe Lamb Public HouseGrade II listedChapel Adjoining South Side of St Mary's SchoolGrade II listedPost Office VaultsGrade 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. 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).

Market Place15 listed · 1 II*

Grove Street12 listed

Mill Street7 listed

Wallingford Street6 listed

Newbury Street5 listed

Priory Road5 listed

Of the 122 entries, 56 are named by a street address; the rest are named buildings such as churches, halls and bridges.

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 33 entries were listed in 1950, 1 of the 1 Grade I buildings among them. 55 came in 1985, 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.

Alfred the Great

Joseph Butler

Henry Hayward

Edward Sell

Theodore Andrea Cook

John Harris

9001050120013501500165018001950

Alfred the Great849–899 · King of Wessex (r. 872–901)

Joseph Butler1692–1752 · English bishop and philosopher (1692–1752)

Theodore Andrea Cook1867–1928 · British writer (1867–1928)

ES

Edward Sell1839–1932 · British missionary (1839–1932)

JH

John Harris1874–1940 · British politician (1874-1940), anti-slavery campaigner

Henry Hayward1831–1912 · British Archdeacon

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

Per resident, Wantage has more listed heritage than 80% of UK towns. All told, the list holds 122 listed buildings, 1 of them Grade I, including Church of St Peter and St Paul. Only 110 of the 583 towns nearest its size have more Grade I buildings. Market Place alone has 15 listed buildings.

Its older streets lie in 2 conservation areas, the first designated in 1970. Most entries on the list, 63%, are houses, terraces and villas. Alfred the Great (849), Joseph Butler (1692) and Theodore Andrea Cook (1867) are among the 6 people born here before 1900. The rest is about typical: 9.8% of its homes were built before 1919, close to the 15% in the typical UK town.