When it comes to preserving and protecting the UK’s most magnificent pieces of architecture, all too often the focus is on older works. Your churches and cathedrals. Your Victorian museums and neo-gothic hotels. While some modern architecture styles get their due – yep, we’re looking at you, brutalism – lots of stuff from the 20th and 21st centuries goes underappreciated and falls into disrepair.
Twentieth Century Society (C20) is a charity all about protecting this country’s more modern architectural marvels, and it recently launched its 2025 edition of the Risk List. The list intends to highlight ‘outstanding twentieth and twenty-first century buildings across the country that are at risk from demolition, dereliction or neglect’.
C20’s list features 10 buildings, and all are fascinating in their own ways. The charity’s 2025 list is also notable because, for the first time ever, it features structures from the millennium era. Three of the structures were completed between 1997 and 2000.
Here are all the buildings which C20 says are at risk of demolition, dereliction or neglect in 2025.
Brighton and Hove Reform Synagogue, East Sussex (1967-8)
What is it? A synagogue with a stained-glass Holocaust memorial described as ‘The Guernica of Brighton’. It was saved as C20’s list went to press.
Why it’s at risk: This one has been recently saved, having been awarded Grade II-listed status in April 2025.
Patera Prototype, Newham, London (1982)
What is it? A prefabricated industrial structure, one of only two of its kind – ‘envisaged as a form of “High-Tech Nissen hut” by architect Michael Hopkins’, C20 explains.
Why it’s at risk: The development of the Royal Docks threatens the structure, which C20 says could be relocated and restored.
Sunwin House, Bradford, West Yorkshire (1935-6)
What is it? A Bauhaus-influenced, Grade II-listed department store.
Why it’s at risk: Having been empty for more than 15 years, Sunwin House is at risk of neglect.
Bury Market Hall, Lancashire (1969-71)
What is it? A market hall that traded for 50 years but closed in 2023.
Why it’s at risk: The council is reportedly considering five options for its future, though C20 is concerned as it says only one option proposes refurbishment.
St James’s Park Stadium East Stand, Newcastle (1973)
What is it? The oldest surviving part of Newcastle’s home ground and a brutalist structure.
Why it’s at risk: The club’s owners are exploring building a new stadium or redeveloping the current one – with the East Stand potentially in the crosshairs.
Grand National Rollercoaster, Blackpool (1935)
What is it? One of very few pre-war wooden rollercoasters left in Britain, awarded Grade II-listed status in 2017.
Why it’s at risk: The owners of Blackpool’s Pleasure Beach are looking to apply for Listed Building Consent to demolish the rollercoaster.
Former National Wildflower Centre, Merseyside (2000)
What is it? A visitor centre with an elevated walkway boasting views over parkland.
Why it’s at risk: The charity that operated the centre went bust in 2017, and it’s since been repeatedly the target of vandalism and arson.
Former National Centre for Popular Music, Sheffield (1999)
What is it? A ‘consciously designed as flamboyant architectural icon’ that was acquired by Sheffield Hallam University in 2003 and used as a student union.
Why it’s at risk: Hallam announced it would be relocated to a new student union in 2024, leaving the Pop Centre’s future uncertain.
Archaeolink Prehistory Park, Aberdeenshire (1994-7)
What is it? An energy-efficient visitor centre by architects Cullinan Studio designed to show off northeast Scotland’s ancient archaeological heritage.
Why it’s at risk: The park shut in 2011 and was sold to developers in 2024, though the visitor centre is now back on the market. It’s at risk of dereliction, says C20.
Penallta Pithead Baths and Canteen, Caerphilly (1938)
What is it? Pithead Baths is a colliery built so that coal miners could wash before returning home. C20 says it is ‘perhaps the most important surviving International Modern movement building in Wales’.
Why it’s at risk: The colliery closed in 1991 and permission for a residential conversion has been in place since 1999. It’s at risk of dereliction.
Commenting on the 2025 Risk List, C20 director Catherine Croft said: ‘This year’s list demonstrates how the Twentieth Century Society is now decisively moving into the twenty-first century.
‘The three Millennial projects highlighted may feel very young to be recognised as heritage, but they’re now a quarter of century old and the product of an era where unprecedented public funding delivered some ambitious and extraordinary projects. They are simply too good to lose.’
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