Shropshire Star comment: Let’s keep heritage in our hearts

And in helping such buildings to see another day, those behind the work are helping to protect Shropshire’s culturally significant heritage for generations to come.

The projects are complex and expensive but our children’s children will be rewarded as they get to enjoy living history well into the future.

At Flaxmill, more than 15,000 Welsh slate tiles have been commissioned for the Grade I-listed building, which is of international significance. It is described as being the first high rise building in the western world and the work to conserve it has been widely praised.

It is remarkable that it once housed more than 800 men, women and children in jobs during the Industrial Revolution – creating a small town of workers each day.

Elsewhere, similar projects are helping to transform buildings that might otherwise have fallen into a state of disrepair. A former town workhouse is being transformed into 36 period homes, a fitting use that helps to get more people into local housing while preserving a valuable structure. Shropshire Homes, the company behind the project, has already helped to preserve the Coalport China factory transforming it into one and two-storey apartments and it seems such conversations are a good way of keeping bringing such buildings into the modern idiom. At Jackfield, skilled craftspeople have worked on new railway gates that are Grade II-listed. And members of the local community have been invited to see the progress being made so that they can learn more about it and play their part.

We live in an area that has remarkable heritage and a fascinating history. And the adaptation, preservation and conservation of key buildings is thrilling for those with an interest in history. Investing new money into old buildings helps to preserve our links with the past, making Shropshire an ever-interesting county for tourists and other visitors.

Rather than raze buildings, the county finds ways to give them new uses. And the town planners, politicians, volunteers and other members of the community behind such schemes deserve praise. For their vision and foresight will bring about a better future in which buildings one forgotten will play a full part.