Thank you for a well-informed comment that points out that old buildings are at best a labrynthine nightmare of hacks and at worst a potential death trap.

Too few people moaning about what's happening to these buildings are willing to pony up the cash to actually pay for it. Tell me, if _you_ had the choice between paying 500k for a new, insulated, safe, building or 500k + much higher insurance for an old, cold, dirty, impossible to work on building, which would you pick? The former, of course, which is why "protecting" a building is basically stealing a home from its owners (and why old listed structures can be a dirt cheap adventure if you like a challenge)

I own and live in a protected structure (thatched cottage in Ireland). Here's some of the issues.

1) The previous owner had "protection" foisted on them against their will. This made their house and its land (aka "curtilage" basically worthless. I paid next to nothing for it.

2) It's massively inefficient, and I need (difficult to get) planning permission to upgrade the heating system. Imagine needing planning permission to replace your boiler with a heat pump!!! I may be able to do a wood pellet stove, but would really prefer heat pump (0 carbon). Right now it's an ancient POS oil stove (looks neat, though I've grown to loathe it) - bit like http://www.handfenterprises.ie/products/details/wellstood-tw... . I also am forbidden from using double-glazed windows, etc.

3) In the most technical, literal reading of the law, I literally cannot hang a picture on the wall without planning permission (using a nail or drilling a hole alters the original material, after all!) - of course nobody does this, so instead everybody just has to guess what their council's particular heritage officer cares about (some are damn-near gestapo like) and hope they don't find themselves on their bad side.

3) I am not allowed to add windows or make them bigger. This is a problem because only one of the windows is big enough to crawl out of, and there is one door. In a fire we may well die

4) Not ONLY do I have to keep a "plaything for the rich" thatched roof, I have to keep it _specifically_ in oaten straw, a material that decays quickly. It's about 20k for a roof on this tiny, ~550 square foot house that will last, oh, 10 or 15 years. Thatch offers literally no advantage whatsoever over a modern roof. At one time, it was what you used if you were poor and couldn't afford anything else, because straw was a waste material, but now with combine harvesters instead of traditional threshing and short-straw oat varieties you can't use straw from normal oats, so you specifically grow oats to make straw for roofs. In the UK I understand water reed is more commonly allowed, and it can last several decades, but Ireland forbids it (in the midlands at lest).

5) House insurance is about 5X as expensive as it would be.

I knew all of these things before I bought the house, which is how I have a place on a few acres a 15 minute bike ride through a nature preserve from a train station rthat has commuter service to Dublin for under €70,000, but the ONLY way this place makes sense is because I have an assumed resale value of 0 and can pretty much toss it in the bin and still come out ahead compared to paying rent.

For the previous owner, "protection" was a complete disaster. Sadly the only reason it got protected was because the last owner was too poor to upgrade it before the law changed, and they could've benefited most of all from increasing home values.