the first time the catalogue was to include inhabited private residences. This legislation created the foundations for what are today known as listed buildings. Under the scheme, an interesting or historic building was graded according to its value to the national heritage: Grade I (buildings of exceptional interest) Grade II* (buildings of more than special interest) Grade II (buildings of special interest, warranting every effort to preserve them) The Act criminalised unauthorised alterations, or demolitions, to a listed building, so in theory at least, all historic buildings were now safe from unauthorised demolition. The truth was that the Act was rarely enforced, only a few buildings were listed, over half of them by just one council, Winchelsea. Elsewhere, the fines levied on those failing to comply with the Act were far less than the profit from redeveloping a site. Little changed. In 1946, in what has been described as "an act of sheer class-war vindictiveness", Britain's Labour government insisted on the destruction, by open cast mining, of the park and formal gardens of Wentworth Woodhouse, Britain's largest country house. The Minister of Fuel and Power, Manny Shinwell, insisted, as 300-year-old oaks were uprooted, that "the park be mined right up to the mansion's door." Meanwhile, plans by the socialist government to wrest the house from its owner, the Earl Fitzwilliam, and convert the architecturally important house for "homeless industrial families" were only abandoned at the eleventh hour when Earl Fitzwilliam, through the auspices of his socialist sister, agreed to its conversion to a college—a lesser fate. This was the political climate in which many families abandoned the houses their families had owned for generations. Town and Country Planning Act 1947 The apathy towards the nation's heritage continued after the passing of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, even though this was the most comprehensive law pertaining to planning legislation in England. The 1947 Act went further than its predecessors in dealing with historic buildings, as it required owners of property to notify their local authority of intended alterations, and more significantly, demolitions. This caught any property which may have escaped official notice previously. Theoretically, it gave the local authority the opportunity to impose a preservation order on the property and prevent demolition. Under this law the Duke of Bedford was fined for demolishing half of Woburn Abbey without notification, although it is inconceivable that the duke would have been