Pergola is added to new Heritage at Risk Register

THE Hill Garden Pergola, the unexpected 'discovery' of which has delighted first-time visitors to Hampstead Heath for decades, has been placed on Historic England's updated Heritage at Risk Register.

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The Italianate structure was designed by Thomas Mawson for the soap magnate William Lever, later Lord Leverhulme, in 1905 as part of the landscaping for his summer garden parties. Open to the public since 1963 and managed by the City of London Corporation, the Pergola's wisteriaentwined colonnades have long carried an air of crumbling beauty, but Historic England says that materials used in construction are deteriorating due to age and weathering. A long-term conservation plan is being drawn up. I