UK World Heritage Sites
UK World Heritage Sites
There are 32 World Heritage Sites in the United Kingdom:
1986 Giant’s Causeway and Causeway Coast
1986 Durham Castle and Cathedral
1986 Ironbridge Gorge
1986 Studley Royal Park and the ruins of Fountains Abbey
1986 Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites
1986 Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd
1986 St Kilda
1987 City of Bath (also part of the Great Spa Towns of Europe WHS)
1987 Blenheim Palace
1987 Hadrian’s Wall (also part of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire WHS)
1987 Westminster Palace, Westminster Abbey and Saint Margaret’s Church
1988 Henderson Island
1988 Tower of London
1988 Canterbury Cathedral, St Augustine’s Abbey, and St Martin’s Church
1995 Old and New Towns of Edinburgh
1995 Gough Island and Wildlife Reserve
1997 Maritime Greenwich
1999 Heart of Neolithic Orkney
2000 Historic Town of St George and related Fortifications, Bermuda
2000 Blaenavon Industrial Landscape
2001 Derwent Valley Mills
2001 Dorset and East Devon Coast
2001 New Lanark
2001 Saltaire
2003 Royal Botanic Gardens Kew
2004 Liverpool – Maritime Mercantile City (Delisted by the 44th World Heritage Committee in July 2021)
2006 Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape
2009 Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Canal
2015 Forth Bridge
2016 Gorham’s Cave Complex, Gibraltar
2017 The Lake District
2021 The Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales
Only five of these monuments represent a period in which Britain held centre-stage as the world’s first industrial nation. The Derwent Valley Mills is part of this sub group of industrial sites as are Ironbridge Gorge, Blaenavon Industrial Landscape, New Lanark and Saltaire.
The Derwent Valley Mills is the only site to be located within the East Midlands Region.
World Heritage UK
World Heritage UK (WHUK) is the new organisation for the 32 World Heritage Sites in the UK. Its mission is to raise the profile and secure the future of all sites within the UK by advocating for support and resources, promoting the Sites’ values and facilitating training, networking and the sharing of good practice.
It held is first successful conference in Saltaire in October. The theme was tourism and it featured speakers from Visit England, UNESCO and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
World Heritage UK is open to individual members. If you are interested in supporting it visit www.worldheritageuk.org.
UK UNESCO Sites
From expansive mountain ranges and stunning coastlines to vibrant cities and rural landscapes – the UK’s UNESCO sites are destinations of world-class natural and cultural heritage.
For the first time a map, designed by the creative cartographer Tom Woolley, brings together all of the Biosphere Reserves, Creative Cities, Global Geoparks and World Heritage Sites across the British Isles that are waiting to be discovered.
