How old does something need to be to be heritage-listed?
National Register of Historic Places
In American historic preservation, the fifty-year rule is the generally held belief that a property cannot be listed in the National Register of Historic Places unless it is at least fifty years old.[31] Actually, this rule is not a hard rule at all; it is an exception to the National Register's criteria for evaluation. As stated by John H. Sprinkle, Jr., Deputy Director of the Federal Preservation Institute, "this 'rule' is only an exception to the criteria that shape listings within the National Register of Historic Places. Of the eight 'exceptions' [or criteria considerations], Consideration G, for properties that have achieved significance within the past fifty years, is probably the best-known, yet also misunderstood preservation principle in America."[32]
List of former places of worship in Wealden
English Heritage has awarded listed status to more than 60 current and former church buildings in Wealden. A building is defined as "listed" when it is placed on a statutory register of buildings of "special architectural or historic interest" in accordance with the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport, a Government department, is responsible for this; English Heritage, a non-departmental public body, acts as an agency of the department to administer the process and advise the department on relevant issues. There are three grades of listing status. Grade I, the highest, is defined as being of "exceptional interest"; Grade II* is used for "particularly important buildings of more than special interest"; and Grade II, the lowest, is used for buildings of "special interest". As of February 2001, there were 47 Grade I-listed buildings, 106 with Grade II* status and 2,020 Grade II-listed buildings in Wealden.