Preservation : London’s Past Is Falling Down : Conservationists in Britain publish a ‘scandalous catalogue’ in hopes of saving historic buildings.

Hundreds of this city’s finest, most handsome historic buildings have been “left to rot, often by the very people and bodies appointed by Parliament to be their guardians,” officials of a prestigious preservation group here say.

But the Save Britain’s Heritage foundation, by publishing what its president Marcus Binney calls a new “scandalous catalogue” of decaying old structures, hopes to prod officials and owners to stem the irreversible damage that it says is occurring to classic Georgian and Victorian terraced houses, an Enfield arms factory, a water tower, several churches and even a synagogue in London.

The foundation reports that these and other important buildings are imperiled in 28 of this tradition-laden city’s 33 boroughs--not only in deterio-rating old neighborhoods but in fashionable areas such as Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea.

And in what may flare into another of Britain’s noteworthy architectural-preservationist flaps--the latest of which focused on a facade of London’s National Gallery on Trafalgar Square--the foundation has expressed its outrage that official agencies may be helping to diminish the city’s architectural heritage.

The report, for example, offered a bitter rebuke to borough authorities who control deteriorating historic homes, purchased 10 or 15 years ago for conversion to low-cost public housing.

“The shocking reality is that many of these fine Georgian houses in Hackney and Lambeth . . . owned by the local authority” have fallen into disrepair, the report said.

“It is absolutely scandalous that so many councils have allowed the heritage on their doorsteps to rot for years on end--if only they had been put on the market at a sensible price, they would have been snapped up and restored a long time ago.”

The foundation has urged Environment Minister Michael Heseltine to force public authorities to refurbish the structures or sell them if they cannot maintain them.

In its report, the experts described significant historic buildings and divided them into three categories: those built before 1840 and possessing “exceptional interest”; those of “particular” importance; and those with “special interest.”

One such building is in Kensington on Cromwell Road, one of the main arteries into London. The tall, 19th-Century house is owned by a firm that wants to convert it into offices. But that plan was rejected by the Planning Commission.

Meantime, the building remains a vacant, run-down eyesore.

Another Georgian house in the Bloomsbury conservation area of Central London was built in 1810 and sold to a public housing authority. But problems over financing held up repairs on the structure, leading to its current deterioration.

The decay of important buildings in London is particularly disturbing, the foundation notes, because the English Heritage, the national commission for historic buildings with which it is affiliated, can provide grants to help save the structures.

Clare Norman, who compiled the foundation report, blames existing laws for failing to give the government the power it needs to force landlords to keep buildings up to snuff. Some owners, she observes, simply hold on to buildings for years as they deteriorate. Sometimes they are waiting for prices to rise or hoping that the structures simply will collapse, clearing the way for them to put up an office building.

“There are a lot of irresponsible absentee property owners in London,” she says.

In the case of public ownership, borough councils have simply let the buildings rot, while other public services like health and education have received first attention, she contends.

But Binney, the foundation’s president, says preservation should have its own pressing role on the public agenda:

“It should be a matter of serious concern to every minister in the Department of Environment that here in the capital so much potentially usable property has been callously abandoned to decay.”