The soon to be re­opened Red House is among 30 her­itage sites to be list­ed by the Na­tion­al Trust.

Chair­man of the Na­tion­al Trust Mar­garet Mc­Dowall re­vealed the names of the new sites dur­ing a cer­e­mo­ny at Bri­arend House, al­so known as Au­drey Jef­fers’ house in St. Clair, yes­ter­day. The venue it­self is among on the sites to be list­ed.

Some of the oth­er no­table names to be list­ed are: Holy Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral, Sa­cred Heart Ro­man Catholic Church, Old Pub­lic Li­brary (POS), Old Fire Sta­tion Build­ing (POS), Old Po­lice Head­quar­ters (POS), Shi­va Mandir, (Gas­par­il­lo), Ari­ma Di­al, Ex­change Vil­lage Shiv Mandir The San Fer­nan­do Rail­way Sta­tion, The Wild Fowl Trust, Knollys Tun­nel, St. Joseph R.C. Church, St. Joseph, Main Ridge For­est Re­serve To­ba­go and Nel­son Is­land.

“The task of list­ing these 30 prop­er­ties of in­ter­est that are pre­sent­ed to­day was an ar­du­ous one and I ap­plaud the staff of the Na­tion­al Trust for the months of prepa­ra­tion and all those who worked tire­less­ly in the past week to en­sure that this event could come off,” said Mc­Dowall, prais­ing the work of her staff in iden­ti­fy­ing these sites.

There are cur­rent­ly 13 her­itage sites list­ed. They are Roomor, Arch­bish­op’s Palace, White Hall, Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege, Mille­fleur, Stollmey­er’s Cas­tle, Hayes Court, Ban­wari Trace Arche­o­log­i­cal Site, Fort King George, Fort Pic­ton, Roy­al Vic­to­ria In­sti­tute (The Na­tion­al Mu­se­um and Art Gallery), Wes­leyan Church (Tran­quil­i­ty Methodist Church) and the old Ma­yaro Post Of­fice.

Min­is­ter of Plan­ning Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said it was im­por­tant that these build­ings are iden­ti­fied as they are key the pre­serv­ing our his­to­ry. She, how­ev­er, felt pre­serv­ing her­itage build­ings could help fos­ter oth­er in­dus­tries while al­so bol­ster­ing the tourism sec­tor.

“If ex­e­cut­ed in the right way the busi­ness of her­itage can pos­si­bly be­come a self-sus­tain­ing in­dus­try. The so­cial and eco­nom­ic im­pli­ca­tions of a her­itage econ­o­my are there­fore bound­less with po­ten­tial for job cre­ation, tourism de­vel­op­ment and en­hance­ment of the in­vest­ment cli­mate,” said Min­is­ter Robin­son-Reg­is.

“Spillover ef­fects can al­so be felt in sci­ence, ed­u­ca­tion, tech­nol­o­gy and can pro­mote so­cial co­he­sion, in­ter­cul­tur­al di­a­logue and the ex­change in our eth­ni­cal­ly di­verse na­tion. This po­ten­tial ben­e­fit es­pe­cial­ly in the so­cio-eco­nom­ic im­pli­ca­tions of cul­tur­al di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and her­itage has been recog­nised by this ad­min­is­tra­tion as well as pol­i­cy­mak­ers around the globe as an im­por­tant pil­lar of sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.”