Kevin McCloud raises Tower Bridge and descends into its Victorian engine rooms, and enters a church beneath which 1500 years of London's history lie buried. In the oldest continuously working theatre in the English-speaking world, Kevin tries out a piece of stage machinery that's still operating after more than two centuries.

Episode 1

Kevin McCloud

Ben Miles

Episode 2

Kevin goes behind the scenes at Chatsworth House, and visits Castell Coch, the Marquess of Bute's Victorian gothic fantasy, complete with painted monkeys and medieval extravagance. Kevin also takes a look at the Palace of Westminster, one of the nation's treasured icons, but now badly in need of repair.

Kevin looks at six listed places where saving heritage meant a great deal of hard work from ordinary people campaigning, rebuilding, restoring and refusing to give up. The programme features a pioneering Georgian villa outside Edinburgh, Newport Transporter Bridge, a medieval timber hall, and a church saved from the Reformation.

Episode 3

Kevin looks at bold, modern places that challenge the idea of what heritage can be, and the places that can be the easiest to dismiss and the hardest to save. He steps inside Liverpool's Metropolitan Cathedral, which is flooded with coloured light from one of Britain's most spectacular stained-glass lanterns, and visits London Zoo's penguin pool, where the aquatic birds are treated to cutting-edge modernism.

Episode 4

Kevin explores places created by people who followed an obsession further than most would dare, and discovers how this singular passion can become something everyone else wants to protect. He climbs the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank, and helps to repair the protected dinosaur sculptures at Crystal Palace Park that captured a Victorian idea of pre-history.

Episode 5

Kevin will travel the length and breadth of the country to uncover the stories behind some of Britain’s most remarkable buildings and structures, exploring why places as diverse as Coventry Cathedral and the Penguin Pool at London Zoo have been judged worthy of the highest level of protection.

This is heritage with the doors thrown open, as Kevin is invited into parts of these structures the public never normally sees, as he meets the people who care for them and gets hands-on himself.

Episode 1

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Season 1 Episodes5

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