Since 1998 English Heritage has been producing an annual register of listed buildings in urgent need of repair to secure their long-term future.

For the first time this study has expanded its scope to cover the condition of other historic sites including battlefields and gardens at risk.

In future years scheduled monuments and conservation areas, as well as places of worship will be fully detailed.

For now, the report entitled Heritage At Risk 2008 summarises listed buildings, monuments, landscapes, parks, gardens, battlefields and wrecks in danger of being lost forever. A detailed register still provides more information on entries of grade I and grade II* listed buildings, grade II buildings in London, as well as battlefield and wrecks at risk.

The report will eventually contain details of every individual item at risk once all the owners have been contacted.

One such garden giving cause for concern is the grade II arts and crafts estate at Whinburn near Keighley. It is one of ten in Yorkshire which are thought to be at high risk.

For the past five decades the mansion house, which is also listed, has been in local authority ownership. And more recently it was run by Bradford Council as a residential school. Empty since 2002, the gardens have become overgrown.

It was sold earlier this year to James Sheldon who is now in the process of developing the house and reclaiming the gardens, with advice from English Heritage. Mr Sheldon intends to turn the mansion into his family home and he is keen to restore the glory of the arts and crafts garden.

The 35-year-old told the Telegraph & Argus: “We will be living at Whinburn, hopefully towards the end of the year and want to put it all – both the house and gardens – back to how it was. We saw the house and thought it was absolutely beautiful.

“The garden is like a jungle although we have already done some work and reclaimed one of the lawns with help from JCB and their specialist equipment.”

Mr Sheldon, who is based in Southport, and has worked as the crew on a lifeboat for the past 18 years, intends to live at the mansion house with his parents, his father being Labour peer Lord Sheldon.

Whinburn was built in between 1896 and 1913 by Keighley textile tycoon Prince Smith. It was converted into a school in the 1950s and was a special referral unit until 2002. The grade II listed mansion in Hollins Lane, Utley, is set in gardens which are listed by English Heritage on the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England.

They were laid out in the 1920s to the plan of influential landscape architect, TH Mawson. They boast pavilions linked by timber pergolas, water features and the formal air typical of the genre.

The mansion itself has 16 bedrooms and is almost unchanged since its construction. It has a mock Gothic baronial hall and gallery as well as oak floors and panelling.

In 2005 a planning application by Lancashire developers to turn it into nine apartments and build two blocks of flats in the grounds was turned down. The company behind the plans had struck a deal to buy the building for £1 million.

The building was re-advertised last year with a price tag of offers in excess of £1.5m.