A HISTORIAN is fighting plans to bulldoze a historic care home and replace it with flats amid fears it will harm Southend’s heritage.

Marion Pearce has launched a campaign to save Nazareth House from demolition after plans were revealed by retirement flats developer McCarthy & Stone to build more than 100 homes in its place.

Nazareth House, in London Road, Southend, was established in 1873 as a home for the elderly as well as for “sickly or incurable” children.

The site also once house the a manor house called Milton Hall.

Mrs Pearce says the building is “far too important to lose” and has contacted Heritage England in a bid to get the building listed status.

She said: “It’s a place of historic importance and is one of the very few remaining Victorian buildings.

“People coming into the city will only see modern buildings as our old buildings have all gone and it’s such a shame because the city has a wonderful history.

“We had lots of buildings from the Victoria era but now we’ve got nothing left. It should not be destroyed and I can’t see why it can’t be adapted for homes or development.”

Fellow historian Robert Hallmann, 87, has meanwhile backed calls to retain the 19th century chapel on site.

Earlier this week, the Milton Conservation Society asked for alternative uses for the chapel to be explored in a bid to save it from demolition.

Mr Hallmann said: “I can’t see why the chapel can’t be kept and used for a communal area. There are not that many places to be proud of in Southend anymore.

“We need some traces of the past and this is such a historical site.”

Under the plans by McCarthy & Stone, the two new buildings would be made up of 60 self-contained retirement flats in one, and 84 assisted-living homes in the other.

The developer’s heritage consultant, Chris Surfleet, said: “The site has been vacant for a significant period of time and is now in a poor state of repair.

“The main buildings presently dominate the site and engulf the chapel building.

“Whilst the chapel holds some modest interest, it now retains very little of its former detail and fittings.

“Any request to have the building considered for listing will delay the proposed provision of much needed modern purpose-built homes for older people.”