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Sources and methodology

How we define a record, evaluate evidence and describe access.

Unit and inclusion

The principal unit is a physical residence building. Royal, princely, aristocratic and official residential functions must be supported by evidence. Ordinary luxury houses and hotels do not qualify merely because their name contains “palace”. Related gardens and heritage features must be identified as such.

A ruin of the same building remains the same unit. A different building on the same site is a different object. Reconstructions must be labelled. A part_of relationship has one level and points to a physical parent object, not an abstract idea of a complex.

What we read

We record published evidence about a building, its location, residential use, people, dates and present access. Official heritage inventories, museum and archive publications and scholarly research support historical claims. Operators and responsible public authorities are preferred for current access information. A tourism description does not settle a disputed historical attribution.

Conflicting sources should be identified and their scope explained. Sources belong with the claims they support. A general bibliography does not mean every sentence has been independently verified.

Three different dates

• Text updated: an editorial change.
• Historical evidence reviewed: the cited historical material was checked.
• Visitor access reviewed: published access information was checked on the stated date.

These dates are not interchangeable. A layout change does not renew an access review. A source review is not an on-site inspection or a promise of future opening. Where a review date is absent, we do not infer one.

Four registry states

• Measured — passed: evaluated against the declared inclusion criterion and supported by evidence.
• Measured — not passed: evaluated but does not meet that criterion, with the reason retained.
• Not measured: no completed assessment; this is not a negative finding.
• Held outside the count: retained separately with an explicit reason.

These are the adopted registry states. Migration of legacy records is incomplete; catalogue presence must not be read as “passed”. They are separate from a building’s physical condition and from its visitor-access status.

Identifiers and relationships

The adopted series is LHL-Z-0001 and subsequent numbers. Earlier catalogue identifiers remain alongside it. Assignment is incomplete: we do not manufacture an assigned code or a PRP link. PRP is a shared physical-object identity link and must be verified against the relevant key register, never created by name similarity alone.

Access and hospitality

Public interiors, guided visits, seasonal opening, limited access, events, exterior access and closed or unconfirmed sites are distinct. Hotel stays and private-estate hire do not imply public touring access. Use the official operator’s current calendar and conditions before booking.

Limits

This is a developing catalogue, not a claim to exhaustive national coverage. Source depth, translations and identity links remain uneven. New research should resolve specific gaps rather than disguise them with a fresh update date.

Policy version 1 · 31 October 2026. This policy date does not renew record-level source reviews.