I'm kicking myself for throwing into a skip the warped and ghastly plastic windows that I removed from my house two years ago. I should have offered them to English Heritage. I can see now that it would have fawned over them as a very important piece of late 20th-century fenestration added to an 18th-century cottage.

The heritage quango, which is charged with looking after the nation's Grade I and Grade II* properties, has just told the Diocese of Worcester that no, it may not change a warped Victorian wooden frame on to which are mounted the 14th and 17th-century bells of Malvern Priory. English Heritage describes the frame as being of “historic interest”, though to Malvern's campanologists it is just “a very bad piece of Victorian engineering” that has warped and will, in a few years' time, make the bells impossible to ring.

It used to be monks who fooled themselves into treating mundane objects as relics worthy of holy reverence. But now English Heritage does it. It wasn't so long ago that, in conjunction with Forest of Dean District Council, it ordered a homeowner to replace the 1960s pebbledash that he had removed from the Victorian cottage - on the basis that it was an important modern alteration. If that is its logic, then why not stick a uPVC portico from B&Q on Chatsworth House and call it a very important 21st-century affectation?

If scholars are really so interested in Victorian bell frames, why can't English Heritage buy the warped one from the Diocese of Worcester and stuff it in a dusty museum? Instead the townsfolk of Malvern have to be deprived of something that is surely far more historic: the sound of its ancient bells ringing out across the town.

But that has long been English Heritage's attitude: history is for historians, not for the great unwashed who might want to enjoy it. A few years ago I rang up the quango to ask why it had spent thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money restoring a West Country cottage that wasn't even open to the public. Came the reply: “The important thing is that it survives, not that the public can see it.”

Since it is we who are paying English Heritage's wages, we have every right to expect to be able to see, hear and generally enjoy the old buildings and structures we help to save. As for its role in policing planning applications, English Heritage has a moral duty to take into account the views of the public, not just its own experts.

Once we've persuaded it to do that, let's ring out the bells of Malvern Priory in celebration.

Times Recommends

• Resist urge to throw voters red meat
• Slay sacred cows and be candid
• We cannot let these 100 deaths deflect us