Half of the nation’s top 10 buildings are in London, with St Paul’s Cathedral named as the favourite.

A survey, taken to launch a new six-part series of Impossible Engineering on TV channel Yesterday, asked 2,000 adults to name their top building.

Top 10 favourite British buildings

1. St Paul's Cathedral, London: 38%
2. Stonehenge, Wiltshire: 30%
3. The Houses of Parliament, London: 26%
4. Edinburgh Castle: 22%
5. Buckingham Palace, London: 20%
6. Windsor Castle: 18%
7. The Shard, London: 16%
8. Westminster Abbey, London: 14%
9. The Eden Project, Cornwall: 12%
10. Blackpool Tower: 8%

Five of the top 10 were London based and only 2 – the Shard and Eden Project – are modern constructions.

Outside of the top 10, the list spread geographically with the only other buildings in the capital making the top 20 being The Gherkin and Battersea Power Station.

Durham Cathedral (8%), the Royal Liver Building (6%) and Alnwick Castle (6%) flew the flag for northern buildings while Glasgow’s The Mackintosh Building (6%) joined Edinburgh Castle as the only two Scottish buildings appearing in the top 20.

Favourite British structures

Turning to feats of engineering, the survey also asked about favourite structures. Stonehenge came top of this list with more than half (54%) of the votes, followed by a trio of London engineering marvels - Tower Bridge (40%), Big Ben (38%) and The London Eye (22%).

The top 10 British structures:

1. Stonehenge, Wiltshire: 54%
2. Tower Bridge, London: 40%
3. Big Ben, London: 38%
4. The London Eye: 22%
5. Clifton Suspension Bridge, Bristol: 22%
6. Hadrian's Wall, Cumbria to South Shields: 22%
7. The Angel of the North, Gateshead: 20%
8. Blackpool Tower: 16%
9. Iron Bridge, Shropshire: 14%
10. Firth of Forth: 14%

Adrian Wills, General Manager of Yesterday praised Britain’s great architecture and design adding that many of the historical structures broke the architectural mould when they were built.