City and Suburban
ByJOHN BETJEMAN IF you like something, these are the tactics which you may expect to tind employed to destroy or demolish it : (1) If the land or the building is privately owned, its future will be decided in secret by the local council, and the paid officials of local government will keep the secret until it is too late for you to protest. Example : An ugly villa in red brick just being completed at Iffley Lock, Oxford, between the grey- stone Manor House and the river. This unforgivable intrusion on to the only village riverside scene in Oxford was erected cm land sold, by Lincoln College. The Oxford Planning Com- mittee informed neither the Oxford Preservation Trust nor adjoining occupiers. It seems that no permission to see plans is granted without written consent from the owner. If it had not been for the public-spirited protest of the local paper, the Oxford Mail, we might all have had the impression that this building was considered a welcome addition to the landscape.
(2) 'If the land or the building is owned by a public body. like a government body or the Church, a letter from a 'Public Relations Officer' or his equivalent will appear, denying any threat to the object of beauty if any statement is printed about the possibility of its destruction. E.vample : St, George's Church, Tiverton. This attractive eighteenth-century building is a feature of the centre of this lovely Devon country town, as important to Tiverton as is St. Martin-in-the-Fields to Trafalgar Square. I mentioned the threat to it in this column on August 26. Shortly after, the Editor published a rather offensive letter from a Mr. Wallis, of Diocesan House, Exeter. saying that the statement that it was to be destroyed was in- accurate. Last month the parish magazine of St. Paul's, Tiver- ton, published the following : At a meeting held at the Vicarage on November 16th the standing committee met the Bishop of Crediton concerning the proposed reorganisation. The Bishop outlined the pro- posed 'scheme' whereby St. George's would be closed and demolished. . . .
(3) If the building is scheduled for preservation and bought by a private speculator for its site value or the value of its materials when broken up, the speculator leaves it to decay until he can call it 'a dangerous structure.' which the district surveyor can then condemn for demolition. Example : Seven examples of this which I know it would be libellous for me to print.
Previous page
