Architecture
Our Villages
By TERENCE BENDIXSON
The cause of the observations is a few acres of narrow, winding streets, a tight society of different-sized houses and a homespun mixture of bricks and clapboard that are as characteristic of a village as the smells of coffee, cheese and biscuits are of a grocer's shop. And just as im- pertant as the neighbourhood's intrinsic qualities is the contrast between it and the later and more loosely planned suburbs which surround it. In 1956 the Minister of Housing therefore recom- mended to the County of Middlesex that re- development in old Twickenham should 'respect the character of the area.' Nevertheless, the County Planning Office, the Corporation of Twickenham and a past president of the Royal Academy, Sir Albert Richardson, now propose fundamental changes to it and an ihspector of the Ministry is deciding whether to permit them.
The misguidedness of these intentions seems appallingly obvious when one explores Twicken- ham, but as they have parallels in towns and villages all over Britain, it is clear they must stem from some national incapacity to sense what is characteristic of a place. One of the proposed changes involves the creation of a mall on top of an underground car park just behind Church Street, the old village high street. Apart from the fact that this 'improvement' will encourage cars to enter a neighbourhood traditionally by- passed by traffic, it will replace narrow glimpses of the church by a ponderous vista.
A second proposal involves a row of shops, designed for the Corporation by Sir Albert Richardson to fill a gap in Church Street. This street long ago conceded commercial leader- ship to shopping parades built between the wars, but it contains a large number of modest eighteenth- and nineteenth-century houses and shops. As is so often the case in village streets, no' two of these buildings are alike, but as a result of similarities in window shape and over- all size, no two are more different than two apples. Nevertheless, Sir Albert intends to erect among them a large symmetrical building of seven bays, a sort of merchant palace. Its mock- Georgian facades do nothing to conceal its alien bulk and, if built, 'it will look as out of place as' a rank of uniformed guardsmen among a group of anglers.
These failures to identify and therefore to re- interpret the architecture of old Twickenham are of more than local importance to a country that reveres quaint villages and profits by showing them to tourists. If preservation alone were at stake, such lack of understanding would be un- fortunate. It will prove doubly so if, as some planners believe, the creation of innumerable new villages proves the best way of giving more Britons decent homes.
Yet villageyness is more than a particular sort of architecture. It springs also from a tradition of planning that frequently involves greens or market places. These enclosures hint at the origins of villages in conditions similar to those that prompted American migrants to form their covered Wagons into stockades at dusk. The medireval settlemmt was designed for security, and if it fronted the sea or a river, projecting wharves or jetties tend to be used in an attempt to enclose the waterfront.
The Embankment at Twickenham used to be enclosed in this way until the Corporation de- molished Champion's Wharf to make way for a municipal garden. Now the Borough Engineer envisages a grassy 'boulevard' that will blast another hole in the backdrop of buildings. A further civic garden will replace a compound where dinghies are stored, notwithstanding that the mingling of masts, chimneys and rooftops is the quintessence of a river-village.
These attempts to create new 'public open spaces' in Twickenham ignore the fact that the boldly embanked riverside, with its string of splendid chestnut trees, already forms an outdoor focus. If gaps among the existing buildings could be filled with houses instead of municipal gardens, and if the facilities on the Embankment for yachting could be extended rather than cur- tailed, the old village could be invigorated by modern activity.
As it is, the County, the Corporation and Sir Albert are doing their best to diffuse and suburbanise the place. If this is because they
believe villages arc medieval relics inappropriate to a motor civilisation, it would be possible to respect them. It seems more likely that they have failed to recognise those aspects of old Twicken- ham that make it a 'distinctive riverside area.'
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