SIR.—I was grateful to Mr. Betjeman for his note (`City
and Suburban' this week) about the proposed demolition of houses on The Barbican in Plymouth.
The arguments used by the Council in favour of the demolition of these houses are unfortunately almost unanswerable on any grounds that most of its mem- bers would understand, much less sympathise with. It might be remembered that it is this same Council that is restoring at a total cost of nearly half a mil- lion pounds the extraordinarily ugly Victorian Ger- man Gothick Guildhall (Norman and Hine, 1874); that unearthed an awful, sentimental Victorian
stained-glass window and placed it over the stairway in H. J. W. Stirling's economically and finely designed modern library.
A Council, too, that has not, as far as I know, commissioned one single piece of civic sculpture, or placed even one fountain in its new City Centre. An enlightened Museums and Libraries Committee has done good work here; but apart from that, artistic feeling or any feeling for the tangible relics of the City's historic past seems completely lacking. The only argument, it seems, that will affect these people is an economic one, and it is to some extent just that argument that is lacking in the fight to save The Barbican from the civic bulldozers.—Yours faithfully,
DEREK PARKER DEREK PARKER
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