SIR,—People living in the riverside area of old Twick- enham
have tended to welcome the plan which, according to Terence Bendixson, 'fails to reinterpret the architecture.' It is a long time since Mr, Mac- millan, as Housing Minister, rejected the last plan, in 1956; local people welcome any proposals that are better than the last ones.
Max Lock, the architect, drew sketch plans for filling in the gaps with houses, as your contributor suggests should be done, but the Corporation is ob- sessed with civic gardens. Another architect, NeVille Conder, who lives near, urged close building and retaining the wharf to enclose the neighbourhood, but the council knocked the building down.
Originally the Corporation wanted to knock every- thing down in the area. At my suggestion Mr. Tom Driberg raised the subject in the Commons, and Sir Keith Joseph replied that five Georgian houses would be 'listed' for preservation. Other buildings have also been saved after a long struggle.
At the recent inquiry I told the inspector that the need, as your contributor remarks, is to discourage motor traffic rather than make a car park. More space for boat storage, which is appropriate to the quarter, is badly wanted instead.
Such space has actually been reduced by the des- truction, last autumn, of a former seventeenth-cen- tury inn and its surrounding sheds. The Royal Fine Art Commission had wanted this building saved, but the council bought it and said no. The structure had been too long neglected. Other characteristic old houses will suffer the same fate.
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