_ REGENCY LONDON
Sut,—" Janus" comments on the appointment of a Committee of Inquiry to report to the Cabinet on the future of the great Nash terraces around Regent's Park. He rightly urges their value as a national monument of architecture, but seems to consider that little more than the preservation of this architecture is worth considering. However, the "financial aspects" on which the Committee is to report are quite as ominous as " Janus " fears. To restore Nash's work for another too years' use might
cost over £2,000,000. To restore them, therefore, for private habitation,
as " Janus " appears to assume, would either mean rents at fantastic levels or the subsidisation of luxury housing on one of London's finest sites out of public funds. The St. Pancras Labour Party, in whose borough some of the finest of Nash's work falls, have what we believe to be better plans. We feel the unique character of the terraces, facing London's finest Royal park, should be preserved for the nation, but that they should be used for national social and cultural bodies, providing them with headquarters and hostel accommodation for visiting personalities and delegations from the provinces and overseas. Being near to the proposed university precinct, they might also provide accommodation for students of University College and Bedford College. They would thus not only remain as an architectural glory, hut would provide the capital with a centre of hospitality to distinguished visitors at once intrinsically beautiful and of historic interest, and on a superb site, such as it sadly lacks today. Learned societies and great trade unions alike have to enter- tain overseas visitors in haphazard hotel accommodation, and the final bathos was achieved in the last-minute desperate calls for hospitality to the U.N.O. Delegations. Our London should be able to do better than that. The Nash terraces are on Crown land. The way forward seems clear, though it is not the way of "Janus." Yet we may arrive at our common aim—the preservation of Nash's work for ourselves and our
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