THE PIPER HERESIES
SIR,-1 did not accuse Mr. Williams-Ellis of indifference to the claims of Regency and Georgian buildings: nor, having read several of his excellent books on architecture, was I in the least startled to hear that he had signed the Carlton House Terrace petition, but merely confirmed in my estimate of his admirable good taste. The point which I wished to make was that the ruthless restoration carried out by the Office of Works causes a very small historical gain at a great aesthetic loss.
Mr: Williams-Ellis says that the Office of Works is both thorough and discreet in its restoration. Thorough it certainly is, but hardly discreet, unless to restore a building discreetly involves putting down neat little suburban lawns and gravel paths, with here and there a flower-bed planted with geraniums, Lobelias and London pride ; installing a turnstile and putting up cast-iron railings in the best St. Pancras Gothic ; and permitting the erection of a corrugated iron shanty where 'bus-loads of trippers (no doubt exhausted by the strain of so much historical research) can refresh themselves with doughnuts and fizzy lemonade ; in fact, to turn the place into a kind of Hamp- stead Heath. It might be better to allow the building to crumble away than to expose it to so undignified an end.—I am, Sir, your
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