SPECTATOR COMPETITION No.

Report by A. D. C. Peterson Competitors were asked to assume that they were junior officials in a Ministry of Town and Country Planning, and that during their first week of office they received an application for licence to erect any one of the following buildings : St. Paul's Cathedral, Fonthill, Magdalen College, St. Pancras Station, St. Thomas's Hospital, the new Pimlico flats. A prize of £5 was offered for an excerpt from their minutes and draft reply.

This was a difficult competition to judge. The entries were good, and good in different ways, so that a balance had to be held between the claims of fantasy, language and verisimilitude. For fantasy I thought Granville Garley's reply to Sir Christopher Wren a clear winner, and his first reason one which no seventeenth-century Court official could have resisted, but he failed on language. R. Kennard Davis sent in just the better of two Latin entries on Magdalen Col- lege, and, though I think I detect the faint note of a ground axe, I cannot refuse it a share in the second prize. fl each to these two. For the best combination of all three excellences I award a first prize of £3 to P. E. Montagnon's comments on the Pimlico flats, which, even to the very paper on which they were typed, might have come straight from the Ministry, and which included the charm- ing notion of" raising cubic footage above the ceiling " of a flat.

Among the runners-up the best were : Stuart Came, who hit on the happy principle that " in all new buildings the possibility of their having, at some time, to be converted into extensions of Government offices must be borne in mind . . . it is suggested that all corridors be made straight along the length of the buildings, and be not less than four feet wide in order to allow the passage of a tea-trolley " ; A. M. Sayres, on Fonthill : " The crypt, which is to be decorated with skeletons, will be a horrid masterpiece," and " owls should be supplied for this part of the building" ; and R. J. P. Hewison, whose objections to St. Thomas's Hospital began, with a firm nineteenth-century confidence : " . . . a grandiose proposal to rebuild a mediaeval hospital. London has hospitals enough : another would merely encourage the shiftless and indigent who, by the laws alike of good administration and political economy, require rigorous deterrence."

FIRST PRIZE (P. E. MONTAGNON)

Mr. Peterson

Please see the attached application for a licence for flats in Pimlico.

It seems that the proposed number of flats would increase the local population per acre by 0.03 per cent, above the limit laid down in the de Laie Report. I understand however that in practice such statistics are determined on the basis of specified acres defined by the Acreage Delineation Division, who have under consideration revision of local acreage demarcation lines in such a way that the proposed site would fall partly within each of two acres. This would clear the point, provided the previous decision is upheld to demolish the similar but somewhat larger block of flats 50 yards further up the road.

To decrease the number of flats within the building by increasing the floor area per flat would be no solution as it would raise the cubic footage per person well above the ceiling accepted on all sides as desirable.

You will doubtless wish to consult the Architects' Division before replying. Meanwhile, I suggest that the point dealt with above should be covered in your reply by the following :— "In reaching the decision to withhold a building licence at least temporarily, we have had in mind the undesirable increase in population per acre which would ensue should such flats be built. During the next eighteen months, however, certain changes which are now pending may well have come in to force. It is, therefore, suggested, without committing the Department to a more favourable reply, reapplication should be made at an appropriate later date."

SECOND PRIZE

(GRANVILLE GARLEY)

Application to erect St. Paul's Cathedral Resolved that

the re-building of Paul's church (miserably ruined in the towne's late great fyre) be not commenced this yeare for lack of money, and for other good reasons as shewne hereunder : i. Hath a Wren the capacity to erect so huge a Nest ?

ii. The shadowe cast by the church will be so gigantick that many must be condemned to dwell in perpetual darknesse.

iii. By reason of the size of the said church, a man's whispering

(R. KENNARD DAVIS)

Collegium juxta flurnen Cherwell in situ hospitii Sancti Johannis aed1f1- candum proponit Gulielmus de Waynflete in honorem Sundae Maria* Magdalenae cujus aedificii descriptionem nub o probandam cen- semus. Imprimis turrim celsissiniam, rem pat-um utilem, maximo suntptu exstruendam designavit, quo proposito ? An ut clerici, pro amino ejus oranges, caelum ipsum, sicut Olympum gigantes, escendant ? Quid autem hortos, silvas cervarias, porticus, triclinia hiberna et aestiva commetnorem Cuncta sane desidiae et taxed aptiora quanz labori studiisque honestls. At scholam grammaticam adjungit humilem admodum sordidanique quam contra amplissimam exquisitissimanzque substruere opportuit, ut fundantentum omnium bonarunt artium scientiarumque. Enimvero collegia in urbe Oxoniensi multa jam suppetunt, et numerum &want adaugers supervacaneum censemus ; ludorum autem in quibus plied bonus litteras discoid pro opulente urbe summa inopia. Io8 overhearing of privy conversations to the publick dismay

and discomforte.

iv. The golden crosse, methinks, will excite the envy of evil spirits, and encourage them so to teare it downe.

v. The bells must bee so exceeding high in the belfry that it will be beyond a man's ingeenooity or rope's strength to sette them a-ringing.