City and Suburban

By JOHN BETJEMAN

CASUALTY LIST

BERKSHIRE: Denford, Holy Trinity Church. Gothick, designed 1830-34 by J. B. PapWoith, in a park, and made as a deliberate fanciful contrast with the severe stone house, said to be by Wyattville, near which it stands. BRISTOL: *St. Mary-le-Port tower. Singularly elegant, late mediaeval addition to this famous city skyline.

DEVON: Newton St. Cyres. A dozen thatched cot- tages, Elizabethan and. in good condition, to be demolished to straighten the road.

Plymouth. Ring o' Bells. Fifteenth-century inn with oak doorways, panelling and plasterwork, all destroyed. Stone entrance to be preserved.

*Plymouth. Lope Street. Two Elizabethan houses.

*Plymouth, The Barbican. A picturesque water- side which compares with Polperro and Meva- gissey, with historic associations. Because the Council will get a good Treasury grant for pulling it down and building modern flats, they prefer to demolish rather than preserve and repair.

DORSET: *R.ingstead. Radar pylons threaten the appearance of Weymouth bay and take the remoteness from the old village and one of the very few but 'unspoiled accessible beaches between Margate and Weymouth.

DUBLIN: *Gate Theatre. This Georgian building has long been famous as a repertory theatre. It may yet be saved if its patrons and ad- mirers subscribe. The Irish don't seem so bent on destruction as we are in England.

Essex : *Mistley Park Lodge. Elegant Robert Adam building, c. 1780, neglected, looking for a purchaser.

Wanstead Conservative Club. Late Georgian. FLINT: Plas .Teg. Grand early Renaissance, 1610. HEREFORDSHIRE: Aramstone Park. Brick Georgian, formal and handsome, c. 1740.

HERTFORDSHIRE: KimptOil Hoo. 1660, with eighteenth-century furnishing. HUNTS: *St. Ives. Georgian and neglected.

KENT: *Queenborough. 73-91 High Street. An important part of a quite unspoiled and attrac- tive old riverside town. Repair would be possible at about E250-per house.

LONDON : Lewisham, Heathfield House. Large Regency.

Nos. 1, 2 and 3 Devonshire Terrace, Marylebone. Late eighteenth-century brick in good order. Dickens lived at No. 1.

MIDDLESEX: *Uxbridge Market House. The local Council wishes to destroy this Georgian pillared brick market •house, so charming and essential a feature of the old town.

OXFORD: *Cherwell Lodge. Charming Late Geor- gian on the St. Clenient's bank of Magdalen Bridge.

SoNIERSET: Bath. The tower of the eighteenth- century church of St. James's., Elegant Italian- ate tower, rebuilt 1848 by G. P. Manners. A feature of the Bath skyline and a Classic foil to the Abbey.

SURREY: Richmond. Maids of Honour shop front. Late Georgian and the last distinguished old shop front left in the main streets of the town. *Richmond. Queen Elizabeth Almshouse. Straw- berry Hill Gothick, 1767.

Sussex: *Brighton. The Blind School, Eastern Road, by Somers Clark. architect of St. Martin's, Brighton, and later surveyor of St.. Paul's Cathedral. A -unique and distinguished essay in Venetian Gothick. Both the Brighton Corporation and the local Regency Society asked the Ministry of Health to preserve the building. .. . The Minister of Health. Mr. D Vosper, refused to allow a Preservation Order to be made on it.

*Worthing, The Archway, Park Crescent, by A. H. Wildes, 1829. As impressive an archi- tectural feature of •.Worthing as the Greek buildings on Calton Hill to Edinburgh.

WILTS: *Wardour Castle, by James Paine, 1770-76, Magnificent Classic, neglected and empty.

I have put asterisks against those buildings and places for which there is yet a faint hope, pro- vided local feeling is aroused.