City and Suburban
BYJOHN BETJEMAN towers looks far lovelier and more peaceful now. I stood by the Strawberry-Hill-Gothic conduit in the Market Place and for the first time obtained an uninterrupted view of the row of Georgian bow-windows above the shops which adjoin Penniless Gate. I was able to appreciate how well these modestly attractive secular buildings acted as a foil to the stately perpendicular of the Gate. I was able to see, too, how ill a pseudo-Tudor office building on the other side of the Gate accorded with what it feebly attempted to imitate. When there is not a base-line of buses and motor cars parked along the sides of a street or square we can see all too clearly the barbarity of modern shop fronts and the modesty of the earlier traditional buildings which often survive them.
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