City and Suburban
By JOHN BETJEMAN You may think from the casualty lists of buildings I report in this column, from the defeats which the Royal Fine Art Commission' records in its latest Report, from the evidence of your own eyes in any old town or village you visit, that barbarism, concrete, wires and munici- pal rockeries and Archdeacons were rising triumphant everywhere. But this is not so. Civilisation does sometimes score a victory. In the Isle of Wight, for instance, there will not be motor racing in western Wight. The BBC tele- vision mast will probably not be erected in the one remaining unspoiled prominent site on the island, and, incidentally, it transpires that tele- vision reception is better when the BBC and Com- mercial share the same mast. The tide is turning and people are beginning to resent the damage. The more people use their eyes in England, the more they are shocked by vandalism and shoddy building. I suppose the television is partly respon- sible for this change of heart, for it can and some- times does make people look at beautiful build- ings. But the greatest allies in the fight have been local newspapers. Here, even before the preserva- tion societies hear the news, the council reports, - letters of protest and editorials are published. It would be well worth the while of some organi- sation which had the cash and staff to take in every local newspaper in the country and collect all impending vandalisms. Such a body could then get in touch with members of local preservation societies in the area and through their allied societies in London with county coun- cils and Whitehall. There is no doubt that most vandalism in England is due to apathy rather than A correspondent has sent me a copy of the Hereford Citizen and Bulletin which pub- lishes three views of Hereford city showing hideosities. One is a traffic island surrounded by parked bicycles leant against each other, another is half a traffic island which shows eight different signs on concrete posts, and another a paper- strewn area among modern back walls called Union Walk. The pictures are accompanied by an appropriately angry article. Another corre- spondent sends me the local paper from Henley- on-Thames, with a letter of protest about pro- posed new street lighting, which is only too likely to be from concrete boa constrictors twenty-five feet high, with lunch baskets in their fangs.
IRISH PEERS When I am very depressed, I like to think about Irish peers. I see them in my mind's eye drinking whiskey in their castellated or Classic mansions at the end of weed-grown avenues and looking out at the rain sweeping over their grassy demesnes. To quote Frank O'Connor's superb translation of the Lament for Kilcash : My cross and my affliction ! Your gates are taken away, Your avenue needs attention, Goats in the garden stray.
All Irish peers beginning with 'Clon' are extinct. Some beginning with 'Ash' survive, and so do a few 'Kit's. The Kildare Street Club lacks now its Gothic hall and antlered Strangers' Room, where if you were a peer you interviewed your agent. The Irish representative peers are reduced to four, and there are twenty-three vacancies. Yes, if 1 am depressed I can at least think that the lot of Irish peers is worse than mine. The Irish ascendancy, from which most of them and their land-owning Protestant relations sprung, provided many of Ireland's rebels and England's generals and admirals, and adorned Irish litera,-, ture with its best poets, historians and novelists. In all. this sadness I am glad to learn that the Irish Government has taken over, for a Forestry School, one of my favourite Irish houses. This was Lord Wicklow's, Shelton Abbey near Arklow, a steepled, pinnacled, romantic piece of Georgian Gothic, designed by Sir ilk Richard Morrison. There was a Prayer Hall at 7 the entrance, amber and mauve with Georgian coloured glass, and a wing with a spire, known as the Nunnery, for unmarried daughters of the Earl. But what, I wonder, has happened to that branch house of Lord Wicklow's family known as Castle Howard (less known, I 'fear, than the other Castle Howard), which crowned an eminence above the sweet vale of Avoca?
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