COUNTRY LIFE
Condemned Cottages
The local council recently issued a demolition order in regard to a line of old and very beautiful cottages. They had histori- cal and aesthetic value, and were not inhabited. A number of local people wished to preserve them and use them, if need be, for barns and garages. All their pleas failed for the reason that such an order is more than Median and Persian : it is against the law to revoke it. It is, of course, right and proper that the first consideration in all cases is the health and comfort of the dweller : aesthetic considerations must entirely give way; and in some instances the aimless preserva- tion of a building solely because it is old is not very much better than the manufacture of ruins and sham antiques which had a short vogue in the eighteenth century. We must agree with this general truth; but if an old building, judged unfit for human habitation, can serve another use, and its beauty and historic interest be preserved, there seems to be no sort of excuse for its demolition unless new cottages are to be built on the same site. One might as well insist on the demolition of an old tree.
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