A High Court Judge was reported by the Guardian to have described Prince Charles’ intervention in the redevelopment of the Chelsea Barracks site as “unexpected and unwelcome”.
    I was surprised; Mr Justice Vos is a judge who is careful about expressing his own views. Then I find that the Guardian got it wrong – the judge said that the developers “regarded this intervention, no doubt, as unexpected and unwelcome.”
    I don’t doubt it was unwelcome; a lot of money down the line, they didn’t want their plans turned over now; but I frankly doubt that it was unexpected.
    Prince Charles has frequently and famously expressed his views on architecture; it was unlikely that he would overlook the treatment of a key site in central London, adjacent to the C18th classicism of Chelsea’s Royal Hospital, more especially when he had been approached by a large group of the public who feared the imposition of an unsympathetic, uncompromisingly modernistic structure, on a huge scale.
    If the prince has a function, passing on the views of many thousands with less scope for influence seems an entirely supportable one, especially in the face of the solipsistic arrogance of the architect involved. Lord Rogers had often displayed his intolerance of those who don’t share his vision of a landscape that belongs to and effects us all.
    His loudest objection to Prince Charles’ expressed concerns is that it is undemocratic, but there is distressingly little democracy behind deciding what buildings will fill our landscape.
   Take the beautiful town of Ludlow, where I live.
   There is a deep, immensely uplifting charm to a place that has retained 800 years of varied and developing building styles, which escapes very few visitors and is treasured by the more civilized inhabitants. However, when it was decided to put up a new library, the developers in conjunction with county council planners produced a scheme for a huge, industrial looking building, vastly out of scale with every edifice around it (apart from an already disastrous redbrick supermarket).
    There was, of course, a “consultation”, in which a host of individuals and organisations expressed their profound objections to the great modernistic shed that was proposed. These “consultations” are the “democratic process” behind which arrogant architects, bull-headed, big-spending council officials and profit-motivated developers hide.
    In a poll conducted by Building magazine, in which readers were asked to choose between Richard Rogers’ plan for Chelsea Barracks, or an alternative drawn up by traditional architect, Quinlan Terry and based on a classicism which has recurred and given great satisfaction and pleasure since the Greeks first created the concept, it isn’t at all surprising that Terry’s plan drew 60% of votes cast.

Disgracefully, there is no voting, no obligation on the part of planning hearings to take any notice of the views and wishes of the people who live in a town – who own their landscape. So I find myself now working in a library which is a cavernous, noisy space, which seems to function as a meet and chat venue, where large quantities of higher space are unused, and commercial activity occupies a proportion of the charmless lump of a bulding. The planners also bequeathed the town an ugly, useless little open space in front of the hulk, “perceived” by the County Council, “to attract people, thus benefitting nearby traders.” It is nearly always empty, occupied by discarded chewing gum and lager bottles.
    There are countless towns and cities throughout Britain that have been ruined in this way, and there have been many occasions when the public have yearned for someone of sufficient influence to raise a voice in support of their objections.
      The almost compete vandalization of the once lovely city of Gloucester, of which only the sublime cathedral and its immediate close remain, wouldn’t have happened if there had been a Prince Charles to suggest to the culprits that they should consider not just the wishes of their rate payers, but also the longer lasting qualities of traditional, vernacular and less aggressively modernistic building design.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Walcot Hall sits in the valley of the River Kemp which flows serenely towards the Clun between the round-topped, wooded hills of southwest Shropshire. In 1764, Clive of India chose to settle in this beautiful corner of England, just east of Offa’s Dyke, and bought the house with its 80,000 acre estate. He commissioned an architect, Sir William Chambers to re-order the house, which he then left to his son Edward. Walcot Hall remained in the Clive family for 170 years, during which time vast sums were also spent on improving the grounds. A mile-long lake, enlarged by Napoleonic French prisoners of war, still spans the view from the Hall.  In 1800, a spacious ballroom was added in order to house a carpet presented to Edward while he’d been governor of Madras.

Popularity: 4% [?]

It’s obvious, is it not, that if you were to produce a trough, fill it with money and place it in front of a 650 average English persons, it would be inevitable that snouts will be immersed in it, trotters, too sometimes, up to the hocks. The extent of abuse will vary from Western Saddleback to Gloucester Old Spot, but the more elastic the criteria by which the trough is kept topped up, the less incentive for individual restraint.

The way the Westminster trough has grown, and the reasons for it are symptoms of a classic British fudge.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Like all dedicated seekers of truth – eternal and ephemeral – this blogger likes to expose himself (though not in his Burberry mackintosh) to the edges of human experience – last week, in two unusual expeditions.

Ludlow Racecourse is an attractive sporting venue set on the gravel-bearing flood plain of the River Teme. There has been recorded horseracing there since 1729, and about a hundred years ago a fine members’ stand was erected in cast iron. Facing north, it prevents a low winter sun from shining in the punters’ eyes. However it also exposes them to the full blast of any northerly wind descending off the Shropshire Hills.

A serviceable, if not architecturally outstanding Members’ Bar and Restaurant was put up about a dozen years ago, and now earns extra revenue – like any sensible Members’ Bar – as an antiques fair and general entertainment venue. Last week it hosted an auction of German Nazi memorabilia.

Popularity: 2% [?]

It may sound a little supercilious to say so, but one is seldom, in my experience, lexically trumped by an estate agent. But this week in the Ludlow Advertiser, John Amos & Co of Leominster are offering:

“A Quillet of Woodland extending to 1.70 acres situated at Bryneddin Wood, Chapel Lawn, Bucknell [Salop].”

The shorter OED offers only one definition of a ‘quillet’: A verbal nicety or subtlety.

Either John Amos & Co are deploying a metaphor of such subtlety it’s escaped me, or they’ve unearthed a term so long buried in the culture of the Welsh Marches that it has been lost to the lexicographers.

They certainly didn’t find it in the standard dictionary of estate-agent-speak, which deserves commendation.

Popularity: 4% [?]