Canal Corridor, Lancaster

Issue
Lancaster: a ‘handsome place of stone-built Georgian houses’. Yet a place where thirty buildings, eighteen of them in conservation areas around the so-called Canal Corridor, are threatened with demolition to make way for banal commercial development, as shown in our picture.

Our view
In concert with English Heritage and SAVE, we objected and argued for creative reuse rather than wholesale demolition. A conservation-based alternative scheme has been commissioned by SAVE which retains the existing streets, courtyards and histories buildings. This is an enduring solution, in contrast to the developer’s scheme, which is presumably created with a short lifespan in mind; because a whole new scheme will almost certainly be needed in thirty years’ time or less (cf Southgate in Bath or The Mall in Blackburn), the buildings are almost literally designed to be demolished. In those circumstances, poverty of design is to be expected. It should still, however, be deplored and resisted.

Result
Lancaster City Council granted consent in October 2008 but the scheme was rejected at public inquiry. 

53 King Street, Blackburn

Issue
Our picture shows the forlorn former police house at 53 King Street, Blackburn. Recent demolitions have cut it off from the small Georgian quarter to which it belongs historically. Not only is it marooned but it risks demolition itself, as it stands in the path of the local authority’s preferred route for the Freckleton Street inner urban link road.

Our view
Local press coverage, sadly, has portrayed the building as an impediment to progress and a cause of congestion, but apart from being of intrinsic value, it performs a useful townscape role in terminating the long axis down Montague Street and creates a useful link with the recently-restored historic quarter to the east. Following significant pressure there are glimmers of hope: the building has been established to be forty years older than the local authority assumed (1780s rather than 1820s) which makes demolition a less straightforward proposition, and two new alternative routes are now being considered which skirt the building and leave it standing. Our ideal solution would be to adopt a minimalist approach which improved traffic flow by adapting the existing road network, but if a new road has to be built our preference would be to route it to the west, thus allowing the historic area along King Street to be knitted back together through sensitive infill.

Result
We opposed a listed building consent application for demolition of No53 in December 2009. English Heritage then commissioned an independent assessment of the Council's transport appraisal; this appraisal had concluded in favour of a route that ran right through the listed building, though other routes exist which bypass it.  Consultations are continuing.

We would welcome your support with this case. If you are willing to write to Blackburn & Darwen Council to help save No53, please contact us in the first instance at office@georgiangroup.org.uk.

In May 2010 we will be running an advertisement on the hoarding shown in the picture, with a pro-preservation message.

Former Kelton Convent, Liverpool

Issue
Built as an elegant early nineteenth-century villa in large grounds with distant views, the old Kelton Convent in Liverpool was dramatically extended in the late-nineteenth century in the Gothic idiom. Institutionalisation has since been thorough but is not irreversible. Proposal to extend.

Our view
In concert with the Victorian Society, we have criticised proposals to add large new wings as part of a residential conversion scheme. The plan to put a large, fully glazed pediment on the roof of the original villa is especially misconceived. Some compromises are negotiable here; sympathetic restoration of the Georgian building should not be.

Result
Pending.