Still an avid fan of the lovely George Clarke and his 'Restoration Man' programme which is on Thurs evenings at 9pm. Though I have to say I much prefer George being a proper architect on site with his hard hat and lots of great practical solutions for good and useful use of the space, to the 'lets pretend I'm an academic' historian George that we see in some dusty old library supposedly tracing the historic context of the restoration project featured each week!
There has been a real mix of projects over the last couple of weeks, a couple of weeks ago the programme featured two towers. One a castle like turret in southern Scotland then by contrast a Martello tower ( Martello towers (or simply Martellos) are small defensive forts built in several countries of the British Empire during the 19th century, from the time of the Napoleonic Wars onwards) and generally look like this:
I have to say I'm not entirely sure why they broadcast this particular episode because both projects where a total disaster! The martello tower was situated on the south coast and had been bought by a rather eccentric actressy lady who talked alot in a rather dramatic way. She had purchased the tower intending to put some kind of room on the roof to capitalise on the fantastic potential views. Sadly the planners blew her plans totally out of the water and took a hard line on this saying that there were only a few martello towers left intact in the country so although they were very happy for the existing structure to be converted to a home there was no option for putting any kind of extension on the roof. So basically she seemed to totally lose interest and we were left assuming that the project didn't happen. I do suspect that her motives for being on the programme may have had more to do with self publicity than a genuine interest in preserving out heritage, but maybe I'm being uncharitable..........?!
The other tower project was a like a castellated folly but another rather strange story, the previous owner was a local man that had submitted endless well thought out sympathetic schemes for restoring the castle and adding an extension in order to make it work as a home. But all of his proposals were turned down flat by the planners! The current owner resided in Essex and used an Essex based architect to come up with several very expensive ill conceived proposals but eventually much to George's (and any one watching the programmes!) surprise managed to get planning. The project was completed but it was the most horrific conversion! It paid no respect to the history nature of the tower and was neither in keeping nor an attempt to contrast a very modern extension. It looked like a couple of garden sheds had been stuck on the front of the tower, but worse than this they were painted the a pale bluemore akin to beach huts than an historic fortress!! The local residents were furious, it stood out for miles and looked truly horrendous! Even George was stuck for words....bizarre..really bizarre...
No comments:
Post a Comment