 |
| Beauty |
 |
| Beast |
Freeman was an oddball in many ways.
In today's more censorious climate he would probably be the subject of police interest....but the past is schmarst .....
 |
| Saturnine |
Our Town Hall owes its hideous genesis to Freeman’s criminal act in wrecking the beautiful Victorian Italianate old Town Hall just days before it was to be listed.
Today, he would have been detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure for such vandalism.
The site blood money allowed him to commission Sir Basil Spence to build that blot on the landscape....the Town Hall!
The brutalist windswept Town Hall sits inelegantly in the midst of historic and elegant Kensington.
Ironically today’s Planning Department would have politely rejected it as ‘contextually inappropriate’ or, in layman’s language, ‘sticking out like a sore thumb’.
What has been noticeable in the days of the pandemic is how successfully the Council staff have coped with home working.
That begs the question as to whether we actually now need this waste of space.?
The Town Hall sits on a site of around four acres so in value terms...multi-billion pound
Let’s do a Nicholas Freeman and send in the wrecking ball and flatten this monument to the rotter’s ego and let the land be developed to provide much-needed housing – low cost and social.
One of the Dame's good friends suggest a new utilitarian Town Hall.
How about near Grenfell Tower as a permanent reminder of what happens when petty little councillors get too big for their boots and forget who empowers them.
I knew Nicholas Freeman having been in architectural practice in Kensington. It was common knowledge that a latish evening visit to his luxurious office could produce dividends for the dodgy developer. Well done, Dame, you may be vicious but you are on the side of the angels.
ReplyDeleteThe demolition of Kensington Town Hall in the middle of the night (just hours before the building was to be protected by listing) is simply shocking. I tell people about it and they are gobsmacked that such a thing took place. But it just goes to show how things have gone for decades in RBKC: The Tories do what they want and they know that they will get away with it as they will always control the Council.
ReplyDeleteA related and far more tragic event is the demolition of the Silchester Baths. https://rbkclocalstudies.wordpress.com/tag/silchester-baths/ North Kensington locals campaigned to save it, but the Council wanted it gone. The baths were demolished and replaced by a playing field, which was in turn replaced by the Aldridge Academy (the Council chose the site because they already owned the land so it was cheap). The Aldridge Academy is right next to Grenfell Tower, which featured a a large picture of the Silchester Baths on its ground floor (you can see a picture of the photograph here: https://www.grasart.com/blog/category/grenfell ). When the built the fancy Academy and redeveloped the neighbouring leisure centre, they needed to "tart up" Grenfell Tower so they added the cladding. They might as well have wrapped the building in petrol but it just goes to show what matters in RBKC: appearances.
A story of arrogance, destruction, unintended consequences and tragedy.
I used to enjoy my tete a tete's with Nicholas. Always helpful to us modernisers
ReplyDeleteDame you are a legend - Lest we forget the carnage brought about by officers of the borough past and present.
ReplyDeleteYou make some very valid points about that God awful building. As for the wind there, it is a shame it doesn't sweep away the windbags inside.
ReplyDeleteThese old farts blow themselves away
Delete