Requiem

THE SACK OF WOOLSINGTON HALL

"More than 30 firefighters battled to put out a blaze at the historic Woolsington Hall in Newcastle on Tuesday night.

The blaze broke out at the Grade ll-listed building at around 8.30pm and fire crews fought to tackle the flames in high winds." (Newcastle Evening Chronicle)

Comment

Burnt down. They got their wish. Deliberately neglected by a multi millionaire who has bought his way into the north east cabal, this Grade II Listed gem was abandoned to its fate by precisely those organisations established to protect such buildings. They failed because they meant to. To achieve this level of crookedness in plain sight without the local media noticing and Plod nowhere to be seen fills one with a perverse inverse admiration for these crooks. Stitched up? They used lasers! So a shower of unscrupulous bastards is getting what they want by any means necessary. Around the north east this blatant sleaze is called 'getting things done'. Rot them!

Season's Greetings

Lower Ouseburn Park 12th December 2015

I have slowed down. I post less for all sorts of reasons. Partly, I feel the urgency has slackened; when I began to write this blog, the threats to the piece of open space I call 'Battlefield' were indeed pressing and real.

At one time the plan was to 'create' parking space for 1300 (!) cars over 'Battlefield' and build 'much needed' (sic) office space in a city that has many unfilled (some never let since built) offices even then; more so now. The last scheme to surface from the murky planning process – I am being polite here – included building strange mounds and playing surfaces over the City Stadium, as if the nearby developers of the old paint factory site owned the rest of the green space. This might still happen. After all, who can stop these people?

THE LOWER OUSEBURN PARK

Battlefield, City Stadium, or whatever one calls it, should now be recognised as forming a public park. It should be thought of as being part of a chain of parks running from Gosforth in the north down (very nearly) to the Tyne. To some these are 'wildlife corridors', to others 'green lungs'. To me they are a necessity and above all, survivors. I am dedicated to their survival.

When is a park not a park? This space operates exactly as parks do all over the country. It is not dedicated to any exclusive use. As yet, you do not have to have a key or a privilege to gain access. Kick-a-bouts, sunbathing, partying, reading, strolling and even pony riding are among the activities the space hosts. It affords a subtly changing mask to the city edge facing across the impressive Tyne Gorge. Huge cloudscapes and visiting migrant birds are among its less obvious attractions. It needs no reason, no 'bottom line' to justify itself – at least not to those who use it.

We live in a time dominated by 'financial considerations' that blot out the reason why such calculations, costs and benefits, ever came into being in the first place. "They know the cost of everything and the value of nothing" quipped Wilde. It was once a joke. The difference between investment and expenditure is lost on those who have power.

I will do what I can, albeit at a somewhat reduced tempo, for as long as I am able.

Best Wishes to you for Christmas and a very Happy New Year.

Timber!

Work on the next two blocks of student accommodation on the old paint factory site have begun in a reversal of the time honoured tree planting ceremony: A lovely, graceful poplar tree that stood beside the (still blocked) footpath running alongside the site has been felled.

Why?

It's not as though there was a need to clear the path or build over it. I suspect the answer is that there will be some sort of high wall constructed around the site in due course and the tree stood in it's way.

Another new student block on an adjacent site (and not part of the old paint factory campus) has taken a different line, one that might have been copied.

Other trees have been either lopped or felled and chipped, some outside the wire fence boundary of the site.

I am sure permission to do this felling was obtained by the contractor's from the Council. But why would they bother?

Season of rituals and mellow fruitfulness

Sidestepping 'issues' for this post.

Just enjoy – as I hope – this collection of images of the open space (not) of this public park (not) that just goes on maturing and growing. I am sure someone in the Civic Centre is thinking what to 'do' with it as I write these words.

Des Res

The Observer's perspicacious (look it up yourself) architecture critic, Rowan Moore has cast his gaze over the newcomer development on the Lower Ouseburn. Link to the full article here.

My own thoughts, following a viewing when the project was still being built, was less adulatory. In fact I found quite a bit more to quibble over than Mr Moore ... Those windows.

Still, the thrust of his comments and criticism are useful considering how much more to come there may be.

Some highlights from the article.

Sweeping his gimlet eye around the local scene Moore regards the apartments built next to The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art.

"Papery and stumpy at once, their vertical accents and white-beige-russet palette pay vague tribute to the noble ex-flour mill that contains the Baltic, but succeed only in diminishing it and themselves at once. Perhaps mercifully, this development makes no attempt to mimic the shapes that the Sage cuts, but edges nervously alongside, like the nerd next to the big blonde on the dancefloor. "

When I saw a model of the proposal for the Baltic, the associated private dwellings were well below the Baltic's height. I suspect in the excitement greed over came them. Mr Moore is quite right. The result weakens the whole.

"Up on the hill is a space in the sky once occupied by Trinity Square car park, made famous in the 1971 Michael Caine classic Get Carter and demolished to the bleats and lamentations of critics, less so from the local population. This time the bleating critics were right, at least architecturally speaking: the brooding, magnificent car park has been replaced by a development of student accommodation above a Tesco: stacked-up boxes like shipping containers without the romance, over which curved roofs crawl like big grey slugs."

That about nails it for me.

Do read the rest of the article for yourself.