| |
Terraces given beach hut look
• ISLINGTON Council and its maintenance contractors are committing an aesthetic atrocity in Percy Circus, Clerkenwell, and the adjoining terrace in lower Great Percy Street.
Some 20 years ago the council decided ground-floor stucco on these lovely terrace houses should in future be painted Portland-stone grey. The council had no powers to enforce uniformity on private owners and did little to publicise its policy to them. Nevertheless, a number of private owners, including myself, accepted the choice and the council, which owns many of the houses, did for a number of years follow its own policy.
We watched with satisfaction as the number of mismatched houses gradually declined and the colour scheme of the neighbourhood evolved towards the uniformity that was undoubtedly part of its original design.
About two-thirds of the facades in Percy Circus and lower Great Percy Street (counting double at the corners which have stucco on two sides) are now Portland stone grey. The north side, which is all grey, looks particularly attractive. Several of the council properties are now due for re-painting, an opportunity that may not come again for several decades.
I was therefore shocked seven weeks ago to discover the established policy had dropped through some crack. The council’s contractors had no such instruction and no intention of following it.
I have been writing and telephoning those responsible ever since, without success. As of now, I have been fobbed off with the council’s complaints procedure and, before it is completed, painters have arrived at one of the houses with instructions to re-paint in the previous colour, magnolia.
The council’s conservation department advises as follows: “External decorative plasterwork was originally painted off-white or in pastel colours, often to resemble stone and owners are encouraged to continue or reinstate this to achieve uniformity. Many stuccoed properties are traditionally painted pale grey.”
The conservation department is apparently unwilling to go beyond its legal powers and recommend a specific colour. The contractors take this advice as giving them substantial latitude at each property, ignoring the overriding aim “to achieve uniformity” and pursuing a deliberate policy of haphazard colour.
The justification for this, as explained by John Holman, managing director of contracting firm Partners, is that “we do not want to identify council properties with a single colour... as this could be socially divisive”.
Mr Holman may mean well but he seems to know little about these houses and the people who live in them. I can imagine some circumstances in which the “socially divisive” argument might be valid, but Percy Circus is not such a place.
These terraces are a mix of council and private freehold and many of the council properties contain both council tenancies and private leaseholds. How could the colour of the stucco be “socially divisive” when some of the flats within a building are private and some council? Or when private houses also match the council’s chosen colour? Still less, how could it be socially divisive to have a uniform colour scheme? And what makes him presume that my neighbours are ashamed to be council tenants? Many of them were here before the council bought the New River estate. They are no more ashamed to live in these homes than we are ashamed to live among them.
I have no authority to speak for my neighbours, but neither can the council, which makes no claim to have consulted its tenants or other residents of the area. I have discussed the issue with many of them and, so far as I know, all owners and tenants would like to see the terraces all one colour.
I feel quite confident that if the council continues to lead the way by using Portland-stone grey itself and encourages others to do so, the remaining private owners will eventually fall into line and the street will come to look once again as its builders intended.
Instead, we have the council and its contractors refusing to backtrack on a decision that will perpetuate an eyesore, making these beautiful Georgian terraces resemble a row of beachside huts.
JIM ANDERSON
Great Percy Street, WC1 |
 |
|
| |
| Your Comments : |
| |
| |
| |
