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Building still has role
• I DO not recognise many of the words attributed to me in your article about Ashmount School, any more than the portrait photo as being of myself (it is in fact of my father) (School is an experiment gone wrong, April 18).
According to Islington Council’s own figures it will cost nearly £6million more to rebuild the school than to refurbish it. That money will be found by selling off its present site and using a “free” site instead – more of the borough’s very scarce public open space.
Open space is constantly prey to those seeking quick financial “solutions” – witness the Barnard Park and Myddelton School sagas – but do we want to lose more of it, as well as one of the few really distinguished modern buildings in the borough?
The present building has the support of the Twentieth Century Society, the Islington Society, Islington Building Preservation Trust and the international conservation association DOCOMOMO, of which I am UK co-chair.
The report commissioned by the council says of the school: “It was at the time of building an architecturally sophisticated exercise in advanced metal and glass aesthetics, making clever use of a difficult site. Although Cadbury-Brown designed many other high-quality buildings none was as ground-breaking or perhaps as exciting as Ashmount School.”
The current chair of governors evidently cannot imagine the school as it might be rather than it now is after 50 years of comparative neglect and alteration, but a previous chair is one of its greatest supporters. That it can be upgraded to meet current standards is the conclusion of the council’s report – “Significant improvements could be made to the existing buildings in order to provide a better standard of accommodation for pupils and staff of the school and to provide a more up-to-date learning environment that comes close to achieving the requirements of BB99... Option A would retain the architectural value of the site and the appearance of its principal buildings, yet would provide a significant improvement in the internal accommodation.”
The technical part of the report illustrates viable options for upgrading the external envelope. In the interests of the architectural heritage of the borough and its heritage of open space, the council should pursue these options.
JAMES DUNNETT
Barnsbury Road, N1
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