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Little Green Street neighbours and supporters celebrate the decision to ban lorries |
Visit Little Green Street (and Venice) before it disappears
Guidebook names cobbled street as world treasure
WHAT have the snows of Kilimanjaro, the Florida Everglades, white rhinos, giant pandas, Venice and a small back street in Kentish Town got in common?
Answer: They have been named in a new guidebook of important things to see before they are destroyed or become extinct.
Little Green Street, a cobbled Georgian dead-end street off Highgate Road, has made it into a new book titled 500 Places To Visit Before They Disappear, edited by New York-based author and eco-expert Holly Hughes.
Residents have warned the narrow mews is threatened by developers who want to use the road to allow lorries access to wasteland where 30 homes and an underground car park are planned on the site of a former railway workers’ club.
Ms Hughes said: “These are one-of-a-kind landscapes, fragile eco-systems, rare bird habitats, places to see the last remaining species of big game in the wild, cityscapes in peril, petroglyphs, and more. I have chosen 500 treasures that will inspire and enlighten travellers – and Little Green Street fits the bill.”
Little Green Street’s inclusion in the book, published this week, is timely. Today (Thursday) is the deadline for the developers, Euro-Investments, to register their appeal against the council’s decision in February to kick out their proposals.
They hope a ruling by Camden Council banning lorries from the street will be overturned.
Nick Goodall, who has lived in the street for eight years, said: “This goes to show that if the developers get their way they will be taking the street away not just from the people who live here, but they will be robbing Londoners of an important part of their history.”
‘A slice of Regency London’
Excerpt from 500 Places To Visit Before They Disappear:
Little Green Street isn’t in the centre of London, but maybe that’s why it survived so long – it’s one of only a few intact Georgian streets left in the whole metropolis. These two-story brick houses may have survived the Blitz in World War II, but the inexorable march of gentrification is another thing altogether.
What’s especially ironic is that the houses of Little Green Street aren’t themselves being knocked down. They are listed as Grade II historic properties. No, it’s the street itself that lies in danger.
The street comes honestly by its name: Little Green Street is only 2.5 meters (8 feet) wide... Little Green Street looks like a perfect slice of Regency London; it’s been celebrated in the poetry of that quintessentially British poet John Betjeman. |
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