Fulford Hall to be demolished

Fulford Hall is set to be demolished. This building once housed Penistone Grammer School, which has now moved to a modern complex down the road. This follows the demolition of Broomhead Hall in Penistone in 1976:

Palatial in appearance, it is quite strange that a developer can not see any reuse of this building, other than a carte blanche brownfield site. So often we rue how throughout the 20^th century, stately homes were demolished with an ideological zeal, yet here we are, readily allowing an architectural marvel to be lost for the sake of a few detached houses and their accompanying commuters.

Justification through extolling that ‘no use can be found for the building’ does not wash with me. Barnsley council, you have now set a president and nothing is safe from the wandering eyes of the speculator.

Shame on you.

And by the way, Penistone Grammer school has I’m sure lost a lot of prestige by moving from Fulford Hall to a (purposefully?) rusting aluminium warehouse.

For  list of stately homes demolished in the 20th century, see http://lh.matthewbeckett.com/lh_complete_list.html

We’re too late to save this masterpiece now, yet this is only the first of many, and its time to up the ante. This could have been 30 or more innovative residences, but we are going to get a handful of generic suburban boxes.