ARLFC Club, Drighlington

Application for the demolition of a former pub, and replacement with 5 dwellings in Leeds:

The Village of Adwalton, contiguous with Drighlington was once home to 5 pubs and a club. One pub, the New Inn, now remains, with the Rugby Clubhouse pictured above no longer in use. This is a very sad statistic. The population has bloated in the villages, yet public life has diminished.

This site is described by the architects as being ‘semi-derelict hardstanding’. Otherise known as a pub carpark. No mention is made of the cluster of Victorian stone buildings that make up this modest yet charming pub. Furthmore, this site is on top of a hill, and is visible from miles around. This building should be considered as part of a wider heritage landscape between Leeds and Bradford that is being slowly denuded of character.

As with most of these pub car park developments, the loss of the building is unessessary, and tantamount to laziness on the part of the developer. A good architect could integrate the pub into a commercially feasible development, perhaps even extending and enhancing the building line seen above, to improve the cohesive geometry of the village centre.

That is what builders used to do for hundreds of years. Development was an opportunity to make places.