Demolishing a Pub…to extend a car park
Closed pubs can be awkward to convert due to large car parks and difficulty in adapting, and so the option to demolish is often taken, as I have highlighted almost each week on this blog. This is unforgivable but at least is tenuously justified. To demolish a victorian pubic house to extend a car park is simply unacceptable:
The Ring of Bells in Cleckheaton seems lijkely to succumb to this fate.
This building is vital to the quickly eroding street front, and has more economic potential standing and waiting for a few years for a use, than as a tarmac recess.
I can’t imagine Kirklees council allowing this to pass, but sadly the lack of a local plan will ensure democracy in all matters of spatial planning is not realised. Everyone in West Yorkshire could oppose this and it would still happen.
Another pub to be levelled
This blog is fast becoming a list of public houses that are threatened with demolition. I can’t help but think that those who apply for demolition of these proprties are probably the same people who extoll the importance of the local as a forum for a community. When its another community though, who cares???
So a pub in this area is no longer viable, this we have to accept, but lets not destroy the building, negating a pub being reinstated in South Crossland. Why not use the property for commercial purposes or flats, and then squeeze in a couple of mews dwelling next door. This would improve the street frontage, retain the pub and fill your pockets with silver Mr Builder!
Certainly embodies something of the colliery culture of West Yorkshire, and im sure will be missed by the people of Scholes.
The Old Brick Works at Blackley Hill, Elland has been disused or a while and is set for demolition to be replaced by 80 dwellings. Classic suburbanisation. No proision of public transport, and as such we can assume there will be at least 50 return car journeys to Leeds/Bradford/Huddersfield each day.
And to look at the plans, you might well think this is Californian dessert. Very uninspiring placemaking. Functional building, with the only utility considered being privacy.
More of the same
Three applications to demolish historic buildings in West Yorkshire this week.
Horsforth:
Interesting Victorian quasi-manor house, possibly relating to the railway that passes nearby. The location of this building is very strange, and even stranger, the use of the place as an Italian restaurant. Shame that it will be lost.
Rastrick:
Middle building is to go. Not an especially important building, but theres no need to knock it down really.
Weatherby:
Quaint corner building in this historic market town to make way for a shop.
Also, although not my patch, Mapplewell in Barnsley will be losing this gem of a public house:
This weeks demolitions
January is here, and with it as a new year of demolition. Warehouses, factories, pubs, cottages, churches – none are safe. We have a housing crisis. We have an environmental crisis. So we knock down robust esoteric buildings. Things are not adding up.
Two entries in the west Yorkshire demolition list from this week, both in Kirklees:
Application to demolish (most of) the Rose and Crown pub in Almonbury:
http://www2.kirklees.gov.uk/business/planning/application_search/detail.aspx?id=2014%2f90001
The new portion of the building is to be retained, whilst the older left hand mass will be lost. I understand a developer wanting to utilise the huge car park on this site, but surely it is self evident that value will be added to his property if the character of the victorian pub is fully retained. Page one of the manual.
And I’ve not even touched upon the travesty offlattening an old pub. It is literally one every month in West Yorkshire. Disgraceful.
Secondly, and old cottage off Drub lane in Cleckheaton is to be felled.
http://www2.kirklees.gov.uk/business/planning/application_search/detail.aspx?id=2013/94064
A very dainty building that adds a great deal to the building cluster next to the social club. It may seem insignificant, but bit by bit we are losing our historic fabric.
