Beautiful stone pub to be demolished in Bradford:

I can’t stress this enough. Just keep the pub. The proposed plans submitted have nothing on the footprint of the former Prospect, so why demolish it? Bradford Council Conservation Officers, this is why you’re there. A non-designated heritage building and an asset of social value, but no justification for its loss. No public benefit. No net gain in dwellings. Step in.

This is an extremely beautiful Victorian building, stemming from an urban tradition that anticipated neighbours, hence the unadorned potential party walls to the sides. This was built in Bradford’s gilded age, when the city had aspirations for an urban culture tantamount to Rome.

The proposal, regardless of the iconoclasm, is a design that says nothing of or to Bradford. The design and access statement goes heavy on the heritage analysis, yet concludes with the gesture of retaining the pelmet, possibly in the garden somewhere.

And the flanks have windows. unlike the pub, they don’t invite neighbours to come and join them in the creation of a high street.

Trams, pubs, industry, houses – an urban street in Bradford, eroded to nothing.