Yesterday I went to a talk at Alston Hall by Stephen Sartin on the subject of Characters of Preston. It made me think about the fragility of our heritage. It’s easy to knock stuff down but it can never be put back. Often the new stuff only looks good for a couple of years and then it looks dated and starts getting grubby.
In the 1960’s there was little thought about preserving and refurbishing old properties. Better to knock them down and build new. We got the ring road, Crystal House and St Georges shopping centre and for a few years they didn’t look too bad. It seemed good to get rid of the smoke encrusted dark old buildings.
It continued with the Guild Hall and it’s shopping centre and the bus station. That looked smart when it opened although the Guild Hall always seemed like it wasn’t meant to be in that position. Now it looks like it doesn’t fit and the shopping centre is very pinched. The bus station is badly located, inaccessible and has a few design problems but is quite an unusual building and quite impressive in size.
The difficulty is that what looks fashionable now soon looks like last years style. It is a worry that in this decade there has been a lot of new stuff all built looking very fashionable. So what will it look like in 10 years?
A new project in Tithebarn is talked about. Care is needed that a new modern blandness isn’t built for the glory of the designers and council rather than what is needed to balance modernity and heritage. Liverpool One might become a template and from what I’ve seen in photos it represents a developers dream and modern blandness. If you go to Manchester they have used old buildings like the Triangle and kept old arcades and King Street and St Annes Square. If a centre has no character might as well go to the Trafford Centre, it has free car parking and is weatherproof.
So what did the talk by Stephen Sartin include. One of the people discussed was Hibbert, architect of the Harris Museum, and how that building was conceived. Then there were the investors in the Preston Gaslight Company which put up some of the first gaslights in the country on the corner of Fox Street and Fishergate and a building that still stands in Fox Street that was one of the first to have gas lighting inside.
Protect Prestons heritage, you only have one chance!