From the Chairman:

I was delighted to see so many of you at our AGM at the beginning of July. St Mary Aldermary proved a welcoming venue. Its availability for events such as ours proved the success of the Bishop of London’s rejection of the Templeman proposals to close more City Churches and instead to widen access. We are grateful to Rev John Mothersole who provided that access and to Colin Kerr, the church architect, who told us about the recent works at Wren’s finest Gothic church.

The AGM was a lively meeting in both the formal and informal parts. You gave your committee a number of issues to consider. One matter raised was the relative prosperity of a Society whose balance sheet has been made healthy by generous donations and careful investment by our trustees. We must maintain a reserve to sustain our core activities and we shall print our reserves policy in the next issue of the Journal. But your committee is exploring ways in which we can use our resources to expand our charitable role.

One initiative already taken is to support the Heritage of London Trust, founded by one of our former Vice-Presidents, William Bell. The Trust’s Patron is the Duke of Gloucester, our own President. In its 27 years of action the Trust has raised some £2.5 million, which it has distributed in small grants to encourage the careful repair of historic buildings. It has also set up the Heritage of London Trust Operations, a sister trust which itself takes on larger projects, including the moving of the St Pancras Waterpoint, which was illustrated in Clive Price’s article in our Journal 453 in the spring. The Trust has a supporting group of Friends and has agreed that London Society members may join in their visits, the next to Spencer House on Monday 10 September at 11.30. For further information please telephone the Trust on 020 7730 9472. We are exploring ways in which Society members can be kept regularly in touch with the Trust’s programme and activities.

This Newsletter brings with it our next events list. I draw your attention to the evening planned for 5 November when we will show slides which are in the Society’s collection; this has been augmented by a recent gift. Not all our slides are labelled so the show will mix a magical mystery tour with an appeal for help from eagle eyed and knowledgeable members. Please also mark your diaries for the Banister Fletcher Lecture by Ptolemy Dean; this will now be on Tuesday 4 December; the booking form will be with the next mailing at the beginning of November.

I also remind members to let us know wherever possible if they cannot join a Society visit which they have booked. Because the Society office is not open every day we hope to set up a dedicated telephone line so that even last minute cancellations can be recorded. This saves us the embarrassment of turning up with a smaller attendance than our hosts had expected; and it increases the chances of our being able to offer a place to a member who may have been disappointed at the initial ticket allocation.

Members should note also that the Institute of Historical Research at London University is promoting a historical look at the tall buildings question in London with a conference on 12 October at Senate House. Contributors include Lucy Markham who drafted our Society’s views on Ken Livingstone’s guidance on London View Management, set out in our recent Journal. Information is available from the Institute and at www.history.ac.uk/cmh/tallbuildings.html. The Mayor’s draft guidance has now been approved by government. Controversy about tall buildings shows no sign of abating with the recent decision, after public inquiry, to approve the proposed 39-storey building at 20 Fenchurch Street. The inquiry focused especially on whether or not a tall building on this site would affect the Tower of London World Heritage Site. This decision comes at about the same time as UNESCO decided that the site should not be regarded as endangered, a decision which seems to admit that the fabric of the Tower may be a more important consideration than its setting. The new building has already been called the Walkie-Talkie. Do we look on tall buildings more sympathetically, I wonder, if we give them nick names such as Gherkin or Shard?

One long-running planning issue which does seem to have reached a conclusion is where the most appropriate site for a statue of Nelson Mandela is. Westminster City Council has given permission for a site in Parliament Square. The Society would have preferred it outside South Africa House in Trafalgar Square. The agreed site may yet be provisional as the whole square is to be re-planned under a World Squares for All initiative. We have asked to be consulted. Those responsible might like to note that in Harold Clunn’s London Rebuilt 1897-1927, Parliament Square is given pioneer status as ‘the birthplace of the gyratory or merry-go-round system of dealing with the traffic problem’. We might regret his conclusion that it was so successful there that it was then followed at Trafalgar Square, Hyde Park Corner and Piccadilly Circus.

Our ability to comment on planning issues is restricted by the numbers of people we can find to monitor applications. If there is a reader of this Newsletter who would be willing to focus on planning applications in Lambeth, including the South Bank, we would be pleased to hear from you.

I hope that all members will manage a relaxing summer break. A welcome prospect for the return from holidays is the annual London Open House weekend on 15-16 September. The guide, to be published in mid-August, will be available, with further information, through www.londonopenhouse.org. If you use the weekend to visit a building, old or new, that you think would be of interest to other Society members, please let us know and we will try to arrange a Society visit.

With best wishes,
Frank Kelsall

TheLondonSociety

From the Chairman:

The
London
Society