WORLDREVIEWS

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December 2019 - February 2020

Fortunately local authorities have to follow the law in relation to conservation areas but Boris Johnson should perhaps consider introducing greater protections for terraced properties from near development to them in a future Queen's Speech.

29 January 2020 - 8 February 2020

The first communication to residents from the council was received on 24 January 2020.

For those members of the international architecture press that wished to see the drawings and those members of the national press that wished to see the heritage aspect documents these are available at the greatercambridgeplanning.org site under the reference 19/1775/FUL.

Given the number of drawings in this application and the time it will take to work through them it is disappointing that the sketchy drawing made available online about 3-4 months ago that residents could see (when I was absent) misrepresented the end of terrace property opposite as being twice as wide as it is so suggesting less blocking of light to all the terrace close to it.

In the consultation with the public by the school a material failure was made and a cause of action in the subsequent 6 years created.

November 2019

There is a disgracefully inaccurate and misleading axonometric drawing put out on behalf of St Mary's School in support of its proposed redevelopment which will block out sunlight, especially from the south, to the facing terrace and provide views into the bedroom windows opposite. David Roberts, who taught me, and who did the original modernist work specifically avoided this.

This is tacky when the school's whole site is large and allows for development away from the historic streetscapes and facades of Newtown and can avoid overshadowing and infringements of rights to light. A continuous blank wall faces the street for good reasons - because is characterises Newtown's building materials, because it was a convent school, and because it affords the residents opposite and the school itself some measure of privacy.

Is this a national example of how a private educational establishment should not be seen to behave - creating privacy issues where they did not exist before, annoying community and much more?

There are many aspects of the whole scheme that are very poor and, unfortunately, contemptuous of community.

A great contrast in environmental sensitivity and design quality to the Sainsbury Laboratory.

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December 2019

Shows proximity of shielding wall.

With all the land, why block your light? the QC asks. The educational ethos in Cambridge tends to be to stay behind walls and screens if you have the land, not develop at pinch points in the roadscape ('stepback' proposed here in the order of four feet only at the narrowest), invite legal challenges and certainly not block neighbours' light. Residents are unhappy about being forced to see into St Mary's School and pupils seeing into their bedrooms.

70% of light will be blocked following the proposals. Traffic risk to University of Cambridge students will be increased in at least three ways. The pinch point fortuitously reduces rat running and discourages unwelcome cars cruising in front of a girl's school as does the existing placement of the entrance by David Roberts so that it is visible from afar from three directions.

At present there is no pick up point in front of the school and that is how it should be. Pupils disperse safely.

To create a four foot or so wide plaza along the length of much of the terrace facing it on the other side to await parental pick up using residents' parking slots without permission, with a cinema like protusion disfiguring the existing entrance to intimidate the whole street, is as dangerous as it is grotesque. Set aside the altercations parents occupying the parking slots generate, delivery vans will mount the kerb exactly where children walk.


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December 2019 - February 2020

David Roberts designed a goodly part of Magdalene College. It was of domestic scale, understated, and much appreciated at the time. His tour de force in Cambridge, though, was at St Mary's Convent School - wonderfully clear modernist lines blending with the Victorian and subsequent buildings - and so sensitive to nearby and existing buildings. Some might say the same of his work at Magdalene.

At one point the idea surfaced that it should be put in for listing. From 2015 onwards many of the modernist windows have been replaced by plastic ones, their shape inevitably altered and their positioning allowing none of the original reveals in the elevation so that the clarity of Roberts' design is less apparent.

This has not caused much anxiety because, after all, this is a conservation area and surely the school would not be permitted to seriously damage the structure of any of the buildings facing the road or the elegant Victorian screening?

Now the school is proposing to replace the one storey structure facing the Victorian terrace opposite with a 4-storey one blocking nearly all the direct sunlight of some of the houses opposite and 70% of their total light and will also mess up, and bring forward and closer to the facing terrace, the elevational line of one of the brick-faced buildings which carries Roberts' design.

DCMS needs to prompt Historic England to investigate what this school is really doing and how it comes to be so poorly advised. The school's own planning application now even states that the David Roberts buildings have been identified as making a negative contribution to the character and appearance of the Conservation Area.

Yet residents of the terrace have loved the school's frontage for it, for the brick boundary walls and Victorian buildings, all which taken together are the best buildings in the Newtown Conservation area not built in the 21st century.

His work at Magdalene College, Cambridge and St Hugh's College, Oxford are both listed Grade II. He was awarded the RIBA Soane Medal and has built more buildings for the university and its colleges than any other architect in its 800-year history.

This currently overlooks the end property of the terrace. Any extension sideways would replace open sky with a similar blocking of light and a view of the sun at first floor level for more properties in the terrace. Light reduction to the end of the terrace would become severe. At ground floor level removal of the screening wall would produce a space where noisy play could take place and openings in the envelope that will diminish privacy for everyone.

The pupils themselves are well behaved and so, for decades, was the school.

The escape structure need not be located where it is proposed leading to loss of value to properties on the terrace and loss of gifts and bequests to the school in the coming decade. Structures extending the elevations forward or sideways in this location and especially this structure diminish view of sky and light to residents. Daylight factors are severely reduced.

The changes to elevations on the street will diminish the historic character of the Conservation Area, will diminish its current character and appearance, especially as a residential area, and create a breach of Section 72 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990.

The extension of the Crush Building and the new build stair on the street frontage are expressly opposed on legal and conservation grounds. The facilities provided by these proposed structures can easily be located behind the existing structures.

The fenestration, its aspect, its size, its direct overlooking of the terrace and angular overlooking of it from the new entrance protrusion, the removal of privacy, the overshadowing, the design, materials and height, the destruction of historic features, and the treatment of streetscape are not appropriate to a conservation area, especially along the elevation facing the street, and reduce the amenity of residents.

The overwhelming tendency in Cambridge when an educational establishment has the land is to build behind existing screens and walls. A King's College without its screen would be much diminished and would lack the sense the privacy, though there is much access, that make for a high performing educational institution.

Removal of the high brick boundary wall, of beauty and historic character, will produce a highly unpleasant environment for residents and create a further breach.

Colleges have cemented their position in national consciousness by progressing to and being custodians of listed buildings. Whatever changes in legislation may take place that affect education this role burnishes their reputations as thoughtful institutions and provides them with additional security. Unfortunately the school has moved in the opposite direction and instead of doing everything to preserve David Roberts' work and seek listing, it proposes an inferior and ugly entrance to disfigure the streetscape and new views into residents' homes which were not there before. The role previously performed by residents of keeping the school safe is replaced by institutional intimidation by overlooking.

Looking directly into the homes of residents from the entrance elevation and infringing rights to light would occasion further breaches in statutory duty and create a cause of action against the school.

A tiny addition of green space, possibly to accommodate de novo dog fouling, which does not take place at present, is unwelcome as it contributes to breaking the purity of line of elevations and Victorian brickwork.

Vehicles speed up when there is a perception of greater width even when this is not the case. Cyclists turn almost blind at the junction into the cycle lane and on occasion commercial vehicles moving sideways on the road to avoid parents leaving the residents' parking spaces have been head on in the cycle lane facing the cyclists coming in the other direction. These cyclists have frequently been University of Cambridge students as three Colleges have accommodation nearby.

As the Council may wish to look to parallels in other conservation areas, this proposal as it affects the streetscape would not be permitted in the Kensington and Chelsea conservation areas.

*****

31 March 2020

We are reliably told that St Mary's School will lose charitable gifts in seven figures over the coming years should this development take place. Covid-19 has left some of the logic of this project high and dry and highlighted potential beneficiaries elsewhere.

It is the last thing any of us could want but we will now have two quarters of negative growth and Cambridge will join the rest of the country in full-blown recession, a place it has not been in the last quarter of a century.

Please stay healthy. We have other priorities than St Mary's School.

*****

An entrepreneurial language course provider tells us that the private education sector in Cambridge is already in recession. Students will not be coming to the language schools this year and they cannot in any event put them with families around the city.

Private schools will be lucky to get the third term's fees in and the catchment cohort for full fee paying pupils next academic year will be shrunk. More bursaries will be necessary to fill the rolls. Borrowing against future fee income for building projects will be out as the following two years will be needed to rebuild financial reserves. Educational entrepreneurs would like filing dates for documents at Companies House and elsewhere deferred by 6 months as they cannot meet their professional advisers. The thinly resourced local press scarcely covers what is going on and struggles to get its news out.

*****

This particular sector probably had reached saturation point before Covid-19 as expansion of facilities, moving into larger premises and new building projects all at the same time by numerous entities usually marks the top of the cycle.

*****

18 March 2020

If the school is unwilling to maintain its architectural heritage and the Council incapable of making it do so, the school should sell up all its sites to a Cambridge College that can and move out to an outskirts site where it can develop to its heart's content and vehicles have space to bring and collect pupils.

We no longer live in the 19th or 20th centuries.

Charities that behave like businesses rather than giving institutions should no longer enjoy their tax privileges.

Buildings can last a very long time - centuries - institutions much less so these days and every one under scrutiny for its purpose. So we may need an entirely different institution in this area. That is the endgame.

*****

21 July 2023

We all get complacent I suppose but about 8 feet away from a legal letter for infringement of air rights by the top of the crane. Certainly not what the users of the pavement below would like to be seeing.

The crane operator may not be going to break anything, like the window, but this is not the designated place to be loading by. It is cutting corners on a Friday evening because this timber could have been taken out by the usual route.

The timestamps on the photographs should be about 75 minutes before those marked, in other words about 15.51.