16 March 2021

Off with its head!

 

The intended height of courthouse in the planned City of London Law Courts has been reduced by over a metre. Both the Victorian Society and Heritage England have lodged objections to the size and scale of the new building, but it seems to have been complaints about the reduction of daylight to the flats opposite the court that swung the axe.

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Actually the old Daily Telegraph building sits immediately across the street, but it wasn’t the bankers that cried foul. Instead it was the owners and occupier of the apartments in the upper levels of the buildings to its west, a nicely varied run of narrow, period frontages of the sort that typify the Street, that stood up to be counted. As a result of some detailed analysis, the parapet of the courthouse has been lowered by 1.2 metres and two rooftop elements of the massing of the block have been cut back to lessen the impact.

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The amenity societies’ criticism is quite trenchant, saying “The proposed new buildings entirely fail to reflect the characteristic scale and grain of the historic built environment” and that its “articulation is weak, and does nothing to reduce the impression of overbearing monumental bulk”. I hate to say I told you so, but… They are also both unhappy at the loss of historic fabric proposed, namely the demolitions of all of the existing buildings along the Fleet Street side of the site and some in Salisbury Square’.

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As it happens there are rumblings down below, too, with the owners of the building to the south east of the overall development objecting to the proximity of the commercial block to theirs and the servicing arrangements, which would have required them to fall in with the shared servicing basement supporting the court, police and office development itself.

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Evenin’ all.