HOW refreshing that Marion Brinton from Historic England has sought to question the proposed plans to demolish the 1869 Acre Almshouses on the grounds that they contravene the purpose and spirit of the conservation area (Advertiser August 3, ‘Fight goes on for almshouses’).

The conservation area, is designed to protect the buildings deemed to be of ‘special architectural or historic interest’ that lie within it. She also sees ‘no convincing explanation as to why the existing almshouses could not be retained and extended’.

So, there we are. Of course, it is unsurprising that Rob Armour Chelu from Armour Heritage, who drew up the uncompromising plans for a new building and would presumably derive some financial gain from the project, should disagree. He seems to think that conservation areas should include buildings that are of a different character from both the wider conservation area (where exactly is that then?) and the surrounding townscape (the whole of Andover). So, it is perfectly acceptable to demolish old buildings in the designated area and replace them with what HRH Prince Charles might describe as a monstrous carbuncle on the face of an old friend.

This hardly sounds like conservation to me; if you want to put up a new building that doesn’t blend in with its surroundings and plainly ’shouts’ at everything else, then don’t put it in the conservation area.

As Craig Fisher has commented, TVBC must commit to the conservation area it drew up in 1984. I think it is true to say that all the modern buildings in that area either pre-date 1984 or were designed sympathetically and built on an empty site, whilst all the existing old buildings have been preserved. Indeed, any reasonable person might suppose that that was the whole idea. Many of us would wish that the rot had been stopped before that date but in 1984 we had to start from where we were then.

And yes, of course artists’ plans of a new development always look much more rosy than the reality — bright and shiny, few people around, perhaps just one car or two, some trees, no rubbish (they never show the bins) and no graffiti of course. It never really looks like that and in this case it is the domination aspect that is so overwhelming.

Let’s stop this now. Get on and refurbish the houses that stand there already and reinstall tenants who have long been deliberately excluded from available accommodation while this circus has dragged on and on.

David Borrett, Lansdowne Avenue, Andover