Forgotten Welsh Houses

Michael Tree; Mark Baker

ISBN 10: 0955968402 / ISBN 13: 9780955968402

Edité par Hendre House Publishing, 2008

A propos de cet article

Small crease to rear lower corner but otherwise fine copy.

N° de réf. du vendeur 047048

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: Forgotten Welsh Houses
• Éditeur: Hendre House Publishing
• Date de parution: 2008
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN à 10 chiffres: 0955968402
• ISBN à 13 chiffres: 9780955968402
• Reliure: Soft cover
• État de l'article: Fine

A propos de ce titre

Revue de presse

This book is a disgrace and should never have been written. Congratulations therefore to the authors for bringing an ongoing scandal to our attention. How can it be that in the last thirty years of rising house prices (excluding odd blips) and when historic properties command extra premium, so many fine buildings of architectural distinction and cultural value have been left to rot in Welsh town and countryside, apparently not noticed, not cared about, clearly not on the market and not (so far as one can glean) causing sleepless nights to local authorities who are the front line protectors of their area s heritage? Is it not a scar on the conscience of a nation that professes to care for its past? More pragmatically, with housing shortages as a recurrent theme in the press, running parallel to protest against the grubbing up of green fields, why is so much potentially good housing, in enviable settings (much of it divisible into manageable units) allowed to crumble? Here too could be hotels, offices, family businesses, employing, earning, paying, revitalising small communities. But silence: the years roll by, the slates slip, the vandals strip and something of value to both the past and future has gone. Yes, there are ownership problems, legal disputes and all manner of obstacles but watching money go down the drain is never rewarding. So why? This book is not a pretty sight. How can our political leaders trumpet national pride when a stone s throw from the Senedd is the imperious but rotting Coal Exchange and the weed-waving Cardiff Bay Railway Station? No signs of regeneration here in their front yard. The Coal Exchange was the greatest wealth-producing building ever built in Wales, where the black gold hacked out by the miners became the cash gold that fed the country and made Wales proud of herself. It seems small beer to mention that the building was also designed by Edwin Seward, one of Wales s greatest architects. Certainly this volume is not a catalogue of anglophile Victorian monsters landed on Welsh soil by extractive English industrialists. Yes, there are one or two, but can we not be as proud of a great design by the world famous Gilbert Scott in Denbighshire as we are of the Monets in the National Museum? Apparently not: Scott s fine mansion at Hafodunos, with plaster reliefs by John Gibson, that peerless sculptor from Conwy, is now a part-tumbled ruin, having been allowed to pass from one unrealistic would-be developer to the next, until some boys with a match lit up the night sky and a grade I listed building, which no-one in authority seems to have made any effort to protect despite the quiverful of legal powers at their disposal, went to hell. Here rather are homes big and small, churches, follies, stables, of all sorts and all ages and all part of our heritage. The authors style is surprisingly cheerful and hopeful; their Introduction explains how to go about saving a ruin. Some entries look too eye-popping and costly ever to be saved, until one reads that the most impossible-looking of all, Gwrych Castle at Abergele, has been purchased for a wonderful hotel conversion, thanks to the dogged persistence of Mark Baker, one of the authors, over a decade of determination. Michael Tree his colleague, has already saved two lovely houses, mostly through his own hard labour. You will be moved by this book; hopefully moved into action. --Thomas Lloyd, Cambria Magazine October 2008