BOOK REVIEWS Publications by Local Groups Marston: A Case for Conservation Roger France Oxford Preservation Trust Occasional Papers No. 6 1988 63pp Roger France prepared this study for the Trust following the precept in Circular 8/87 - "Designation of a conservation area will thus be only a preliminary to action to preserve or enhance its character or appearance . . . the local authority shoud adopt a positive scheme ... " Too few have, of course, through lack of staff, time, resources or interest, and the results of the lack of a clear definition of an area's character, or of any detailed policies, are painfully clear at appeals, where vague intentions of 'sympathetic materials' and 'design in keeping with ... ' are tested to destruction. The booklet follows a clear and logical pattern - a history of the area, the environment (current planning issues included), archaeology and historic landscape, the built heritage (detailed historical and to~nscape analysis), appraisal and recommendations. This is the most difficult and possibly controversial area; there are some detailed recommendations, such as a tighter definition of the village envelope and traffic management measures, and the declaration of Article 4 Directions to protect building character. The author suggests that the District Council should incorporate the detailed proposals into the District Plan. Whether the District Council will take gratefully to the Trust's suggestions remains to be seen - certainly it is comparatively rare for a non-statutory conservation body to prepare a study as detailed as this. It is to be hoped that the Council will be able to adopt and utilise the analysis and that consideration will be given to the problem of closely relating broad policies to specific local situations the practical application of the protection afforded by conservation area status. Buildings at Risk in Hackney Elizabeth McKellar Hackney Society 1987 44pp (published December 1988) £2.50 There are, as the Introduction to this booklet remarks calmly, "buildings quietly falling down all over the Borough". Their slow and peaceful demise is in marked contrast to the publicly-acclaimed demolition of local tower blocks; the difference is also that these are in many cases fine historic buildings, many of them listed which should have a viable future. The survey and report by the Hackney Society aims to establish the nature and extent of the problem. The report is, in its own words, "a cry against waste, mis-use and unthinking destruction". 160 buildings were surveyed (age. condition and usage). many of them having been previously surveyed in 1980. Of the 126 buildings surveyed in I 980 and I 986. only 53 had been renovated - most of these houses and many in an unsympathetic manner. As is clear from the well-presented and illustrated essays on individual buildings. the industrial, institutional. educational and ecclesiastical building types have much less hope of rescue. The exemption of Area Health Authorities from planning legislation is seen as contributing to the problem. particularly in the case of the German Hospital in Ritson Road. Commendably. the Society does not mince words in laying blame - the dereliction of 85 Stoke Newington Church Street is "wholly attributable to Council neglect" ang the National Trust comes in for censure at Sutton House which "has declined dramatically" in the years of the Trust's ownership. One of the Report's stated aims is an indictment of the planning policies of the London Borough of Hackney; another is to reveal the wealth of interesting architecture in Hackney, much of it little known. The analysis sets the historic environment of the area firmly in the context of the local social. economic and political climate and therefore achieves more than a bare 'buildings at risk' survey would. Copies are available (price £2.50 inc. p&p) from The Hackney Society, 21 Sanford Terrace. London Nl6 7LH John Wood: Architect of Obsession Tim Mow! & Brian Earnshaw Millstream Books 1988 224pp £15.00 John Wood the Elder was largely responsible for the form of Bath as it is today. The Circus, Royal Crescent, Queen Square, are his lasting monuments. His severe Palladianism executed in clean Bath stone ashlar, with the familiar sequences of formal geometry revealed by the aerial photograph, are commonplaces of the English Tourist Board's repertoire and the birthplace of the Town Scheme. It is difficult to envisage their creator as other than a cool professional, a Classicist to his marrow, a thinker of unwavering mental discipline held in awe by his grateful clients. This first full biography reveals otherwise. Wood was blindingly eccentric; a dabbler in Freemasonry, Druidism and Judaism whose pseudo-antiquarianism failed to do other than adapt the information he took in to previously-fixed notions. Thus the Circus, his best-known work, appears to have been based on his conviction that the Classical orders were created by the prophet Moses; the circular form not on Classical precedent but on the stone circles at Stonehenge and Stanton Drew, which reflected a Druidic culture flourishing in Bath in pre-Roman times, and which in turn took its forms from the First and Second Temples at Jerusalem. The author's extensive analysis of letters from his clients - notably those of the Duke of Chandos - reveal a general distrust of Wood's technical competence and some aspects of his design ability. The correspondence has its lighter moments, notably the Duke's desperation to possess a working water-closet and Wood's apparent inability to achieve this for his client. He suffered major humiliations at the hands of Ralph Allen, Bath's most noted entrepeneur, who over-rode his designs for Prior Park and frustrated his ambitions for a massive Royal Forum astride the River Avon. The machinations involved in development in Bath's booming 18th century property market would not seem out of place in the Business News section of Private Eye today, but Wood's outstanding capabilities in bombast and self-deception would leave Toad of Toad Hall speechless. He was able to write a complete description of 'his' design at Prior Park, without once letting on that the building as built differed comprehensively from his intention, by skilful use of mood and tense of verbs. There is an extraordinary contrast between Wood's achievement in Bath, and his contemporary reputation, disgraces and humiliations; and between the beauty of the buildings and the hotch-potch of half digested history and myth from which their architect created them. The exposition of these in Mow! and Earnshaw's book guarantees a shift in vision to anyone familiar with the forms, but not the origins, of Wood's architecture. 27
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