Context 162 - November 2019

38 C O N T E X T 1 6 2 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 9 which outcome would prevail. Feria Urbanism, a planning and design studio specialising in neighbourhood strategies and community engagement, was commissioned to undertake a series of interactive workshops in March and June 2015, followed by a three-day design forum for the general public in July. An interim report captured outcomes from these events and poster exhibitions were mounted during October and November. These meetings had followed an overarching joint core strategy (JCS) which had identified two strategic sites within the town, the ‘North Street Quarter’ on the riverside location of a former foundry and a greenfield allocation at Old Malling Farm. Together, these allocations would provide over 600 new homes, but are excluded from the neighbourhood plan because of their strategic classification. The neighbourhood plan would be required to find sites for at least a further 220. Extensive public consultation fully supported this addition to the town’s fabric, but wholly in brownfield locations within the settlement boundary of the town. The emerging South Downs Local Plan would eventually carry forward these targets from the JCS, on its adoption. The neighbourhood plan steering group enshrined four key characteristics that it contends make Lewes special; independence, geography, creativity and built heritage. Townsfolk were determined that policies in the plan should protect its dramatic skyline on its chalk ridge, views of it from the town’s surrounds, and frequently striking views outward. These viewpoints were carefully identified on a map showing the locations and direction of 14 key views to be protected by a policy, Heritage Protection of Landscape and Townscape, HC3A. This sets out to protect the dominance of Lewes Castle, the visibility of open countryside from the town, the historic character and streetscape within the two established conservation areas and their complex and intricate roofscape. Further attention was given to the town’s distinctive ‘twittens’, narrow passages that run off the main streets, and the flint boundary and retaining walls which are such a feature of many street scenes. If Lewes had a heyday, it was arguably in the Georgian period, when the population grew from around 2,500 to over 8,500 by 1831. Timber-framed houses were frequently remodelled and refronted in a dizzying variety of cladding materials: bricks, flint, beach cobbles, weatherboards, imported slate and, most commonly, either plain tiles or mathematical tiles, an ingenious way to simulate brickwork in a wafer-thin skin, applied directly to the timber frame behind. Entirely new streets were laid out on the flanks of the historic core, lined with modest terraces, sometimes built of brick but often framed using Baltic softwoods and faced in identical materials to those cladding the remodelled medieval houses in the centre. This diversity is fascinating and still largely intact. Today most Lewes residents are deeply committed to environmental concerns. This has led to a certain tension between the provision of various energy-saving measures on these delicate historic structures, which are frequently minimally insulated and were almost invariably fenestrated in the 18th and 19th centuries. This conflict is essentially insoluble. An early draft of the plan had proposed a heritage policy that would have differentiated between the linear core of Lewes, as shown on a 1799 map, and the early-19th-century development to its flanks. At examination, the local planning authority persuaded the examiner that this twin-track approach had not been founded on evidence in the 2007 conservation area appraisal and would lead to inconsistencies within the same conservation area that would result in harm to character. The approved policy in the neighbourhood plan, HC3B seeks to strike a balance fair to both sides of the argument. As conservationists, we assume that we are on the side of the angels. Most of the buildings we protect were products of a low- carbon society; how can they now be blamed for polar melt or rising sea levels? However, in an age where Extinction Rebellion is gaining influence and may yet achieve political traction, we should be aware that some see our nuanced and complex consideration of historic fabric integrity or breathability as a blinkered impediment to a zero- carbon world, rather than a common-sense response to care of traditional structures based on evidence and long experience. Church Twitten, one of the distinctive passages that run off Lewes’ main streets