Two Buildings - Trust Annual Report 1963
It is a pleasure to report that two buildings which have been completed since the publication of the last Annual Report are decidedly better than the ones they replace. One is the City Council's development to Sir Hugh Casson's design of lower St. George's Street, an attractive lay-out with a good sense of scale for the vicinity, and the other is the new Supermarket, a dignified and restrained design, admirably suited for its purpose. Unfortunately it is too often disfigured by brightly coloured window stickers. If only the same could have been said about the rebuilt 102 High Street. The knowledge that it would be well nigh impossible to get a better building, prompted the Preservation Trust to protest, but without avail. What has happened on this site clearly demonstrates that a well intentioned compromise does not provide a satisfactory solution to the rebuilding of an ancient city.
The shape of the new building follows closely the dimensions of its predecessor and the roof line at the front must be at about the level at which it originally existed. But alas, the new steel framework has destroyed the character which the building until recently possessed. It now appears as the Manor of God Begot in a straight jacket, lacking the robust form, which it once derived from the living timber.
This is one of the few buildings in central Winchester which commands a position where three sides are successively revealed to the passer-by. There is in the new version no harmony between any two of them, each seems to have been conceived independently on the drawing board. At the front, yellow brick and metal windows are an unfriendly intrusion in the High Street, and clash with the brickwork of the St. Peter Street elevation which is in quite a different style. Finally some of the original timbers rather shame¬facedly try to shield the new work from observers in St. Peter Street. Here the removal of the barge board and fancy window is to be welcomed, but it is regrettable that necessary repairs were not effected by small pieces of wood saved from the tons of sound timber removed from the main structure. It would have looked better than the newly inserted sawn timber, which has been gouged out with some unnatural looking cracks and daubed with paint to give it the desired colour.
All this points to an important principle in Preservation. The more worthwhile a building, the greater the care which should be taken of its maintenance. If, however, preservation should become impossible for any reason, then it must either be replaced by something better, or a facsimile reproduction must be made.