The Charm of Winchester - TrustNews Dec 02
a personal comment by Michael Carden
Many of the Hampshire Chronicle's recent and well intentioned (if sometimes intemperate) correspondents seem to me to have missed an important feature of Winchester's character. They appear to believe that nothing in or around the City must ever change, or that if anything new is unavoidable, it should be in the style of a previous age. They have failed to appreciate that the most dominant characteristic of the City is that it has continuously changed, and must continue to do so if it is to retain its character. To halt development in the middle age of these correspondents would be illogical and selfish. If this had been done in the City's middle-ages, we would have none of the post-mediaeval buildings which contribute enormously to the character of the City, however much some of them upset people in their time because they too often appeared to be in stark contrast with their neighbours.
Similarly, the development of the stretch of open land between St Cross and Winchester, or the loss of the green fields at Oram's Arbour and on St Giles's Hill would not have occurred, and of course we would have no railway line or viaduct! So it is not our generation's duty to freeze things as they happen to be now, but to strive to ensure that what is built contributes in one way or another to the ever changing character of our city rather than detracting from it.
There are bound to be different opinions about the design and position of new and redevelopment, just as there are about music or food. Tastes vary, and because we may properly argue for our own preferences, we should not be offensive or untruthful about the preferences of others. We should, however, combine to exclude from our City both junk-buildings (in the sense of junk-food), and the wasteful use of precious resources like our valued buildings and our open countryside. But compromises will always be necessary, and of current examples three of the most controversial will serve as illustrations.
The Bar End Park-and-Ride is of course unwelcome loss of open land in everyone's eyes, but the intention is to make this sacrifice as part of an on-going scheme to contribute to the well-being of Winchester by reducing traffic effects from which the character of the City suffers, but without reducing its commercial life. It is only a small sacrifice because the area concerned was until recently a bypass (not water meadows or ancient wild flower meadowland as is often claimed), and it only uses about 10% of the land reclaimed from the bypass (not all of it as is often implied).
Minstrel's Restaurant is by any standards a junk-building and suitable for redevelopment. Moreover, there is an opportunity on sites like this to contribute to the preservation of the countryside by increased residential densities. Whatever personal preference may be there is no reason why the new building should not be of its century, as its neighbours were of theirs, and even (although it is not) a little taller than the tallest of them, as many of them were in their time.
The green wedge of Abbotts Barton Farm is something all of Winchester would hate to see reduced. But, if eventually forced by the Government to accept some extension of the urban boundary, where should such a development be which would not do equal harm? Each neighbourhood is entitled to fight its corner, but in the end the Local Authorities must take an objective decision (and the Trust an objective view). Whatever the outcome, we must insist that any new development does not repeat the junk-design and wasteful use of land with which we have become so familiar. I hope, should the need arise, that we might achieve something at least as good in density and design as, say, Oram's Arbour.