Parthenon in a Puddle - TrustNews Spring 1999
Conservation Officer's farewell talk
Having only worked for the Trust since March, actually this was for me more of an introduction to Andrew Rutter, his principles and his knowledge. And what a lot there was for me to discover at the Milner Hall on 9th September, where Andrew gave a lecture entitled "Time, Townscape and People; Winchester's Place in the World" to Trust members and guests.
View of Winchester, about 1980,
by Andrew Rutter, drawn from St Giles Hill
It is impossible for me to try to recreate the content of Andrew's talk here. I have tried to capture something of the event through a few quotations and points which particularly struck me.
Andrew has been in Winchester for thirty years - approximately one thirtieth as long as the Cathedral. When he first started working at Hampshire County Council he identified "little understanding of design", as he quoted from a letter he wrote then. But he went on to read a letter written to the Hampshire Chronicle in 1970, soon after Andrew joined Winchester City Council, which set out the criteria by which the Preservation Trust would judge the City Council's design decisions. Over the years since then he has gathered a wide acquaintance of buildings, townscapes and landscapes, which he has used positively to influence the quality of design and planning of Winchester and its environs.
Andrew's slide-show travels took us all over the globe, from Edinburgh to Canada, from St Cross to Africa, and from Stonehenge to the Parthenon (beautifully photographed as a reflection in a puddle!). Always he drew us back to parallels and comparisons with good and bad planning and design in Winchester. He mentioned the importance of structure, "a wonderful way of creating decoration". He commented on the constraints of having "a lot of communications to cram into a small space [Winchester]". He stressed the importance of people, who "can make an enormous difference". He also pondered upon the supremacy of Nature - "we think we're masters of the world - but we're not".
In conclusion Andrew said he had enjoyed "a wonderful job", thanked the Trust for all its help and hoped it would continue to support his successor as it had supported him.
He writes:
"At that time most of the houses on the west side of St John Street had been pulled down to give way for the planned dual carriage way. The cars parked on the left-hand side of the picture indicates where the new road system would cut through to a roundabout across the river in one direction and through St John's Street to Chesil Street in the other.
The church stood in isolation, with the Archaeologists investigating Roman graves. It was normally locked because of vandalism.
This drawing helped the process of negotiating the present houses which wrap round the churchyard and down Water Lane."
As the new pen-pusher and envelope-opener at the Heritage Centre, I found the evening a fascinating and most enjoyable one. Andrew said at the beginning of the talk that he had once read that "work is love made visible". If this is so then Winchester has surely been blessed with the love of Andrew Rutter.
The chairman of the Trust, Michael Carden, wrote a letter to the Hampshire Chronicle (1981) in support of Andrew's work under the the title 'Rebuilding Winchester', with the closing paragraph:
"As to Eastgate Street, we hope that the planning Authority will have greater regard for the principles stated earlier, and will not fall for the plausable arguments which claim that a clean sweep is the only viable solution, that inconvenient old buildings are beyond repair, and that modern design cannot be improved by critism"