It’s funny how fickle tastes can be. After the war, great swathes of crumbling, gaudy Victorian tat were torn down to make way for a cleaner, slicker vision of the future – their loss mourned only when the new modernist dream turned sour and people longed for the pretty, decorative predecessors to the ugly, concrete monstrosities that stood in their place.
Styles come and go; fashions change – but destruction is permanent. St Pancras station was spared friendly bombs, while just down the road, poor old Euston station was not shown the same mercy.
Even people you think you have pinned down can be fickle. St Pancras’ saviour, Sir John Betjeman – clearly no fan of brutalist architecture – surprisingly ‘gasped with delight’ at the National Theatre building on the South Bank of the Thames. On the other hand, Prince Charles – reassuring in his consistency – famously described the development as a ‘clever way of building a nuclear power station in the middle of London without anyone objecting.’
Presumably, nuclear power stations are something not to approve of, but what about coal power stations? Well, there’s a de-commissioned one of them just along from the National Theatre: Bankside power station, designed by Giles Gilbert Scott, is almost universally admired now that it isn’t pumping out black smoke over central London. So perhaps we like the structures that generate our energy to be clean and without radiation – although you wouldn’t guess that from the reception given to most windfarm developments up and down the country.
Another of Gilbert Scott’s creations, the red telephone box didn’t get off to such a great start. I am told that these staples of picture postcard Britishness were not quite as popular when the garish, red hunks of cast iron first appeared on village greens in the 1930s – but just try and remove one of those beautiful red kiosks now and see what kind of reaction you get.
I doubt that those phone boxes were quite as vilified as wind turbines are today, but who knows, perhaps one day wind farms will be as loved as the red phone box is now. Maybe once we have stopped using them, once they have been superseded by something else, we will decry their loss – like post offices, churches and the country pub: only once they are under threat of extinction will we fight for their survival.
The conservation of landmarks is now very much a mainstream concern – it’s a continual battle, and far from won, but one that has widespread public support. If nothing else, the world has moved on from the wholesale cultural vandalism that was the accepted norm in the post-war years.
With St Pancras, Betjeman was proved right: the station is now the perfect model of how railway stations should function, and is Britain’s answer to Grand Central in New York (itself rescued by a Supreme Court ruling prompting greater care for historic landmarks in the US). The loss of Euston station inspired the formation of the Victorian Society, which champions the architecture of that age. The red telephone box is an undisputed and treasured icon, frequently preserved when a little pressure is applied to BT. Bankside power station now houses the world’s most popular art gallery, and Gilbert Scott’s other London power station is listed and protected (though unfortunately still without a permanent function).
What is needed, in my opinion, is an equally active campaign to promote new designs, and, I believe wind farms should be central in this. Wind farms need their own Betjeman if they are to win public approval and, especially if we are to come anywhere close to meeting renewable energy targets. But if this is too difficult to achieve, and our love for the defunct triumphs over our love for the new, then perhaps we should start by making windfarms seem more cuddly: let’s call them windmills, and think of their popular Dutch cousins.
I wonder if they were hated when they were first built?
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The wind turbine in my home town of Reading, in Green Park next to the M4 and the even more beautiful Madejski Stadium, is the biggest in the country and quite beautiful. You can see photos of it here:
http://www.ecotricity.co.uk/wind-parks/
Mike Barker
I went past the Green Park one the other day and it is indeed one of the bright spots on that journey.
We also holidayed in Cornwall last year where there are quite a few wind turbines and they are no more harmful to the beauty of the place than many other developments.
Wind farms are bizarre. I used to absolutely hate the site of them as a blight on the landscape although. But since I do agree with them, my dislike of their appearance has reduced and now I actually quite like them… strange how things happen!