DANGER TO ABBEY

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 17 June 1933, Page 11

DANGER TO ABBEY

Adjacent Building Plans

IVTEMBE-RS of the Town Planning Committee x of the London County Council are determined that, if they can prevent it, there shall be no new building scheme near Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. The committee is asking . the- council to schedule an area of 211 acres around the Houses of Parliament for town planning purposes. In its' report, the committee states that it is ‘‘much perturbed” by certain building schemes which it thinks would spoil the area. “One of the schemes,” said Lord Had do, chairman of the committee, His to erect a block of offices 100 ft. in height on a site now occupied by a terrace of eighteenth-century houses. The main buildings of the Houses of Parliament are only 80ft. to 90ft. high. Another proposition is to build offices and research laboratories, approximately with an overall height of 111 ft., or two and a-half times that of the present buildings. “But there is a further and even greater reason for our opposition. These uew buildings may easily endanger the safety of the Abbey itself. It is an open secret that there is always water trouble regarding the Abbey foundations, for the ground on which Abingdon Street stands was reclaimed from the old River Thames bed. It is not putting the 'matter too high when I say that there might be definite possibility of serious subsidence of the Abbey if the new buildings are permitted. The proposed buildings in -Great George Street would entirely spoil the symmetry of Parliament Square, beloved not only by our own people, but by hundreds of thousands of visitors to London.” _ ■ •