113-119 Borough Rd & 125-132 London Rd, (St George's Circus), Southwark, London

Although Dance was responsible for the planning, the surviving buildings were actually deigned by his successor as the City Surveyor, William Montague. The buildings, including the Duke of Clarence pub on the Circus, were erected in c.1820-1828 and though undeniably modest they are believed to contain many original, if shabby, features above the ground floor. There have been a number of attempts to get them listed, but so far without success - they have been deemed to be of insufficient group interest despite their history and to be insufficiently complete. We, and many others, would beg to differ. The refusal of English Heritage to recommend the terraces for listing is another example of its recent suspect record on listing. In this case numerous similar terraces throughout the country have been listed. We will be addressing this issue in our forthcoming report, Grand Ideas for the Nation's Heritage.

Though some of the buildings have been virtually derelict for many years, they have only recently come under direct threat of demolition. They are now owned by South Bank University, which is seeking planning permission with architects BDP to demolish them and replace them with new lecture, library and sporting facilities. These proposals have greatly alarmed both SAVE and the Georgian Group. Clearly these are not buildings of outstanding quality but they are honest, basically intact and the only survivors of an important example of Georgian town planning which still defines the layout of Southwark today. Moreover, they clearly have a market value, even despite their current condition, because of their central London location. The proposed building is on a vast scale and would tower over the surviving Georgian buildings on the opposite side of London Road and threaten to destroy any remaining urbanity around the Circus itself.

Southwark has recently put back the original 1771 obelisk at the centre of the Circus. Meanwhile it is attracting praise for its ambitious redevelopment plans for the Elephant and Castle just down the road. What is required now is a complete rethink about the planning of the Circus - developing this block in isolation will only exacerbate the poor environmental quality of the area. An urban design framework study is needed to address the wider environmental issues, such as traffic management and pedestrian flow, as a blueprint for development and this must be fully integrated with the planning of the redevelopment of the Elephant and Castle. Southwark must be persuaded that sustainable regeneration means not only wholesale redevelopment but also, and hand in hand, the more modest reuse of honest historic buildings such as these.

There is gathering local opposition to the scheme, supported by the local MP and fermented by the Georgians and SAVE. We have lobbied hard for English Heritage to change its position on listing and also use for it to use its reserve powers to designate the Circus a conservation area, something it has tried to persuade Southwark to do for many years without success. Its decision is awaited with interest; it may well decide the fate of the buildings.

This remains at the top of our casework agenda. Since the report in the last newsletter, Slough Estates, the new owner of this 180 acres of ex-MoD land, has put in an outline application for redevelopment of the site as a business park. This set alarm bells ringing. Farnborough is the most historic aviation site in the country and a place of remarkable historical associations. At the centre lie two huge listed windtunnels, surrounded by many more historic structures which are not listed (though undoubtedly should be), including the original aircraft factory of 1910.

A group called FAST has developed plans based around the public opening of the massive windtunnels to tell the story of the site and showcase the latest aeronautical achievements. Slough, however, has not so far shown much interest in public access, and the strong feeling remains that it would really rather the windtunnels weren't there, perhaps not surprising given that it spent £70milion acquiring the site. The planning application makes little reference to or provision for public access to the listed buildings and the proposed road layout would involve the demolition of many key historic structures. Slough has already begun demolition of all the unlisted buildings on the site.

SAVE persuaded English Heritage to support our calls for the area around the windtunnels be removed from the application to prevent immediate demolitions there and allow for further discussions about its future to take place. Meanwhile the local authority, Rushmoor Borough Council, has received an undertaking from Slough that it will halt the demolition of the most important of the unlisted buildings to allow for their future to be discussed further too.

The application has yet to be considered, but it looks at the moment as if the immediate threat may have been averted. However, this is by no means guaranteed and an awful lot more campaigning will be needed to finally secure the long-term future of this exceptional site.

The concerns raised by the redevelopment of the Factory Site have highlighted how difficult twentieth century industrial sites can be to conserve. Their scale, and the design and construction of the structures on them, often leaves traditional notions of SPAB style repair and functional reuse redundant. We will be addressing the issue of the legacy of twentieth century industry in our forthcoming report on the future of UK conservation, due to be published in March this year.

Battersea Power Station, London

The fight to save Battersea is almost as old as SAVE itself. When Bankside opens as the new Tate Modern in May to what seems inevitably to be massive publicity and rave reviews the spotlight will once more fall on its forlorn sister. The news is not encouraging. Having gone through two or three well respected architects, lost its major partner BAA and its launch tenant Warner Cinemas, the owner Parkview International has recently applied for an extension to its 1997 outline permission for "a brand new leisure destination in London" to allow it more time to submit the detailed plans that were promised years ago. The scheme still appears to be for cinemas, theatres, apartments, hotels, film production facilities and dozens of shops and restaurants and it appears the land dispute with London Electricity have been resolved. However, considerable doubts remain about Parkview's ability to realise its grandiose ambitions. When it acquired the site it promised to have the development completed by this year - now it says 2005. Even if it really is completed by then, it will have been 23 years since the power station closed and nearly twenty since John Broome first launched a similar scheme. Surely soon it will be time to abandon these grand and unfulfilled promises and think again from first principles. A leisure complex is not the only solution.

Railtrack Redevelopment

Railtrack owns some of the most magnificent buildings in the UK, but its record as a custodian is mixed. It has spent millions restoring the great Victorian trainshed roofs of Brighton and Manchester Piccadilly, yet knocked down that at Blackburn; it has done a good job at Paddington with Nicholas Grimshaw (despite the fussy paving), but threatened to take the roof off Edinburgh Waverley and put a shopping mall over the platforms. Now the spotlight has fallen on two London stations - Waterloo and London Bridge. Railtrack have denied rumours that it wants to build a 55 story tower above the former, but it has emerged that, remarkably, the building is not listed.

Our more immediate concern centres on London Bridge, the very first railway station in London when it opened in 1836. Very little remains of that terminus, but most of the Grade II listed LBSCR trainshed of 1866 still stands - a typically uplifting if unkempt Victorian iron roof. Now Railtrack plans to spend £400 million redeveloping the station, demolishing the trainshed and putting an office block over the tracks. The trainshed has to go, apparently, not to make way for the offices, but because of new alignment of platforms and escalators to a new concourse below the tracks. What seems extraordinary is that in an age when most have come to recognise that is impossible to better the soaring Victorian trainshed as a pleasant - indeed inspiring - environment in which to catch a train and Grimshaw and Santiago Calatrava have been busy reinterpreting them at new stations all over Europe, Railtrack appears to wants instead to recreate the experience of the new Charing Cross, Euston and Birmingham New Street. Oppressive and sunless bunkers are surely not the way to encourage more people to use the railways.

Asylums Update

However, the NHS remains a bastion of unreconstructed ideas when it comes to the disposal of its property, and only last week we learnt of the razing of one of the finest unlisted asylums, Warlingham near Croydon. For years we had asked the council to designate the pleasant buildings and marvellous grounds a conservation area, but without success. Now all that remains amidst a sea of crushed bricks is the solitary listed water tower, soon to be surrounded by 160 executive homes.

Part of the problem stems from the decentralised structure of the NHS, which makes disseminating best practice much more difficult than in, say, the MoD. Therefore we have welcomed the opportunity to address a joint English Heritage / NHS conference on the disposal of redundant hospital sites, and will do our best to demonstrate that conversion not demolition is the best option.