On Sun, 18 Apr 2004 16:01:18 +0100, "G&M" wrote:


Life in a National Park must be hard :^)

Not for me perhaps. But for all the farmhands who can't actually afford to
live there it isn't so good.

People who have those kind of jobs can barely afford a home anywhere.
However part of the reason local homes are unaffordable is that prices
have been driven up by second home owners and incomers.

It works both ways, if there was no listing process or planning
permission you might end up surrounded by Tudorbethan boxes and not
want to live there anyway. So maybe living with these things is an
acceptable price to pay.

Problem with the listing process is it stagnates the farms. Farms used to
build a farmhouse. Next generation that would become the barn when a new
farmhouse was built. As this went on unused structures were demolished and
the stone used for the new buildings. Thus farms moved from crofts, through
cottages onto the farmhouses we now know. Suddenly with listing and the
National Parks, this stopped dead. I live in a valley with 30% of the
buildings unused and unusable, but it is impossible to get permission either
to demolish them or convert them to any sensible use. If course if a
demolition was allowed the replacement would have to fit in with the look of
the countryside, but that isn't beyond the wit of at least a small
proportion of modern architects.

True, turning them into homes is better than nothing. What would be
better is to have some restriction in the title deeds to make them
available to local people, so they don't end up as more holiday homes.

True, but art deco buildings and town centres were considered common
enough in the 60s to make way for tower blocks and ring roads, and it
was seen to be 'progress' at the time.

And fortunately still is. Whoever tried to list the Portsmouth Unicorn
should have been strung up from it.

Anyone got a link to this on the web? I'm curious to know what it
looks like.

cheers,
Pete.