There are a couple of property developers in Warrington who just demolished a listed alehouse a few years back and made a car park. They just paid the fine
On the shores of the Menai Straits on Anglesey there's an enormous ****off block of luxury flats that you can see for miles from the mainland. It's totally incongruous with the surrounding area. The site once held the Bishop of Anglesey's palace. In the 60's ( I think) someone took it down and built the eyesore. Presumably a few judicious back-handers secured the planning permission.
I think Historic England have the final say about change of use applications for listed buildings mate.
I take your point, but it's complicated - in Wales at least. I have a friend who bought an old property - it was unlisted at the time, but after the purchase a listing was instigated by the local council, who then submitted it to Cadw (the Welsh version of HE), who then interfered with every stage of the renovation. And made the whole project virtually unworkable with their restrictions, btw. On the other hand, local property developers seem to get away with doing anything they want, and there's always a suspicion that something dodgy is going on before Cadw even get a sniff.
Doesn't parts of Wales (I'm thinking north) have strict rules about the materials used etc slate..when building or renovating? I actually like the idea. Newcastle (here not tyne) could have used that..some horrendous builds in and around the seaside town totally incongruous to what they've tried to restore on the main streets
They do, and I'm all for the conservation of interesting or important buildings. Cadw mostly do a good job, and tbf to them they will offer a grant to help renovating things to the required standard (when the government lets them have some dosh). The problem is that in order to qualify for the grant you have to pick from their approved list of builders and craftsmen. Some of these just take the piss with their quotes. My friend was quoted £200k for a job that local builders would do for £60k -£70k. When all is taken into account the build costs way more than the finished property is worth. You can forego the grant and get it done for a fraction of the price, but you then have to be careful that the job is done to the required standard.
What you do is employ the local contractor, but employ a surveyor who will sort out all the Listed Building Consent, Building Regs, etc and check the work is done to standard by the local guy. The surveyor would usually want 8 or 10% of the contract sum to do it. Still a lot cheaper than the CADW/English Heritage panel contractors
Don't be so sure. One of the locals that I eluded to yesterday (that is now a Tesco Extra) was a listed building too. It got flattened! Ironically, the other local wasn't listed yet they built the Tesco Extra inside that one
Yep. That's what is happening now. In fact, a retired surveyor offered to be project manager for a small fee, so that's made the thing more manageable.
If you don't fancy being a landlord, buy the property and turn it into a TV set. Film your own sitcom. Scrubs was loosely based on two doctors experience, the Goldberg's based on the childhood tapes of the producer's family. It can star Burt Coof a clumsy habitual customer who keeps drunkenly falling over and hurting himself. He frequently hallucinates when he take peyote buttons about combine harvesters. Denis the landlord. A fat old man who keeps flashing everyone his moobs. He has bladder control problems and pees in a bottle of sambuca he keeps behind the bar. He serves sambuca to people that wrong him. Felicia, an attractive lush who spends all her time trying to convince Burt to do her up the bum. This is dangerous because her husband is in the thick with the Albanian Mafia. Then there is Bob, the contractor. He is a boring sod that everyone actively ignores but he never cottons on. ... Draw on your life stories and become.a director....
The issue with listed buildings is if some clown lists everything then the rule is pointless and you find historical stuff of some moderate value gets knocked alongside the stuff thats got none i'm pretty sure the cheese has ZERO cultural value as a building.
her name is fiona. as in fe fi fo fum i'm going to **** fiona's bum. or whatever it was that RHC said that time.
Old buildings and architecture can keep the look and aesthetic feel of a town though. It's one great advantage the UK has over the US. Each town and village in the UK looks different. Different mix of architecture and appearance. In the US there are almost no historic buildings (they build them so cheaply they don't last and certainly very few rules to preserve them) every city amd town you go to in the US looks almost identical. Buildings like old pubs have certain historical charm that keeps a unique look and more appealing feel to an area.
As the Cheese has been a pub for several centuries it will have some cultural status within the Latchford community, and was probably the centre of village life for many years. It has obvious age, judging by the beamed ceiling. Several generations of very wobbly piss artists have inhabited the bar at times in the past. With Lady Denise, a distant relative of Lady Godiva, displaying her ample breasticles in support of the common man, and believe me he is common, on many occasions. It was also the site the land speed record for combine harvesters was broken only recently. This, together with it being the centre of the pharmaceutical industry in Latchford probably earned it it's listed status.
Culture is a relative term. It doesn't mean high brow operettas and random splashes of paint ona white canvas. Some guy on the Steppes playing a nose flute is culture. A French man painting a portrait using his penis as a brush is culture. I would say, yes, the cheese had its own unique culture, stolen goods sold.across the bar. Cocaine in the men's room. Women desperate for anal. Patrons calling each other gobshites and ****hounds. It's not stuff you would share at Albert Hall but the cheese definitely had its own culture.
