They've cleaned the monument. Hooray. Here's a photo. All too easy to take for granted, but take note:
"It is indeed the Monument, in the true Roman line. Only the restoration could have produced it - the few short years when ceremonial was not something apart but was at the same time larger than life and not just an enlargement of domestic forms."
And then there's Aldgate. I've uploaded a photo of Bain Dawes House / Latham House, boarded up, derelict and dangerous with tank-traps blocking the drives. Awaiting demolition to make way for a very big scheme which may or may not work. Nairn hopes for great things - he's takling about the seventies schemes - which I think work(ed), although that makes me unfashionable. What was nice about this development was that it was part of a complex that incuded housing, facing Mansell Street. Maybe not particularly well realised, but at least a nod to the residential and transitional character of the area, so well described in NL:
"One of the most dramatic contrasts in London. Just when the city seems to be getting to its most crowded and correct, along Fenchurch Street and Leadenhall Street, the whole thing falls away... At the other end of Aldgate East is another moving change: the split of Commercial and Whitechapel Roads - one going to the docks and the estuary, the other pointed straight at the heart of East Anglia, those long miles beyond Newmarket. It is only a traffic block now, but it could be marvellous, given town artists and not just town planners.".
Indeed. But the new developments seem to emphasise and prioritise shopping at the expense of living space and I worry that the scale might be wholly wrong. Time will tell. Also anxious about the Still and Star's survival, which is essential. Of course, the Hoop and Grapes will survive, which is as it should be. But the Hoop's just a good building. The Still's a pub.
