Bourne Hill.
In February 2006 Salisbury District Council submitted a planning application, together with the necessary application for listed building consent, for the creation of a large extension to its offices at Bourne Hill, in order to centralise all its functions on one site . The Society (in common with other local groups) had been concerned about the process which has led to this application, but in general (and in contrast to many local residents) it felt that the design which had been arrived at, by the architects Stanton Williams, was a good one, which respected the existing listed building without trying to imitate its style. However, in commenting on the planning application, the Development Committee did raise a number of concerns, including the size and scale of the proposed extension, the client's commitment to a high degree of maintenance, the high visibility of the occupants and contents of the new extension and potential car traffic problems in the surrounding residential area. Despite considerable local objection, the Secretary of State decided not to intervene in relation to the planning application, which was approved in September 2006, English Heritage having earlier given their approval to the application for listed building consent. Contracts were then signed for the work to be carried out, but local authority elections intervened, and a new administration ordered a rethink. A lengthy process then ensued, culminating in the submission of further applications in February 2008. These are based on the retention of the original design approach, but a much reduced scale, truncating the extension so as to retain the northern or 'secret' garden, which was a focus of much of the protest. The impact on trees will also be reduced. Questions as to how a process came about which ended in a building with severely reduced office space costing significantly more than the original proposals are considered to be outside the remit of the Society, which will restrict its involvement to consideration of the new applications. Since these incorporate a design approach with which the Society had no problem, and answer partly if not wholly its concerns about size and scale, it is unlikely that we will be lodging any significant objections. A successful outcome in design terms will ultimately depend on the Council maintaining its full commitment to the project, and in particular not seeking penny-pinching economies in what is built. Having selected architects with an excellent reputation for this sort of work, the Council needs to continue to give them its whole-hearted backing. If all goes well, the potential exists for something of genuine quality to be created. As to the use of the new facilities, an assurance has been given that the new unitary authority will make use of Bourne Hill when the work is complete, which according to the programme should be spring 2010. What this will mean in practice remains to be seen, since the exact format of the new local government system, and therefore its office requirements, remain, as of February 2008, a complete mystery.
Wilton Road
a) Old Manor site. The Old Manor Hospital site comprises two areas of land, separated by the Wilton Road. By far the largest is that on the south side of the road, which contains three listed buildings and a listed fountain. The part on the north side contains a further two listed buildings, and all the site is within the Salisbury conservation area. In the 1920s and 30s the Old Manor Hospital was, according to one account, the largest private mental hospital in Europe. It was taken over by the state in 1954, at which time it had 672 beds, though this had reduced to 288 beds by 1978. Since then, of course, approaches to mental health care have radically altered, and the current facilities are very different. On the south side of the road, completion in 2003 of three new mental health care buildings on the eastern side has left land on the western side surplus to the original NHS requirements for the site. This includes the main former hospital building, the Grade II listed Finch House, and other buildings which deserve to be retained. A design brief was produced in 2000 to direct the future of the whole site, driven by the expectation that the primary use of any surplus land or buildings would be residential, and the Society made the point, then and subsequently, that any such development needed to be of the highest possible design standards. The conservation area designation for the site theoretically gives the Council the power to require this, though of course views may differ as to what constitutes good design, and the planning system is in any case not an ideal tool for achieving it, particularly given the key role almost invariably given to the profit motive. Matters at the Old Manor were then complicated by the surplus land being passed to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, for the specific purpose of enabling the construction of 'housing for key workers'. A lengthy period of subsequent inaction was eventually explained when it emerged that several NHS-related users had been identified who were interested in having premises on the site, and in 2005 the case for it to be passed back to NHS use was accepted. The surplus land and buildings on the south side of the Wilton Road then became the responsibility of the Wiltshire and Swindon LIFT, or Local Improvement Finance Trust, one of many such organisations now involved with NHS development projects. A period of apparent activity and the promise of specific proposals for the site was followed by one during which no news emerged, until it became apparent that the LIFT approach to the site had been abandoned. What is now planned for the area is unknown, but some sort of action is urgently needed. Buildings are boarded up and decaying, including the listed ones, and the whole site has a derelict and forlorn appearance. This unfortunately includes the listed Kennet Lodge, right at the eastern end of the site near St Paul's roundabout. This changed hands some time ago, with the intention that it should become a Quaker Meeting House, but so far lack of funds has prevented its new owners from putting their plans into practice. In 2006 the Society identified one of the currently unlisted buildings on the land, the ballroom, as being worthy of particular protection, and asked English Heritage to consider it for listing. The ballroom was built in 1868/9, and is remarkable for the purely Georgian style of its main features, when one much more typical of the mid-Victorian period might have been expected for a building of this type. The English Heritage assessment ignored this aspect of the ballroom, identified it as a fairly commonplace example of a not especially rare building type, and recommended that it should not be listed. Its conservation area location gives it some protection, for instance requiring an application before demolition could be carried out, but not the same scale of protection that listing would have conferred. It is to be hoped that the ballroom's obvious merits will ensure that it remains, little altered, in whatever new use pattern eventually emerges for the site.
Surplus land and buildings to the north of the Wilton Road are in different ownership, that of the Salisbury Foundation NHS Trust, rather than the Wiltshire Primary Care Trust which owns the land to the south. This northern part of the site is unlikely to have any future health care use, and the owners are expected to seek permission for housing development on it, having reached agreement with the court authorities to share the access road to be created off the Wilton Road for the new courts building immediately to the west. A building on this part of the site was also identified by the Civic Society as arguably being worth listed status. Llangarren, a house of c. 1850, was felt to probably reach that level of architectural and historical interest in its own right, but with a case made even stronger by its relationship with the two Paragon buildings which front the Wilton Road just south of it. These are already listed, and the fact that Llangarren is of the same date and part of the same group appeared to the Society to make the case for listing it more or less watertight. English Heritage unfortunately took a different view, feeling that Llangarren itself had been too greatly changed, and that its relationship to the Paragon building had been too compromised to make listing justified. Again, a conservation area location means that demolition would need consent, unlikely to be readily given for the whole building, though an unattractive 1930s extension might well be seen as dispensible.This northern part of the site shares the derelict appearance of the southern one, with both Paragon buildings now entirely boarded up. The state of the Old Manor site is close to being a disgrace to the city, particularly given how long it has now endured, and a speedy resolution for the whole area is urgently needed.
Conservation area appraisals Salisbury District Council has a statutory obligation to carry out appraisals of all its 70 conservation areas, resulting in documents which will set out the particular characteristics and merits of each of them, and provide a framework for new development which will meet the required criterion of 'preserving or enhancing' their character. While this process has been underway for some time for a dozen or so of the village conservation areas, the scale of the Salisbury one had discouraged a start on its appraisal, until the Council's vision project made the need for it difficult to ignore. The consultants carrying out the initial village appraisals (subsequent ones are in the hands of the Council's own conservation officers) are now working on one for the Salisbury conservation area, which has already been seen in draft form. The final version is likely to be a document of some interest, but it is as yet unclear how useful it will prove to be as a tool for influencing development within the city. Current contentious proposals to build on an undeveloped site in St Ann Street, generally accepted as the finest street in the city, raise questions to which no conservation area appraisal could by itself provide definite answers, though it is to be hoped it could at least give some indicators as to the best way to resolve conflicting views.
Meanwhile four village conservation area appraisals, those for Dinton, Hindon, Amesbury and Steeple Langford, have already been through a consultation process and are being amended as a result. Five further appraisals, covering Tisbury, Downton, Durrington, Wylye and Broad Chalke, are about to go to consultation, and eventually, unitary reorganisation permitting, all 70 conservation areas should be backed up by appraisal documents. Whenever it has the necessary local knowledge, the Society will seek to comment on them as they evolve.
