This is not demolition but vandalism
Last updated 10:59, Friday, 14 November 2008
On behalf of the thousands of people who signed the petitions to try to save the historic parts of the St Aidan’s County High School building, may we express our profound disappointment that decisions have been taken to demolish the building in its entirety to make way for the new Richard Rose academy.
While plans for the new building may appear exciting and innovative, it is regrettable that as a city we appear to be willing to demolish so much of our heritage to make way for buildings which are doomed to be transitory. We do not believe that it would have been beyond the wit of a creative architect to incorporate the entranceway and old hall of the school into the new building.
When one sees the sort of design which has modernised and inspired extensions to some of our oldest buildings: Tullie House in Carlisle, university colleges, St Pancras Station and so on, while retaining a sense of history and important links with the past, it is disappointing in the extreme that such imagination has not characterised plans for the Richard Rose academy.
We are about to sweep away 100 years of history. We are casually about to lose links with the first secondary school for girls to be built in Cumberland. The oldest parts of the building are beautiful; what is more, they embody so many memories for the thousands of pupils who have been educated on the Lismore Place site in the past 100 years.
We do not believe that the oldest parts of the Boys’ Grammar School would be allowed to disappear so easily. Nor should they. The history of ordinary people is important. Many, many girls from ordinary, working homes were given opportunities they could only have dreamed of before they gained access to the High School. Down the years the hall has housed many assemblies, carol services, public performances and concerts.
It has dignity, history and many, many memories for the men and women of Carlisle and far beyond our boundaries. This is not demolition, it is vandalism.
We will regret deeply the loss of this building, for the pupils whose memories it embodies, and for the city it served.
JEAN WIRTH and DAVID KEMP
Carlton Gardens
Stanwix
Carlisle
