Bastion House & Museum Of London – Mass Support For Retrofitting & Opposition To Demolition

The B

arbican Quarter Action (BQA) campaign meeting against the demolition of London Wall West on Tuesday 17 January 2023 proved a huge success, with St Giles church in Cripplegate filled with hundreds of supporters. Below we’ll simply quote from the BQA mail out about the event sent on 18 January. Prior to that just a note on a small detail of this very well organised and much needed campaign.

The BQA had already produced badges in support of their anti-demolition campaign and it is great to see there are now banners too. However new to us at the meeting were the Bastion House and Museum of London postcards with BQA online links. It was a sharp move to provide free campaign postcards the month non-barcoded stamps go out of use. Sending the cards to a few friends is clearly a great way to get the word out and deploy stamps that might otherwise be wasted if not used within the next couple of weeks. While a very small thing, this kind of touch and timing that shows how on the ball the BQA campaign is.

And of course there was good follow up on Twitter, as well with this, the BQA’s 18 January 2023 email.

The Twentieth Century Society places Bastion House and the Museum of London on their Buildings At Risk list in another blow to the City’s plans

At a packed meeting in St Giles’s Church last night, Coco Whittaker, Senior Caseworker at the Twentieth Century Society, announced that Bastion House and the Museum of London are being recognised as one of the ten most threatened 20th century buildings in the UK and are being placed on their Buildings at Risk list.

This is a highly significant moment and another blow to the City’s plans to create an inappropriate new office development at London Wall West. The Twentieth Century Society confirmed that it will campaign for Bastion House and Museum of London to be identified as Designated Heritage Assets that merit protection.

The City was granted a Certificate of Immunity from Listing until August 2024 in the context of the Centre for Music scheme. Clearly the City’s current plans for LWW have little or no cultural or heritage merit, but the immunity from listing still stands. Demolition can therefore, in principle, take place anytime before August 2024, whether under permitted development rights or following the granting of planning permission by the City’s own Planning and Transportation Committee. But all our energies are focussed on stopping the seemingly relentless cycle of demolition and new build.

The Twentieth Century Society’s significant announcement is a clear warning to the City that their plans will be carefully scrutinised at national level and major objections will continue to be made from a wide range of expert sources.

At the same meeting, renowned architect Ian Chalk gave valuable insight into the growing trend to refit and refurbish existing structures, using the successful re-purposing of the brutalist style Camden Town Hall extension (which was also on the Twentieth Century Buildings at Risk Register) as a case study. It was clear from how the developer approached this project and what was achieved, that the City has never seriously investigated with due diligence the potential to refit and re-purpose Bastion House and the Museum of London.

The demolition of Bastion House and the MoL will release 45,000 tons of C02 into the atmosphere – a huge and entirely avoidable contribution to the climate crisis and one which directly flies in the face of the City’s net zero policy for the Square Mile.

Videos of the presentations by the Twentieth Century Society and Ian Chalk will be available on the BQA website in the coming days.

Revised proposals from the City for the LWW scheme are expected in the next two months and BQA will of course keep everyone aware of any news or developments and will continue to do everything possible to make the City stop and re-think their ill-conceived plans.