John Heawood (Letters, April 30) is spot-on. Swinson house is worth keeping.
The council architect’s recently expressed view runs: ‘The building has suffered a lot of damaging, unsympathetic repairs over the years’.
Then fix it and imaginatively develop it! Don’t let uncaring developers interested purely in profit rampage through the city, sensitive areas and all.
Look at the old Clifford Street Fire Station for what a sympathetic and switched-on developer can achieve.
I hope my local councillors opposed this wrong step. Don’t flock to the banner ‘Let’s pull it down to build something worse’.
Do we need more hotels transforming York into ‘anywhereville’? Why can’t those ‘masters of the blah-di-blah’, the denizens of West Offices, heed wise, experienced and qualified York voices who have a real feel for the city rather than making way for the bland and banal?
At this rate of ‘progress’ the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall is going to feel lonely. While the council is allowing these characterless edifices to proliferate across town, anonymising this once special and distinctive city, we apparently crave World Heritage Site status. Bonkers!
Derek Reed, Middlethorpe Drive, York
Blue Beck House blues
Yet again we see developers wanting to demolish a grand Victorian House - Blue Beck House off Shipton Road - to build a supposed state of the art facility (Plans submitted for 72-bed care home in York, The Press, May 2).
No doubt it will be granted and we’ll have another concrete and cheap brick building to admire, not.
Dave Matthewman, Green Lane, Acomb
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