I was interested to read Stephen Lewis’s item on Severus Hill (The Press, May 18). I hope the campaign to save this nature haven succeeds.

What about the hill’s ‘crowning glory’, the water tower? Along with Holgate Windmill and Poppleton Road School, it’s a distinctive feature that enhances the built environment of that part of York.

Is it listed? - not in the Pisa-leaning sense but graded, recorded and safeguarded by the the Dept of Culture etc guided by Historic England?

I assume the tower no longer fulfils its original purpose.

I’ve been fascinated by that structural landmark since my youth and somehow bracketed it with the nearby windmill…water and wind.

Derek Reed, Middlethorpe Drive, York

 

What about Piccadilly?

Following the removal of a wooden board advertising the Happy Valley Chinese Restaurant, the campaigner Gordon Campbell Thomas says he is happy that at long last sanity is starting to prevail in Goodramgate (Press online, May 21).

So now that street is sorted, with one sign gone and another to be determined by a planning inspector, Mr Campbell Thomas can concentrate on a far more serious manifestation of ‘vandalism’ in Piccadilly, where completely alien and intrusive shipping containers continue to blight the central historic core.

That is an abomination that really does need an injection of sanity. Or is the Ghost of William Etty mysteriously selective as to which parts of the city will get a haunting?

Matthew Laverack, Lord Mayors Walk, York