Things That Should Not Have Been Built in Britain

[Serial_Apologist]

Power cables can be put underground & therefore cause virtually no disturbance to the landscape; it's too much trouble for the power companies to do so so they pretend that it's 'uneconomic' (ie it reduces their profits).

The M8 through the middle of Glasgow

The M74 extension/completion

I'm probably alone on this thread in quite liking pylons. An admision that probably cost me a job interview on a country estate in Suffolk a few years ago! For me there is a gracefulness about their shape - unlike the unanimously 90 degrees plastic upward-thrusting vertical windmills; and they lend a sense of distance that is otherwise curtailed by horizons being as far as one can see and therefore imagine. I guess it's having being brought up with them that makes them an inevitable part of much loved landscapes with which I am familiar. Going to Ipswich today? Follow the power lines! I like the shorter, wooden ones too. And I do miss telegraph poles, which used to be everywhere lining country roads, not just railway tracks.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I'm probably alone on this thread in quite liking pylons. An admision that probably cost me a job interview on a country estate in Suffolk a few years ago! For me there is a gracefulness about their shape - unlike the unanimously 90 degrees plastic upward-thrusting vertical windmills; and they lend a sense of distance that is otherwise curtailed by horizons being as far as one can see and therefore imagine. I guess it's having being brought up with them that makes them an inevitable part of much loved landscapes with which I am familiar. Going to Ipswich today? Follow the power lines! I like the shorter, wooden ones too. And I do miss telegraph poles, which used to be everywhere lining country roads, not just railway tracks.

I have met a few people who, like yourself, like pylons. Possibly it's the cables that cause the greater offence.

[Serial_Apologist]

I have met a few people who, like yourself, like pylons. Possibly it's the cables that cause the greater offence.

Quite possibly, EA; the issue of cancer incidence in their vicinity has never been satisfactorily explained away.

[An_Inspector_Calls]

Do you mean wind-turbines? On-shore, I'd agree. Offshore, no, they are very useful.

No, I mean windmills. On shore they're ugly, useless and subsidised. Offshore they're only useless and subsidised.

[An_Inspector_Calls]

Now why didn't I think of that? It's the best example of The Emperor's New Clothes I can think of. It's rusting away much too slowly.

Thankfully, it won't rust away, it's made of Corton weather resistant steel.

[MrGongGong]

Now why didn't I think of that? It's the best example of The Emperor's New Clothes I can think of..

BINGO

Not as much as Titian matey

[cloughie]

I went on a train that stopped at Ripon station in 1958.

Another sad victim of Butcher Beeching!

[Flosshilde]

I'm probably alone on this thread in quite liking pylons. ... For me there is a gracefulness about their shape -

Oh no you're not!

And I do miss telegraph poles, which used to be everywhere lining country roads, not just railway tracks.

[AmpH]

Ikea

Garden Centres

[Lateralthinking1]

Offices and trains in which the windows don't open.

Non-electric milk floats.

Motorways that come to an end in illogical places.

[Bax-of-Delights]

The Whitgift Centre, Croydon.

One only has to visit this fright of a town and its windy, god-forsaken retail space, now replete with the knuckle-draggers and pram-faced denizens, to realise how far town centre development had got out of kilter. What it replaced was the elegant Trinity School of Whitgift built in 1596 and its romantic Gothic towers and verdant lawns dominated Croydon and deemed, one presumes, far too elitist to rub shoulders with Kennards, Alders and Grant Brothers in the new, bright dawn of shopping civilization of the 70's.
This is what it looked like before the bulldozer arrived:

http://www.trinity-school.org/page/?title=History+of+School&pid=44

This is what it looks like now:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Whitgift_Centre,_Wellesley_Road_entrance_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1629630.jpg

To my utter and eternal shame I worked on that building site in the 60's during school holidays.

[Hornspieler]

Originally Posted by Serial_Apologist I'm probably alone on this thread in quite liking pylons. An admision that probably cost me a job interview on a country estate in Suffolk a few years ago! For me there is a gracefulness about their shape - unlike the unanimously 90 degrees plastic upward-thrusting vertical windmills; and they lend a sense of distance that is otherwise curtailed by horizons being as far as one can see and therefore imagine. I guess it's having being brought up with them that makes them an inevitable part of much loved landscapes with which I am familiar. Going to Ipswich today? Follow the power lines! I like the shorter, wooden ones too. And I do miss telegraph poles, which used to be everywhere lining country roads, not just railway tracks.

Some years ago, I was driving back to Bournemouth from Exeter on the A 35 when, near Axminster I suddenly encountered the most terrifying fog.

It was terrifyng because it lay on the road and only came up to the level of my bonnet. My headlamps were of no use, they were inside the fog and simply turned it into a sea of milky white. I could see a lovely full moon and thousands of stars on a clear winter's night. But I would have been in deep trouble had it not been for the telegraph poles along the side of the road which I was able to steer by until I emerged some few hundred yards later into clear air.

A strange phenominum. I have never seen anything like it since, but those telegraph poles were my salvation that night.

HS

[Boilk]

The cretinous Angel of the North. Not only is it an eyesore (a giant biped with aeroplane wings in place of arms) but its apparent success has encouraged other artists into thinking "crap art will be condoned, even lauded, if you simply up the scale to XXXL".

This is exactly what has happened with Mark Wallinger's giant White Horse at Ebbsfleet in Kent (dubbed the Angel of the South) ... shortlisted, but thankfully shelved (so far) for lack of the estimated £12m in funding required

[Lateralthinking1]

The Whitgift Centre, Croydon.

One only has to visit this fright of a town and its windy, god-forsaken retail space, now replete with the knuckle-draggers and pram-faced denizens, to realise how far town centre development had got out of kilter. What it replaced was the elegant Trinity School of Whitgift built in 1596 and its romantic Gothic towers and verdant lawns dominated Croydon and deemed, one presumes, far too elitist to rub shoulders with Kennards, Alders and Grant Brothers in the new, bright dawn of shopping civilization of the 70's.
This is what it looked like before the bulldozer arrived:

http://www.trinity-school.org/page/?title=History+of+School&pid=44

This is what it looks like now:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Whitgift_Centre,_Wellesley_Road_entrance_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1629630.jpg

To my utter and eternal shame I worked on that building site in the 60's during school holidays.

Well, I went for an interview at the new Trinity School of Whitgift, among others, in 1974. I then came to know one of the other schools of the Whitgift Foundation rather better. The building of Whitgift School in Haling Park, South Croydon has something of the appearance of the first Trinity School. It is constant and aloof in its own grounds. One might ask who sold the land for the Whitgift Centre and profited. No prizes for good guesses. I have no memory of the centre of Croydon before the Whitgift Centre. It is though worth saying that rather than being indicative of crass modernity, your references to Kennards, Grants and Allders evoke nostalgia. The first two went decades ago. At least one is now an amusement arcade containing shops. Allders closed this year. As you will be aware, it was the only one that adjoined the Whitgift Centre as well as the main road. In the 1980s, it had the third biggest floor area of any store in Britain and the biggest outside of London. Huge numbers of jobs have gone. It is a shanty town.

If Croydon was and is effectively my home town, I would not have chosen to have lived even here on the outskirts of what was once known as Mini Manhattan. It is not at all surprising that in 1982 I opted to study in a traditional cathedral city. At the same time, there was some scope to view its modernity in a positive light. I am not all for the old. But when the words went onto the buildings and a roof was constructed unsympathetically over the Whitgift Centre, one could see what the planners thought they were doing. They thought they were bringing the place up to date. The impact was the opposite and ramshackle is not the half of it. The almshouses still stand. They are defiantly all-powerful. No one with any clout in the borough could touch them. But when one walks past them - and I rarely venture there now - they appear to be cowering from the downbeat nature of it all. Yes, there is street theatre to add splashes of colour but absolutely nothing works harmoniously. And that, I regret, is the 1960s legacy.

[MrGongGong]

The cretinous Angel of the North. Not only is it an eyesore (a giant biped with aeroplane wings in place of arms) but its apparent success has encouraged other artists into thinking "crap art will be condoned, even lauded, if you simply up the scale to XXXL".

This is exactly what has happened with Mark Wallinger's giant White Horse at Ebbsfleet in Kent (dubbed the Angel of the South) ... shortlisted, but thankfully shelved (so far) for lack of the estimated £12m in funding required

Absolutely...... and while your at it lets get rid of Nelsons column and all the other so called "sculpture" that litters the country
i've even heard that there's a chalk man with a huge ................................