IF you have been to Milton Abbot recently you will notice that the village hall has been re-clad in corrugated iron and the timber windows have been restored. I understand the Historic Buildings Officer insisted the hall be restored in materials to match the original.
It would have been easy to recover the roof in cheap slate, clad the walls in magnolia painted render and install white so called ?low maintenance? uPVC windows.
Much is made of the issue of local distinctiveness in the town planning system, but in practice it rarely happens ? much of the built environment currently is the result of mixing a limited palette of ?approved? materials, forms and colours that conform to a perceived notion of what the locality looks like, with little consideration given to the actual content of the site. The result is a dummed-down type of formula architecture which is in no way ?local?.
There is a strong local tradition of building in corrugated iron that has come from the humble agricultural shed. It now stands alongside slate, thatch, stone, cob and render as a so called ?traditional? material and it is wholly appropriate that the character of the village hall should be retained.
I think Milton Abbot Village Hall looks great and wish to congratulate the Planning Department for thinking outside the (metal) box!
Graeme Barclay
RIBA Chartered Architect
Venn Hill
Milton Abbot