Save Ashdown

11/09/2024

🏛️ ASHDOWN IN 🏛️

We know not how, other than by the sound judgment and impeccable sources of that esteemed organ, but Ashdown is featured in the current issue of Private Eye.

The article draws directly from our planning objection to the proposals, including on the observation that the plans as currently constituted are “entirely alien” both to Ashdown, and Sussex vernacular architecture.

has asked the developer to submit further information. The Latrobe Heritage Trust considers that, twenty months after the application was first submitted (the guideline for major applications being thirteen weeks), it is now appropriate that a determination be made on the application as it stands.

We expect more info in the coming weeks – stay tuned 📣

19/08/2024

A familiar face… and the 44th President of the United States.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., has President Barack Obama take the Oath of Office for a second time in the Map Room of the White House, 21 January 2009. (Official photo by ).

Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Ashdown’s architect, watches carefully over the proceedings.

President Thomas Jefferson, the 3rd President of the United States, appointed Latrobe as Surveyor of the Public Buildings in March 1803. This portrait was painted by Charles Willson Peale in c.1804.

Latrobe designed the East and West wings, and porticos, for what was then known as the President’s House. describes Latrobe and Jefferson as “intellectual and architectural soul mates”, although they would occasionally clash.

In a frustrated letter to his assistant, John Lenthall, in 1805, Latrobe wrote: “I am sorry that I am cramped in this design by his [Jefferson’s] prejudices in favor of the old French books, out of which he fishes everything, but it is a small sacrifice to my personal attachment to him to humor him, and the less so, because the style of the Colonnade he proposes is exactly coincident with Hoban’s Pile,—a litter of pigs worthy of the great Sow it surrounds, and of the Irish boar, the father of her.” (James Hoban, the White House’s principal architect, was Irish.)

The only problem was that he accidentally sent this letter to Jefferson instead of to Lenthall. The President returned it claiming not to have read it, although it was later apparent that he had. Thankfully their friendship endured, and Jefferson reappointed Latrobe to this position in 1815, where he focussed on works to rebuild the US Capitol – where Latrobe’s works were more fruitful and consequential than at the White House – after it was burnt by the British in August 1814.

14/08/2024

🚨 ONE DAY LEFT TO ACT FOR ASHDOWN

Urgent: have your say to Wealden District Council before the deadline – 23.59 UK time on Friday 16 August. If you haven’t sent your email yet, now is the time. It will take you approximately two minutes.

Internationally important heritage in Sussex, near Forest Row, built by the White House and US Capitol architect, and a WWI war memorial, are at risk of destruction to build 47 luxury apartments and suburban houses.

Ashdown House was built by Benjamin Henry Latrobe in 1793. It is a place of beauty, refinement and innovation. It’s one of the earliest Greek Revival houses in Britain and includes parts of a manor house recorded in occupation from 1285.

The plans mean:

🧵🏘️ Using a loophole to provide NIL affordable housing, and avoiding £2 million in developer contributions to local schools and GPs
⛪️ Destruction of a Chapel built as a WWI war memorial, to be turned into a one-bed flat
🎭🏊 Demolition of a theatre and swimming pool
🚮 Pointless demolition causing 3,572 tonnes of landfill waste
🚗 Destroying a footpath and bridleway, placing a new development with 100+ cars at the end of a winding 1km single-lane track.

Our campaign hub (link in bio) includes useful information on why Ashdown matters, what threats it faces, and what you can do to help.

Support a viable alternative for Ashdown; see our website for more info.

📣 The deadline for comment to Wealden District Council is Friday 16 August. Make sure you have your say. SHARE this post and tell at least three of your friends.

10/08/2024

After a long hiatus, the developer has filed the final application for development at Ashdown. The deadline for comments is now less than a week away; i.e. Ashdown needs you to send an email to Wealden District Council with your views by *23.59 this Friday 16 August*. More on how, what and why below.

Skip/scroll to the ‘How to help’ section below, at the bottom of this post, if you’re in a hurry, or see our website https://www.latrobeheritage.org.uk/save-ashdown . Otherwise, read on.

The Latrobe Heritage Trust remains gravely concerned that these plans would cause severe and irreparable damage to a building and site of international significance.

This remarkable building, a place of refinement, beauty and innovation, and a prototype for the US Capitol, has for the last four years been failed by its owner and failed by the state. Now is the time to do your bit to prevent plans which would destroy much of its historic fabric, and to saturate its historic landscape in low-quality, suburban housing.

The original plans, filed in December 2022, were widely condemned, including by Historic England, us, SAVE Britain's Heritage, the Georgian Group and hundreds of local people, including many of you.

The developer went away to lick their wounds, and commissioned some more paperwork. A few weeks ago, the updated plans were uploaded onto Wealden’s website.

In truth, very little has changed in this slightly updated application. So here’s a summary of what has changed:

Three victories for Ashdown (thanks in no small part to your lobbying last time round). The developer has backed down on their proposal for a 16ft-wide lift-shaft on the side of Latrobe’s Georgian villa. They have given up on trying to demolish part of the rear (Georgian/late Tudor) wall of the house. They've also given up on chopping the main house into two apartments ‘vertically’, i.e. the top floor stays with the two below.

However, these plans still entail a hugely damaging scheme of works to the house’s interior, described by Prof. Patrick Snadon as the ‘best-preserved Latrobe interior in the world’. More below.

Having been told by Historic England, us and you that their proposed development around the house was unacceptably ‘suburban’ (HE’s word), the developer has redesigned the surrounding development to add one more house, further densifying the north of the site. The proposed configuration is now larger, and still clearly ‘suburban’. See images below.

The proposed new buildings would be made from low quality materials which are entirely alien to the setting of the Latrobe building, and are not historically or geographically appropriate. These include composite cladding and dark brick, with a misplaced attempt at very modest decoration by placing some of the bricks beneath the windows at obverse angles. This change merely adds a further house to a group of dwellings which are egregiously out of keeping with either of Sussex vernacular architecture, the principles of the Greek Revival, or broader neoclassicism.

The updated papers talk about every aspect of the structure of the Latrobe house needing to be rated to 60 minutes’ fire resistance, but they don’t say how this would be achieved – an extraordinary oversight for a building of this historic significance. Indeed, the level of detail in the updated plans is so wanting as to make it difficult for the Latrobe Heritage Trust, or expert statutory consultees, including Historic England, to make a proper assessment.

So this change merely adds a further house to a group of dwellings which are egregiously out of keeping with either of Sussex vernacular architecture, the principles of the Greek Revival, or broader neoclassicism. Frankly, it’s extraordinary that the developer could think terraced, obviously suburban housing is appropriate to this setting. The proposed development around the house is now even more enormous, and remains entirely incongruous.

The developer also proposes to move around some bin and bike stores, and to move the car park – needed for the 110+ cars which would be used by residents to come and go – further away from their houses.

That’s it. Everything else remains the same.

So the main Grade II* building, which comprises the Latrobe villa and the original Tudor house, is still to be split – just into eight flats rather than nine.

To this end, the developer continues to propose a profoundly destructive scheme of demolition and construction works to divide the house, which will result inevitably in a substantial loss of historic fabric.

Historic buildings become very difficult to maintain when split into separate ownerships. While also gravely lacking in detail, even the developer’s own updated heritage impact statement admits that the proposals “still result in some negative effects on the historic significance” of the house.

This is a truly extraordinary admission.

There is also no change to the plan for the destruction of the interior of Ashdown’s Chapel, built in the Arts and Crafts style by Norman Evill in c.1930 as a war memorial to the fallen of the First and Second World Wars, for conversion into a flat.

The plans on flood risk and transport remain so insufficient as to have been criticised by the various councils. Nothing else has changed: this is still, ultimately, a proposal to carve up one of the finest houses in the country and a prototype for the US Capitol, to saturate it with suburban housing, and to provide the access for this development up a mile-long single-track bridleway.

In summary, and on the basis of continued professional advice, the Trust continues to consider that the proposals breach or fail to meet the requirements of 41 local and national planning policies, and that there are several technical flaws within the applications.

You can read our original January 2023 objection which sets this out in more detail on our website; with the exceptions of the changes above, which have not resulted in any changes to the breaches of policy, it stands. We will be submitting a formal response in line with the above in the coming days.

So what’s the alternative? It’s straightforward, it’s far more viable than this proposal and it could be brought into commission within months rather than years.

The buildings and facilities remain configured for a wide variety of educational and institutional uses. The expenditure they require for continued use as such is very limited as compared to the cost of demolition and housing development, which the application estimates to create 3,573 tonnes of landfill waste. The exorbitant cost of these works is the principal reason why these proposals are so excessive.

Retaining mixed residential and institutional/educational use would have minimal impact on the heritage of the site while continuing to provide (i) utility to the community and (ii) a level of public access and appreciation for the heritage at Ashdown. Even at the peak of Covid, the developer s understood only narrowly to have outbid a child carer’s respite charity. The market is now far more buoyant; there is no evidence that continued educational or institutional use is unviable. You can read more on the viable alternative for Ashdown on our website.

HOW TO HELP

Send an email by 23.59 on Friday 16 August to [email protected], subject line WD/2022/2372/MAJ and WD/2022/2373/LB , setting out your views. You can read the planning application here; listed building consent application here. You can visit the Save Ashdown campaign hub https://www.latrobeheritage.org.uk/save-ashdown . And you can read our original January 2023 objection which sets this out in more detail here.

SHARE this post, and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

Sign up to the mailing list if you haven’t already https://mailchi.mp/bbca707d46b1/save-ashdown . We’re firing up the engine of the campaign again, so you’ll see a number of posts in the coming week. To get the word out to as many people as possible, we’ll also be sponsoring the post to people locally - 500,000 people saw our digital campaign in January 2023.

Donate to the campaign https://wonderful.org/pay?ref=327409 . We’re a very small charity with limited resources, and we’re extremely grateful for the generous support we’ve received so far. Donations have so far printed 200 posters and paid for sponsored ads online; we’re also keeping funds back in case we have to challenge a planning decision in a judicial review in due course.

Sir Roger Scruton was right when he observed that “beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it did not matter.”

Thank you for your support in living as though it does.

Note: the plans and CGI images used in this post are copyrighted materials belonging to Den Architecture Ltd. They are used here solely for the purpose of criticism and review under the fair dealing provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. © 2024 Den Architecture Ltd. All rights reserved.

10/08/2024

🚨 Urgent appeal: have your say to Wealden District Council before the Friday 16 August deadline.

Internationally important heritage in Sussex, near Forest Row, built by the White House and US Capitol architect, and a WWI war memorial, are at risk of destruction to build 47 luxury apartments and suburban houses. The plans mean:

🧵🏘️ Using a loophole to provide NIL affordable housing, and avoiding £2 million in developer contributions to local schools and GPs
⛪️ The destruction of a Chapel built as a war memorial, to be turned into a one-bed flat
🚮 Pointless demolition causing 3,572 tonnes of landfill waste
🚗 Destroying a footpath and bridleway, placing a new development with 100+ cars at the end of a winding 1km single-lane track.

Our campaign hub includes useful information on why Ashdown matters, what threats it faces, and what you can do to help. Support a viable alternative for Ashdown; see our website for more info.

📣 The deadline for comment to Wealden District Council is Friday 16 August. Make sure you have your say. SHARE this post and tell at least three of your friends.

Help to save internationally significant heritage at Ashdown House, Sussex, from destruction and carving up into 47 luxury apartments and suburban houses. Find out how you can have your say and support the campaign today.

08/08/2024

🚨🏛️ Don’t like the sound of destroying internationally important heritage in Sussex to build 47 luxury apartments and suburban houses at the end of a 1km long single-lane track and bridleway?

🚮 Pointless demolition causing 3,572 tonnes of landfill waste?
🧵 A loophole to avoid £2 million in developer contributions to local services?
⛪️ The destruction of a Chapel built as a war memorial commemorating the fallen of the First and Second World Wars to be turned into a one-bed flat?

The application to carve this historic house into 47 units is BACK, and we’ve published our campaign hub. It explains what’s changed; includes lots of useful information on why Ashdown matters; what threats it faces; the viable and sustainable alternative for Ashdown; and what you can do to help.

Make sure you have your say in the next eight days – the deadline for comment to Wealden District Council is 23.59, Friday 16 August.

We won’t win this unless we work together. Please share this post and tell at least three of your friends. Thank you for your support.

Help to save internationally significant heritage at Ashdown House, Sussex, from destruction and carving up into 47 luxury apartments and suburban houses. Find out how you can have your say and support the campaign today.

13/07/2024

‼️🚨 The owner of Ashdown has published new plans for development. We’ll publish our views next week; stay tuned for posts which explain the new scheme and how you can help. The deadline for comment is 31 July. In the meantime, you can read the revised plans by clicking the Linktree link in our Instagram bio 🏛️

08/03/2024

Running a preservation campaign can sometimes feel a merely technical or political exercise.

It’s about getting people to realise why they care about our shared heritage. Awakening their interest, passion, curiosity. Telling them interesting stories they haven’t heard before.

And it’s about getting the people who make decisions to make ones which conserve it – not just to look on impassively as it is allowed to sink into the dust, at exorbitant profit to a distant developer who is indifferent to beauty; actively hostile to custodianship.

It is, in large part, an exercise in repeating oneself, in the odd hope that people come to believe that one is doing so because one is actually right – rather than merely mad.

But sometimes you must brook a little sadness, and that, indeed, is what I felt after receiving these pictures from a concerned neighbour.

These pictures show Ashdown – a Grade II* listed building, built in 1795, a prototype for the U.S. Capitol – continuing to decline and rot, remorselessly steadily, entirely predictably.

This remarkable building, a place of refinement, beauty and innovation, finds itself failed by its owner and failed by the state.

The developer’s own condition report, which he had to submit with his application for 47 houses on the site, stated that water was already pouring into the building three years ago.

Yet nothing has been done. Windows have been smashed and badly boarded up. What used to be the lawn is now oddly bestrewn with police tape, ripped across the encroaching brambles. The front of the house flows permanently with water. Fencing is blown down. The plastic classroom chairs which were familiar to me as a boy at Ashdown when it was a school, on which we used to sit in the Library on a rainy Wednesday afternoon probably pretending to read, sit upturned, random in the gardens. A plastic Ozymandias.

“What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.”

Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, the great chronicler of British architecture and a very sparing user of superlatives, called Ashdown “very perfect indeed”.

Sadly it is now very far from perfect. It is at its lowest ebb, yet the tide on which it floats continues to flow out.

The planning applications for such absurd development here should have been completed within 26 weeks, in line with government policy. Some 15 months later, they now sit in suspended animation, with no plan at all from the developer, Wealden District Council or Historic England for progress for the future of this place.

Meanwhile, the building is now incurring serious harm, and is at ever greater risk of catastrophic damage.

We formally asked Wealden District Council to take action within its legal powers to compel the owner to undertake vital, basic maintenance. We repeated this request in December 2023. It has not acted, and these images speak for themselves.

In December 2022, we asked Historic England to formally consider updating and upgrading Ashdown’s 70 year old listing as a matter of urgency. The listing is nine lines long and refers erroneously to Latrobe as a ‘Sussex Architect’. It was and is seriously inadequate as a summary of Ashdown’s historic significance.

But Historic England told us that we would have to pay £8,000 for the privilege of it doing its job, through its ‘cost recovery service’ - the entire sum of the charity’s bank balance at that stage. Its general counsel, Andrew Wiseman, told us that “we agree that an enhanced listing would help to provide greater clarity about the nature of [Ashdown’s] significance, but we don’t think that is the only way to ensure adequate protection in this case.” Country Life’s Athena column criticised this decision, and it defended itself in response in the national press, while refusing to act further. The listing remains unchanged.

The world is beset by problems, many of them distant from us and difficult to solve. Saving Ashdown is not in that category – it is absurd that it is being allowed to be degraded in this way, and only a few people need to change their minds and pull their levers for this not to be so.

Sir Roger Scruton, wrong about a few things, was right when he observed that “beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it did not matter.”

Sadness is just a more polite form of anger. It can and will motivate us to do useful things. To that end, the Latrobe Heritage Trust will be announcing the next steps in our plan by the end of this month, after a little more work behind the scenes.

I’ve waited patiently since the summer to update you on the proposals to carve up Ashdown House, and to saturate its historic landscape in low-quality, suburban housing - I’ve not wanted to send you pointless emails while there has been little to say.

But there is now no more time to wait, and it’s time to stop the rot.

This campaign won’t be won alone; it will only prevail with your help. Thank you for your support so far – we'll keep you posted over the next few weeks📣

PS. this campaign is far from over. We’re now able to accept online charitable donations to support our work. You can find more details about the Trust’s work here https://www.latrobeheritage.org.uk/about-us , and donate here https://wonderful.org/pay?ref=327409

PPS. you can read more about why Ashdown matters here https://www.latrobeheritage.org.uk/save-ashdown/why-ashdown-matters . And you can read about the viable alternatives for it here https://www.latrobeheritage.org.uk/save-ashdown/viable-alternatives

24/01/2024

Ashdown was built in 1793, a prototype for the US Capitol and the White House. It’s one of only two Latrobe buildings in Europe, and a place of refinement, beauty and innovation.

But it's slowly being saturated, smothered and destroyed, all in plain sight, while its housing developer owner refuses to fund crucial maintenance.

So we're pleased to announce that Save Britain's Heritage has added Ashdown to its Buildings at Risk list. This is another important step in raising its plight, and one towards giving this remarkable place a viable future.

https://www.savebritainsheritage.org/campaigns/item/886/Reuse-Me-Dont-Lose-Me-2023-Buildings-at-Risk-New-Entries-List

Stay tuned for a fuller campaign update soon – there's good news too! 📣

07/06/2023

The charity which runs this campaign, the Latrobe Heritage Trust, is now able to accept donations online.

If you're interested in chipping in, see our website https://www.latrobeheritage.org.uk/support-us for more information or donate here https://wonderful.org/pay?ref=327409 .

More updates on Ashdown when we have them!

Making a donation to Latrobe Heritage Trust with Wonderful Payments is fee-free. The charity will receive every penny.