A symbol of decline
There’s a framed print in my study; Canaletto’s “The Piazza San Marco, Venice”, that annoyingly, from time to time, tilts to the right; Canaletto’s calm Venetian scene is then unbalanced, needing a little nudge to the left to straighten it. I think I am not alone in thinking that most of us prefer some kind of order in the world, be it straightening the Canaletto; arranging the furniture; or wanting a city created for the pleasure of the eye.
I was musing this over, looking out of the bus window, when, just before the traffic lights at the bottom of Lower Rock Gardens, I saw, yet again, the dilapidated state of the late Victorian seaside shelter, which has worsened over the last nine months. I wondered, “Why has there been no attempt during this time to preserve this heritage asset?” In its prime the shelter would have been well maintained and valued; it might not have been thought of then as a heritage asset, just as a shelter to protect people from the weather and a place to rest a while.
Today, this shelter could easily be transplanted from some Third World country’s poor shanty town into Brighton. Today, it houses those poor unfortunates who don’t have a home; it has become their home; a home whose windows have been replaced with found bits of sodden cardboard to keep out the prevailing wind, the original windows being smashed or removed for “safety”’ reasons. Is the council reluctant to move the homeless on from the shelter in order to renovate it? They didn’t have such reluctance recently in New Road, where they “solved the problem” of the homeless gathering on the award winning, long wooden bench, by removing the bench and so moving the “problem” on to another part of the city. The city lost an exceptional piece of seat furniture.
As for the late Victorian seaside shelter, perhaps a pot of paint and the will to improve this heritage asset – before the council have other ideas for it – might do the trick. It may not be a Canaletto, but the paint might just brighten up and straighten out this part of the city.
