In response to John Lawrence's now-deleted comment. Why photograph something ypu be;leve to be ugly?
To draw attention to the fact, and also a way of expressing my distress, instead of letting it simmer inside. The above houses are not particularly ugly, as they do at least have their original windows, but it's such a shame when the old brickwork is destroyed.
Just one house can spoil a whole street, as it sticks out like a sore thumb, and then others follow suit and the area becomes a hotchpotch of clashing colours, with the subtle shades of brick now lost forever.
I used to live in a big city, where it was like looking for a needle in a haystack to find a single private house that was still in its original state. And this change happened virtually overnight, in the late 80s or early 90s.
Fortunately, the situation is not so bad in Oxford, where they have several 'conservation areas' which forbid exterior wall painting and UPVC replacement windows. I am lucky to live in one such area, but it's like shutting the stable after the horse has bolted, because many houses had already been spoiled before the regulations came into force. However, the good news is that anyone replacing their plastic windows now has to revert back to wood!
Four decades ago, drives and front gardens were paved in the then-fashionable "crazy paving" - a matrix of odd-shaped chunks of broken pavement slabs with mortar filling the gaps, usually without proper excavation or foundation, and hence liable to break apart within a short time.
You don't need to describe it, as my father crazy-paved our front driveway and made a good job of it. But I see from streetview that the entire front garden is now asphalted, with no floral ornamentation whatsoever. My mother's lovingly tended rockery has gone, along with the hydrangea in the centre of the lawn and the beautiful broom bushes at the side.
But the front of the house has some hideous crazy-cladding on the lower half. Surely they didn't recycle my father's carefully laid slabs! But on closer inspection, this is stone cladding rather than concrete.
To complete the transmogrification, the homely-looking porch has now been closed off by a ubiquitous white plastic door. Don't they realise that the purpose of an open porch is to protect callers from the rain whilst waiting for an answer to their knock? Even if the outer door is left unlocked, most people are too shy to open it and stand inside.
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5 comments
Isisbridge said:
Why photograph something ypu be;leve to be ugly?
To draw attention to the fact, and also a way of expressing my distress, instead of letting it simmer inside. The above houses are not particularly ugly, as they do at least have their original windows, but it's such a shame when the old brickwork is destroyed.
Just one house can spoil a whole street, as it sticks out like a sore thumb, and then others follow suit and the area becomes a hotchpotch of clashing colours, with the subtle shades of brick now lost forever.
I used to live in a big city, where it was like looking for a needle in a haystack to find a single private house that was still in its original state. And this change happened virtually overnight, in the late 80s or early 90s.
Fortunately, the situation is not so bad in Oxford, where they have several 'conservation areas' which forbid exterior wall painting and UPVC replacement windows. I am lucky to live in one such area, but it's like shutting the stable after the horse has bolted, because many houses had already been spoiled before the regulations came into force. However, the good news is that anyone replacing their plastic windows now has to revert back to wood!
example of a 'sore thumb'
Howard Somerville said:
Isisbridge replied to Howard Somerville:
Howard Somerville replied to Isisbridge:
Isisbridge replied to Howard Somerville:
But the front of the house has some hideous crazy-cladding on the lower half. Surely they didn't recycle my father's carefully laid slabs! But on closer inspection, this is stone cladding rather than concrete.
To complete the transmogrification, the homely-looking porch has now been closed off by a ubiquitous white plastic door. Don't they realise that the purpose of an open porch is to protect callers from the rain whilst waiting for an answer to their knock? Even if the outer door is left unlocked, most people are too shy to open it and stand inside.