Spot on - especially with regard to the financing model. Funding this through housing is not the way forward. Keep the Civic buildings and just get the pools working again. How difficult can it be.
The Save the Face of Forest Hill campaign is ongoing in its opposition to the demolition of the frontage block of the Pools and Louise House. As a reminder, you can sign the petition at:
We are also urging all interested parties to attend the Council organised Public Meeting to discuss the pools plans at Forest Hill Methodist Church, Normanton Street, Forest Hill, London SE23 at 7pm on Thursday 21st August 2008 to air their views.
Yes fantastic. Lets festoon the area with loads more clapped out redundant buildings. There can never be enough of them.
The Thames is good enough to swim in, isn't it- what more can we want.
I do wish the local fossil collectors would move to Lyme Regis instead of further depriving local Forest Hill people of modern much needed facilities and homes.
It is actually possible to have buildings de listed especially when its in the public interest. I am sure many of us will be looking into that.
Whilst I'm not quite as vexed as our friend Roz, I must admit that I find this latest development quite depressing - enough to break my self-imposed silence on this matter/thread.
I can understand the need to create a Listed Building register to protect unique items of our shared heritage, but we must also realise that society moves on. We cannot, and should not, preserve buildings for the sake of it. Louise House is NOT a beautiful building nor does it have the kind of unique history that BBC Period Dramas are made of.
I speak as a parent who desperately would like his two kids to be able to choose to go swimming regularly in a local pool. Instead, every time we consider it, we must plan excursions to Beckenham or elsewhere involving the car. We are lucky, we have the car, but what about others, and what about the ability to do something "in the community"?
Do we HONESTLY think that the vast majority of SE23 residents would choose to keep the buildings over having a pool and facilities they can use? I do not.
Preservation of the status quo would have meant that there would have been no pools in the first place. This would all have been a big forest and instead we could be grazing our sheep here a few weeks a year.
I'm fairly certain the distinguished Victorian gentleman who bequeathed the area and built the pools in the public interest would laugh out loud at such nonsense. He built a 'modern' pool of the time. It is now time to take that baton and run with it by building the kind of place he would have built if he were around today.
I am not a fan of what the Council were proposing, and I think that they were misguided in their approach to the development process, and had demonstrated little reason to trust them with this running this building as I blame them entirely for getting us into this mess. However, listing Louise House is not the answer.
I hope most of you know who know me (including many who will disagree with my position) understand that I do love Forest Hill, and that I do my utmost to make it a better place, but I find this entire thing very depressing.
Personally, I wanted to go swimming in a local pool with my son and daughter some time before the next Olympics. I honestly believe that this will never happen now.
That is a bizarre, verbose and ill-informed response from both Roz and Robwinton. Until you have read all 12 pages of the EH and DCMS report I feel you would be wise to reserve judgement.
It is a pity that so much comment on this issue has been equally ill-informed. Why not rejoice in another listed building in Forest Hill.
For a random selection of items on local history visit my blog at:
http://sydenhamforesthillhistory.blogspot.com/
Rob Winton has summed up this situation perfectly. As a Father with a 3 year old daughter myself, I had already considered Option 2 would provide us with a reasonable (if not perfect) facility. Not everyone will be pleased with whatever outcome transpires, but it is clear that any short term endeavours may end up on the back burner. Like FH Central across the way, it is clear building costs will not be met if there is a cash shortfall caused by dithering, protest and a declining economy.
My daughter loves swimming, and we live a couple of minutes walk from the train Station. I would love to be able to take her swimming more often, even in the evenings when I return from work, but presently, each occasion requires a walk to Sydenham and then a bus journey. Typically a 70-80 minute trip each way as opposed to a few minutes walk. Whilst I appreciate that many would consider it a luxury to have a decent facility on your doorstep, we are fortunate enough to be on the threshold of potentially getting just that, or perhaps, we were on the threshold. A decent, local child friendly pool is all I want and I am sure many share this view. If my daughter could swim 2 or 3 times a week rather than just once or twice a month as at present I would be very happy.
I have a keen interest in architecture and have seen many great buildings disapear before their time. I try to take a balanced view of such situations and feel the site has only a minor historical value. In my mind, the site does not warrant listing status, and this "win" simply means the building is now a pawn to protect the existing pool as none of the plans offered can proceed without clearance of both sites.
Many locals are growing tired of waiting and simply want the convenience of local, modern, working facilities. I suspect that this building will now simply become a great weight around our collective necks.
I look forward to reading the report and would be happy to put it on the web if Steve can send it to me. Then everybody can make well informed responses.
I hope that Lewisham Council can now find a two pools solution on the site with Louise House still present and hopefully used for the community as it was intended (well not quite as it was intended as a place to teach local girls to become washerwomen for the upper classes).
Whatever the architectural merits of Louise House is has been partially vacant for many years providing no use to the community and from the outside it has little architectural merit. For too long it has been yet another poorly maintained and under-utilised site in Forest Hill the listed status could easily maintain this situation if the council/architects are not imaginative.
stevegrindlay - you know I have the utmost respect for you, your knowledge and your commitment to the area and even our friendship. It is one of the reasons I have not jumped into this discussion to date and avoid upsetting friends who happen to have different views to mine, but what could the report possibly include to make the pools arrive faster?
The building is now listed so it cannot be replaced. If anything it might mean finding a way to "incorporate" the building or the facade into a facility. I very much doubt that will be ever be achieved in a satisfactory way.
What else do you expect, or know, these reports to include that might change my mind? I'd love to know. I have read your views / watched your video / listened to your talks on the historic importance of the buildings and yet I am not convinced, so I beg to differ - that's all. My PERSONAL priority is to get a swimming facility in Forest Hill as soon as possible.
I have a 3 year old and a newborn. I am totally convinced that neither of them will be swimming in Forest Hill until at least 2012, and quite possibly never will. That is not a good result.
Please feel free to convince me otherwise without calling me bizarre, verbose or ill-informed.
St Pancreas was a 'clapped out old building' given a new lease of life. Lots of old buildings have including the Kentish Town Pools in North London. The Horniman has a modern extension which contrasts with the old building brilliantly.
It's a shame the council never considered this as an option from the beginning. Now it will have to and hopefully we will all get the pools and the buildings we can all be proud of without making the area look like Milton Keynes with generic cheap as chips architecture.
Perhaps Roz should go and live in Milton Keynes if she hates 'clapped out old buildings'.
I think some of the nashing of teeth is unnecessary.
The Save the Face of Forest Hill campaign has always maintained that Louise House and the frontage block of the pools building should be preserved. English Heritage clearly agree with us about Louise House and they do so for good and interesting reasons. I hope I have succeeded in attaching the two relevant documents.
Like several people who have posted I also have young children who want to go swimming and end up travelling in the car. We fully support the Council in building new pools on this site. The solution is obvious: build new pools behind the facade of the old using, if necessary, the extra land which currently forms the under-used park to the north.
To be honest, I think that is the common sense solution. It is perfectly possible and then swimmers and lovers of the historic (I and my family are both) will all be happy.
Thanks Tim, I hadnt reaslised the historic significance if Louisa House -how interesting! The council should put this building to good use.
What a pity there are people who would like to see these buildings destroyed because it's the quickest (if quick is an appropriate word!) solution to getting the pools back in use. While we want our pools back, I'm not convinced we need more flats in Forest Hill and at what price to the history of the area? The whole thing smells of a political agenda to meet housing targets rather than what is best for Forest Hill.
The Council should be ashamed of themselves for allowing the pools to decay in the first place. If the Council had run a fair and proper consultation (years ago) we may well be nearer to having our pools available before 2012. It's a disgrace but is the compromise worth it?
I think the ire of those who are upset at the lack of swimming facilities would be best directed at the clowns at Lewisham who failed to maintain the existing building until it became unuseable, and who have then messed around for the last 3 years pretending they were seriously considering preserving the existing buildings but achieving precisely nothing.
Is "Give us a pool! Any pool!" the best way to respond to all this?
But then, Roz, you have always been a cheerleader for all things Labour and Lewisham and we well know not to expect any deviation from the party line into the dangerous realms of independent thought on the matter.
I think unfair to attack Roz or for that matter anyone else on that basis.
She is fully entitiled to her views
Unusually for me I find myself in the middle on this.
I can see the need to hold onto our history this is very very important but also see the desire for others to get a pool asap.
Am I alone in feeling that both cases have very valid points.
I am a member of English Heritage. I have never been in Louise House but from the outside never considered it to be that remarkable, then again I am no expert.
I expect the council will say that retaining LH will mean the price of all options will increase and therefore the matter will be delayed for some time, but of course could be wrong.
Moaning about what the council should've done in the past isn't going to get us a new pool.
This listing doesn't make it any more likely, in my view, that we'll save the pool and surrounding buildings.
It makes it more likely we won't get a pool at all, and the whole plot lies derelict for years until the market perks up. Then it'll be sold off for housing.
And hasn't the point been lost that in the initial consulatation, the majority of respondents opted for new build over retention? The Mayor could quite happily at that point gone for newbuild and claimed majority support for that action.
I bet he wished he'd listened to the majoriity and gone for it then.
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