Reader’s letter: Take Eastbourne back to when Britain did elegance

I wrote recently about my dismay that Airbourne would be back.

However, my purpose this time is to ask how is it that nitwits are recruited for our highway systems and town planning? The last people to be involved with our roads and highways should be highways engineers. In that same demented way, the council use town planners to determine construction of properties. Hence, years of monstrosities and bland buildings.

The Cavendish Hotel on the seafront is a fine example of an Eastbourne in grander days. A lovely building until it took a hit from a German bomb. Instead of restoring the building to its former glory, the council gave permission for the construction of a carbuncle on the side of an elegant foot. It beggars belief that such a thing could happen. Equally, the Congress Theatre, vaunted as a listed building, is ugly and lacks the sort of atmosphere theatres must have to earn the title ‘theatre’.

The Eastbourne seafront has a fine history of elegant buildings that came about at a time when Britain understood elegance; sadly, those days have long gone.

A council with imagination and creativity, could have turned Eastbourne into a seaside town for the affluent and stylish visitor. However, the finest example of council stupidity and ineptitude is The View Hotel!

It may be a good hotel, I don’t know.

Nevertheless, no matter how good it is as an hotel, it is an extremely ugly building, and its hideous roof would not be out of place atop a high security prison. It is as far removed from elegance as it is possible to get.

Some have said they are convinced it was allowed because of the ‘old boys’ network of ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’.

I see it as a scandal.

I have been in the View Hotel; I was out with a friend who expressed a desire to have a drink.

We were next to this hotel so went in. At the bar I asked the young lady serving, if it was true the hotel had something to do with unions.

She said it did; so, I ordered a pint of Thatchers Gold. Its former union connection does offer something of an explanation as to the ugly design of the building.

The union involved, at the time, must have sought the help of a one-time architect of Josef Stalin.

Britain is in decline. ‘The richer Britain gets the poorer it thinks of itself’*.

*Bill Bryson – The Road to Little Dribbling.

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