Deborah E. B. Weiner
Introduction
The re-use of historic buildings for purposes of redevelopment in the name of ‘heritage’ and ‘preservation’ is a complicated, and at times disturbing, global phenomenon with counterparts in every major city. In England the fabric of historic buildings, and even whole building types, have been threatened and lost in the property boom of the 1990s – and the process continues. Some buildings are not necessarily lost to wholesale demolition but rather to what has, in fact, been carried out in the name of ‘preservation’. The concerns of both preservationists and historians have been seriously distorted by powerful market forces. Indeed, England faces a time when its ‘heritage’ will be read largely as a generic ‘past’ erased of the lived experience which makes its vast building stock a testimony to those who came before. The process is distinct from the familiar re-use of old buildings in cities, understood as organic, happening over time. It differs in crucial ways – in size, speed and scale of investment and also in the extent to which ‘heritage’ is used to justify and support redevelopment rather than oppose it.
While this process is being played out throughout the country, a particularly striking example exists in north London with the recent transformation of the nation’s most notorious nineteenth-century lunatic asylum, once the second Middlesex County Pauper Lunatic Asylum, or Colney Hatch, into luxury condominiums1 (Figures 9.1 and 9.2). The former hospital, closed in 1993, has been converted by the developers, Comer Homes, a subsidiary of Opecprime Development Ltd, known for other large-scale projects of ‘restoration’,2 as well as schemes for the Docklands, Ealing and Bayswater developments.3