Unifying the ambitions of developers and government bodies is a freely borrowed and frequently misapplied language lifted from the history of architecture. It is a language not only adapted for the marketplace but it appears to neutralize opposition to commercial development. The discipline of architectural history remains in large degree focused on the study of ‘great architecture’ and ‘major monuments’ designed by ‘great architects’, – churches, palaces, country houses with the occasional inclusion of industrial triumphs such as pumping stations and railway stations, though this is changing. This language evokes fine feelings and formal observation. Neglecting a host of other building types, including many institutional buildings, the discipline fails to examine the significance of buildings which are neither great in qualitative terms, nor by great architects. The language and concerns fail to offer tools for an experiential understanding of these buildings in history. The language is easily taken on board by those who would trade on a notion of a national past: according to Comer the former hospital is ‘a Victorian masterpiece which has delighted and inspired aficionados of fine architecture for generations’,81 in which ‘important architectural features are painstakingly restored… to blend harmoniously’ emphasizing the ‘sympathetic, imaginative and successful conversion of historic buildings’. Comer asserts that they are ‘respecting history’.82
The preservation movement, itself, is often limited to the language of aesthetics, whether fitting or not or contributing to our understanding of the past. Hanwell Asylum, built in the Borough of Ealing in 1831, has also been converted to flats by Comer Homes. The caged fire escapes, designed to prevent escape and suicide, were described in a plea for their preservation in Country Life as ‘delicious wrought iron. . . they give the impression of immense beautiful bird cages’.83 Likewise, the windows designed with razor sharp edges and small individual panes of glass, each to be opened separately, a suicide prevention device, were described as an ‘imaginative ventilation system’84 (Figure 9.9).
It is the developers, masquerading as preservationists, borrowing the language of architectural history who are transforming the past and robbing people of their history. The heritage movement colludes in its desire to save old buildings at all cost, even their meaning.
Preservation?
In the rush to realize capital from NHS properties, even during drops in the property market, what seems to have been overlooked is whose property, after all, was being disposed of, not to mention what might best benefit the
patients and the wider community. As Marcus Binney, president of SAVE, has argued, ‘most of the buildings now being sold off to developers were built from voluntary contributions or at taxpayers’ expense. They have been maintained and equipped not only by the Exchequer but by bequests, donations and charitable gifts.’ As he put it, ‘they are in a real sense public property’.85
Those most disturbed by the fate of Colney Hatch have been former patients – they call themselves ‘survivors’ – who have drawn a parallel to the idea of redevelopment or the obliteration of all concentration camps, leaving no trace behind and who have suggested the retention of one asylum as a survivor-controlled museum:86
When the psychiatric hospitals and asylums are gone and the last of the thousands who spent decades in them are dead, how will people know what life was really like for their inmates? How will the scale of suffering and physical, mental, sexual abuse within them be remembered? What sanitized accounts of the aims and regimes of these institutions will be offered?87
Today, Colney Hatch fulfils a fantasy for the urban commuter, a Disneyland-like distortion of asylum cum country manor. It offers a fantasy of an elegant rural life linked by an underground rail to the City by swipe card where once patients were brought to the asylum. The large asylum set in its thirty acres of parkland now provides a setting to the unknowing of a romantic bygone era.88 It stands as a lost opportunity as the built environment preserved offers an immensely valuable access to the nation’s history. Would demolition perhaps of all but one such institution – as survivors suggest – after careful and thorough documentation, not have been preferable to this form of ‘historic preservation’?