Lambeth council finally finished installing new street lights along the length of Gipsy Hill this week. A job they started in November 2006! Well done Lambeth, only took you eight months! I wonder what will happen to the old 60s concrete ones? The replacements are design to look Victorian as Gipsy Hill is a conservation area.
There’s a lot in the news at the moment looking at Britain’s recent architectural past and what should be saved or flattened. The 60s and 70s now seem a very long way away, coupled with the change in Prime Minister maybe we’re mentally and physically spring cleaning our society ready for – shudder – a new era? Look at the Millennium Dome, at last seeming to find a true purpose as proper music venue. Mr Brown constantly sells the image of Modern Britain, not a city of Europe but of the World, it’s what won us the Olympics.
A few months ago I read a guide to the South Bank when it was first opened as the Festival of Britain in a second hand bookshop. It described what was coming as ‘A New Elizabethan Age’, as the current Queen had recently come to the throne, strange how that term didn’t really catch on. We don’t seem to measure ‘ages’ in Royal reigns anymore but in other things…. like lampposts.
