Mark Cummins, Lib Dem councillor for Brondesbury Park, is reported in today's Wembley Observer as calling on Quintain Estates to 'rethink their plans to destroy one of the last remnants of the Wembley Empire Exhibition'. As you can see from the video, which was taken today, the destruction is almost complete and Cllr Cummins is too late.
Quintain estates turned down an appeal from local historian Philip Grant to at least leave one wall of the historic building, one of the first to extensively use reinforced concrete, in time for celebrations of the 90th anniversary of the British Empire Exhibition which takes place next year.
Brent's lack of respect for our local heritage continues...
3 comments:
A sad day. The last small remaining section of the Palace of Industry shown in this video is roughly the section that I asked Quintain to save, but they told me that it would be unsafe to do so. The fact that it is free-standing in these images, without any structural support, and that the demolition men are having to use special cutting gear to break through the steel reinforcement bars in order to remove the last of the lion's head corbels, shows how strong the structure of the building still was, nearly ninety years after it was erected. "Safety reasons" was just an excuse used by the developer to ignore what I still believe was a reasonable request. Whatever the economic advantages of Quintain's regeneration scheme, Wembley is poorer for the loss of this historic building.
Philip Grant.
Stonehenge next!
Love the lack of any goggles and the lit fag on the fella using the cutting gear!
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