Restoration drama

Yes

 
William Cook
Rejoice! Rejoice! Fifty-four years after its destruction, Euston Arch has returned to Euston. Well, after a fashion. Four blocks from this lost portico, salvaged from a murky river bed in east London, have been deposited outside the station by Euston Arch Trust, a heroic pressure group that is campaigning to rebuild this much-lamented landmark. It’s only a tiny fragment of the original, but I can’t begin to tell you how much this small pile of rubble cheered me up. Wouldn’t it be terrific fun to reconstruct this splendid monument? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to bring old buildings such as Euston Arch back to life?

Even by the philistine standards of the Sixties, the demolition of Euston Arch was a particularly crass and shameful episode. Erected at the entrance to the world’s first metropolitan train terminus, this huge propylaeum was a fitting tribute to the golden age of rail. Its gratuitous removal was equally symbolic. When it was constructed, in 1837, Britain led the world in train travel. When it was torn down, in 1961, we’d long since fallen far behind. Rebuilding it would reconnect our railways with their illustrious history. It would show we’re no longer willing to endure the architectural aberrations of our recent past.

The alibi for this act of vandalism was the redevelopment of Euston station — resulting in the dismal structure we know and loathe today. Actually, the arch could easily have been relocated, but smashing it to pieces was much cheaper. John Betjeman and Nikolaus Pevsner both begged Harold Macmillan not to sanction this iconoclasm. Woodrow Wyatt tabled a motion in the House of Commons. Their heartfelt pleas fell on deaf ears. Despite his olde-worlde public image, Supermac was infatuated with modernism. ‘An obsession with such buildings will drain our national vitality,’ he opined, perversely. Why are so many Conservative politicians so utterly unwilling to conserve?

The demolition contractor used some of the stones to build his new home in Bromley, called Paradise Villa — an address straight of Betjeman’s Metro-Land — but most of it was used to fill a hole in the Prescott Channel (a tributary of the River Lea).