City and Suburban
WH1CH is the most beautiful town left in England? Last Friday, before the rain started, and when the sharp morning sun was throwing up the stonework black and silver against the mounting grey clouds, I was in Stamford, Lincs. 1 am inclined to think this is the best town we have, with its rows of early Georgian houses of individual and varied design in well-cut ashlar, its graded stone roofs, cobbled streets, its five medimval churches, steep hills and elmy setting. And walking about in it, doing my pre-Bank Holiday shopping, I came across the street market at the top of the town where sunny old houses look down on stalls and there is no motor-traffic. It was what all Stamford ought to be, for in the main streets roaring with lorries and coaches almost as big as the houses, heedless of the beauty of the place and merely looking on it as a twisty inconvenience on that ghastly Al route from London, I found it a difficult and dangerous job to cross from one narrow pavement to a shop on the other. Stamford of all towns in England deserves to be spared through traffic, for the sake of its commercial prosperity and its unique beauty. There is hardly an ugly building in the town except for a faience cinema, for even the clumsiest late Victorian and Edwardian look harmless in that wonderful local stone.
THE VANDALS' REGISTER I believe that Mr. 0. G. S. Crawford, the distinguished archwologist, used to keep a photographic record of vandalisms he noticed when travelling around and he called it 'Bloody Old Britain.' 1 subpend a few examples for his case book : RUTLAND : The mild hunting country around Exton, Cottesmore, Thistleton arid Market Overton has been dug up into brown barren mountains to extract iron ore. We are told that these will one day be levelled and that the earth will be more fruitful. 1 repeat we are told this.
BUCKS: The charming view of the inn, church and elms in the old village of lver has been ruined by a pink brick garage. Wotton Park, near Aylesbury, was laid out by Bridgeman and Capability Brown before the latter went to Stowe. It was one of the landscape treasures of the county. All the trees have been felled by timber merchants, the Chinese, Doric and Saracenic temples and lodges are in ruins and the estate agents have divided it into lots so that it could never be preserved as a complete scheme. The house, with alterations by Soane, is owned by demoli- tion contractors.
SUSSEX: The famous view of Petworth House and church has gone because the church spire has been replaced by a roof of bright red tiles on the tower.
WILTS: One of the delights of the truncated interior of Malmesbury Abbey was the collection of eighteenth- century wall tablets and a particularly fine one by King of
Bath on one of the pillars. These have all been removed and the place looks bare and museumy. On the other hand the outer carvings on the famous Norman doorway are still blistering and splitting away.
EVERYWHERE: Roadside garages are being put up regard-
less of scale, scenery and neighbouring buildings. The only decent new one 1 have seen lately is outside Hucknall, Notts, where the landscape is so full of wires, poles and concrete that it hardly matters.
THENK YEW 'Worried, Redditch,' writes : 'There is a village in Hertford- shire called (Miley. Is there a house in it called "Thanks Most"?' A friend in the City of London lately saw a man working a pneumatic drill there and wearing a deaf-aid.
BETJEMANX Lovers of the Isle of Man will be sad to hear of the proposal to shut down the 1890 electric tramway from Douglas to Ramsey which runs through fields and over bridges and glens and has a branch line at Laxey which curls, up to the summit of Snaefell to a steamy tea-house, 2,000 feet up. Let us hope that the Manx Government, which has wisely kept the happy holiday spirit of the Island alive, will keep this enchanting electric tramway. It is just as worthy of a subsidy as the other Manx attractions, such as the Isle of Man Railway itself and the horse trams along the front of Douglas—to me Naples is the Douglas of the south, not the other way round. The younger generation prefers light railways to motor-coaches. And in order to lend weight to my appeal to the House of Keys to save the Manx Electric Railway, I subscribe myself, this week, in Manx : EWAN QUETJEMAN
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