Forum Topic

Listing buildings

'In the wake of the recent demolition of 51 Drayton Green (St Helena's home) in West Ealing, Ealing Civic Society is launching a campaign asking local people to nominate their favourite buildings for local listing.The Society wishes to ensure that local buildings of architectural or historical interest are identified and protected from unsympathetic redevelopment before they are affected by planning applications which may envisage their demolition.'Some of us are not happy that the ECS did not only apply to have 51 listed but also the IPC chapel next door of which I am a trustee. That application succeeded, 51 failed. As a result the church meeting there, whose congregation has outgrown the chapel's capacity, is now restricted in developing its site. There is an irony here. The IPC bought the whole property including 51 from the nuns in 1979. The nuns  wished to sell only to a buyer who would use the chapel for Christian worship.  Now their convent has gone and the chapel is listed. IPC sold the convent to the Chinese embassy after NHHT were slow to purchase from them in 79. After two different property developers owned 51 NHHT bought it and have now demolished 51.

Graham Weeks ● 5536d2 Comments

Graham,Just for the record, Ealing Civic Society (ECS) applied in writing to Ealing Council on 30 May 2010 for St Helena's Home at 51 Drayton Green to be locally listed. ECS had much earlier applied to English Heritage to nationally list St Helena's Home at 51 but didn't explicitly ask for the Chapel (at 53 but physically connected to St Helena's Home at 51)) not to be listed. English Heritage (EH) themselves discovered that the chapel at 53 was designed by a famous architect and EH then decided to nationally list the chapel - but not to list St Helena's Home.Ealing Council sat on the ECS local listing application for well over six months before responding in any shape or fashion. In the end Notting Hill Housing forced through the demolition as Ealing Council showed no real interest in preserving or re-using any part of this elegant piece of West Ealing social history.I know that it's not really any of my business but maybe your church would have been better off keeping the whole property (51 and 53) which it bought in 1979. Just why did your church buy 51/53? If it was with a view to selling on 51 then the church must accept some 'blame' for what has subsequently happened. If you had found a buyer who would contractually agree to re-use 51 then the whole listing saga would not have got off the ground. I do accept though that finding anyone in the property world who is keen to adapt/re-use than demolish and build dense blocks of flats is a struggle.The national listing of the Chapel on your land at 53 was an unintended consequence of West Ealing Neighbours and ECS trying to save St Helena's Home.

Eric Alan Leach ● 5536d

Thank you for putting the record straight.The reason the church did not keep the whole property in 1979 was purely financial. We could not afford to. 51, 53 and 55 were a package on the market together. We would have loved to have kept it all but back in 79 we could not afford the princely sum of £250,000 for the three properties. In fact the nuns would have accepted our initial offer of £200,000 but the Charity Commissioners intervened.We asked the Chinese to let us have first refusal if ever they wanted to sell. They never told us they were selling. You cannot hold us responsible for what happened to 51. It is solely the work of NHHT.

Graham Weeks ● 5536d