The Montpelier and Clifton Hill Association

The City Council has set aside £550,000 to be spent over the next three years on the Seven Dials roundabout and the roads nearby. The main purpose of this spending is to reduce the number of road accidents. Improvements to the appearance of the roundabout seem to be incidental to the project which is being managed by a transport planner although an urban design officer also attended the first consultation meeting held in St Luke’s church on the 20^th August.

It must be hoped that some of this money will be made available to enhance the visual appearance of this busy and cosmopolitan part of the city.

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THE MCHA has expanded its area to include the medieval church of St Nicholas and its churchyard after members at the Annual General Meeting voted unanimously to adopt a new constitution.

The MCHA’s 41st Annual General Meeting was held on a blustery night at St Michael’s to the accompaniment of rattling stained glass windows. Members voted unanimously to approve the new constitution, by 30 votes to nil. There were no abstentions.

The new constitution is based on the Charity Commission’s model constitution for charities of our size and it replaces the old constitution, which dates from the days before there was even a conservation area. Continue reading →

Plans to build a controversial high-rise hotel on the old ice-rink site in Queen Square have been recommended for approval by the council’s planners. (Ed: This is an archived story: see later stories above.)

The MCHA has consistently opposed this plan because of its impact on St Nick’s, the churchyard and Wykeham Terrace. All of these buildings are listed. The MCHA says the hotel is too high and too large.

The hotel will largely obscure the Queen Square office building in the picture above. The plans also make nonsense of the council’s tall buildings policy, which says that this site is unsuitable for a six-storey building.

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The conversion of the main Lainson building continues apace and the scaffolding that has surrounded the building for nearly three years is now starting to come down. The Lainson building, which dates from 1880, is the focal point of the new Royal Alexandra Quarter. Taylor Wimpey is now advertising flats for sale in the converted building and prospective buyers can make an appointment to see a show flat. The first owners should be able to move in next year.

Demolition work finished on the Royal Alex site at the end of February 2011. The Victorian villa, and the other turn-of-the-century buildings were all been reduced to rubble and removed.

A temporary marketing suite has now been built on the junction of Clifton Hill and Dyke Road with two show flats. Most of the flats in the blocks that form the first phase of the development have now been sold.

Taylor Wimpey has dubbed the new development the Royal Alexandra Quarter as part of its marketing strategy. Taylor Wimpey plans to name the new blocks after the old

hospital wards. The main building will be called the Lainson Building, after Thomas Lainson the local architect who designed it.

Plastic street signs cost about £360. But they only last 30 years or so, and maybe a lot less…judging by the condition of some recently vandalised signs.

Yet for only a couple of hundred pounds more we could have replicas of original signs, such as those in Clifton Terrace and Montpelier Terrace (see photo). Continue reading →