Victory for Edward Fox as council pulls support for ‘hideous' ramp at railway station
Edward Fox has helped force a council to withdraw its support for Network Rail's plan to install a 'hideous' ramp at a listed railway station.
The Day of the Jackal actor, 87, helped to persuade his local council to reconsider its support after an impassioned speech against a new ramped bridge being built on to the Grade II-listed Victorian station at Wareham, Dorset.
He was greeted with enthusiastic applause from 250 people during a protest last month as he urged the local MP to 'go into battle for the community and not kowtow to the bureaucrats'.
Network Rail planned to replace a level crossing at the station with a sloping zig-zag bridge, claiming that the original structure was a safety risk.
The Liberal Democrat-run Dorset council said that it now 'opposed the closure' of the level crossing because of the 'clear message sent by Wareham residents including Edward Fox'.
On Friday, Fox praised the council for having 'real courage to publicly reverse its position'.
But he said that he will be keeping the pressure up on Network Rail to maintain a level crossing, which has been used by Wareham residents for 40 years to travel from one side of the town to the other, without any reported accidents.
About half of the town's 6,000 population live on the north side of the railway, with the crossing being the only pedestrian route to the town centre.
Many people feared that they would be cut off from vital services because they would be unable to negotiate the lengthy, uphill bridge.
Fox urged Network Rail to 'do the right thing and remove the threat of closure of the level crossing'.
He said: 'This is indeed most welcome good news. Nick Ireland, the leader of Dorset council, should be loudly applauded for listening carefully to the concerns of local people and for doing absolutely the right thing for the residents of Wareham.
'It takes real courage to publicly reverse a decision.
'The thousands of people who use the crossing will be most sincerely grateful that a temporary reprieve on closure has now been won.
'Mothers won't have to struggle to school up and down lengthy ramps on cold rainy days, those pushing wheelchairs will not have a daunting journey to get to the doctor's surgery and children will be able to continue to cycle safely to school on the flat.
'Our beautiful listed station will be saved from being despoiled by a hideous modern eyesore.'
He added: 'I now urge Network Rail to listen carefully to the concerns of local people and other crossing users and find a way of keeping the level crossing open in the long term.
'This is the only solution that will avoid the town from being cut in two, the only solution that makes real sense. Wareham is a special case and this needs to be recognised.
'It is now for Network Rail to do the right thing for the people of Wareham and remove the threat of closure from the level crossing.'
Mr Ireland said: 'Our previous approach has been to work with partners to find a solution to this closure so pedestrian access can be kept at this location.
'However, the strength of the Wareham community's opposition to previous proposed alternatives cannot be ignored.
'So rather than accept that the removal of ground-level pedestrian access is inevitable, we are now opposing the closure itself.
'This current administration will not seek to impose any solution that involves ramps or lifts.
'We're only interested in proposals that maintain ground-level pedestrian access at the crossing without any lifts, ramps, or any other similar alternatives.
'Recently, I attended a public demonstration at the crossing alongside local councillors; Vikki Slade MP, and many other prominent community representatives including the actor, Edward Fox OBE.
'We will stand alongside the Wareham community and fight the closure, because it's the right thing to do.'
The current level crossing costs the taxpayer £120,000 a year because the local authority has to employ crossing attendants.
Following the protest, Network Rail said: 'We recognise the strong attachment the local community has to Wareham level crossing and remain committed to working with everyone to identify a safe, accessible and sustainable long-term solution.
'The safety of our passengers, residents and colleagues is our number one priority and the most effective way of removing risk at Wareham is to close the crossing entirely.
'Despite years of efforts to explore safer and fully accessible alternatives – including multiple planning applications and consultations with the community – previous proposals have not been supported by the local planning authority.
'The crossing has a history of misuse, to the point where our regulator, the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), issued us an improvement notice, which led to the introduction of electronic gates and crossing attendants, funded by Dorset council.
'Network Rail and the ORR are fully aligned that any alternative must be safer and put public safety first, and a recent independent report said only a full closure and replacement with an accessible bridge with lifts or ramps would remove the safety risk entirely.
'While we know this proposal is contentious, we are committed to working closely with Dorset council, local stakeholders and the community to find a way forward.'
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City merchants 'came up with a different system of working their markets compared to the English. They based their apprentices in early American colonies and got the people addicted to debt for fancy European products'. Until this point, most Scottish cities, including Glasgow, were built on a dense medieval 'fishbone pattern' by King David I, featuring one long central spine with higgledy-piggledy streets branching off. The Royal Mile in Edinburgh is a perfect example. Come the American War of Independence, Glasgow merchants began returning home, bringing with them the city grid system of colonies like Virgina. Many believe Glasgow 'exported the grid to America', Murphy says. 'No it didn't. Many early American settlements were laid out in grids. Those ideas are brought back.' (Image: Niall Murphy, Director of Glasgow City Heritage Trust. Photo: Gordon Terris /Herald & Times) It's now that the city really starts to take shape. George Square was originally 'swampland', considered only good for 'slaughtering horses'. It then became market-gardening land, before the gentry moved in as Glasgow sprouted 'new towns' around today's city centre. The Millennium Hotel is 'the last' of the grand Georgian townhouses built around the square. The square was enclosed at one point for use only by the rich – much to public anger. There were plans for a fountain called 'Le Jet de L'Eau'. It has had repeated facelifts, alterations and redesigns. 'The only constant about George Square is change,' Murphy adds. In the Georgian period, rich 'Glaswegians loved a point of view' – in other words, they liked a city laid out with architectural flair. So around what is now the Merchant city, squares sprung up with civic buildings, mansions or churches 'framing' the perspective, and townhouses built around. St Andrews in the Square was a classic example. READ MORE: 'I'm just a wee bam from Grangemouth' How Gillian Mackay aims to lead Scottish Greens Labour's taste for biological extremism is both creepy and dangerous The super-rich are lying to us. It's time we turned the tables Mob ONE such mansion, built for the MP Daniel Campbell near the Trongate, was positioned to impress anyone crossing Glasgow Bridge from the south – the main entrance into the city. Campbell taxed malt, riling 'the Glasgow mob who descended on his home and wrecked it'. The architect who built that mansion was Colen Campbell, a 'key player' in the Palladian style. Think of grand Georgian homes and you're probably visualising Palladian mansions. A perfect Glasgow example is the Tobacco Merchants House on Miller Street. Unlike many English cities then, Glasgow was built almost exclusively from stone, as two fires in 1652 and 1677 destroyed a third of the medieval timbered city. Queen Street Station was built over the old quarry which provided the materials. Another was at Giffnock. Both produced blonde sandstone, though that ran out in the 1890s. Red sandstone from places like Maybole became the replacement. For a while, these red properties were considered 'posher' than the blonde as they were new. The Georgian city was 'arcaded', with street-level archways, and shops and homes set back from the road. 'It was the civilised thing given Glasgow's climate,' Murphy adds. Walk around the Merchant City today and you'll still see archways on buildings, remnants of 18th-century arcades. Many, however, were lost 'from 1866 onwards when the Glasgow Improvement Trust' began demolishing swathes of the city. These upmarket arcaded buildings in areas like Wilson Street, Glassford Street and Hutcheson Street became Glasgow's 'first new town'. Tenements were the standard home for most Glaswegians, apart from the very rich or the very poor. 'It's a very Scottish thing,' Murphy adds. 'Scottish cities don't expand in the same way as English cities as they're under attack at various points. So you get these more compact settlements. Rather than spreading out, the only way to go is high.' Some Scottish tenements reach 14 floors, among 'the tallest buildings in the world at that point'. 25th September 1956: The Surrey Lane entrance to Nicholson Street flats, in the Gorbals, the notorious slum district of Glasgow Class IN Glasgow's tenements in the 1700s and 1800s, 'the richest lived above the shop on the first floor. The further up you got the poorer you were because the higher you had to climb'. That style of living continued, to some degree, into the 20th century. Go to The Glad Cafe in Glasgow's southside to see a good example of an Art Nouveau tenement where social classes lived together. This mix helped foster Glasgow's egalitarianism, Murphy suggests. 'The tenement encompassed the entire social strata, and Glasgow became a tenement city par excellence.' However, that didn't mean Glasgow was utopia. Down by the Trongate, there was a grand building called the Tontine Hotel, next to the Tollbooth which was effectively 'the original city chambers'. This was where merchants gathered to drink coffee, read newspapers and cut deals. 'It was like an early stock exchange.' Beneath the arcades was what was known as the 'plane stanes' – Glasgow's first pavement. 'Tobacco lords cloaked in red velvet like Venetians walked up and down, and if they thought you weren't the same social class they'd sweep you into the gutter.' As Glasgow entered the Victorian era, 'wealth became more expressed through buildings'. Financial distinctions were also hardening and 'social classes more stratified on a neighbourhood basis'. So slums grew. 'But the idea of a tenement just being for poor people alone didn't exist.' Look at Victorian banks or merchant offices and you'll see carvings of ornate symbols like the goddess of prosperity, or luxury goods like bananas and pineapples. It was a form of bragging. By the mid-19th century, the first of 'Glasgow's tragedies' begins with a wave of 'urban clearances'. The lust for eradicating historic buildings and whole neighbourhoods reached crazy proportions in 1911 when fire destroyed the Tontine Hotel and the council voted to demolish the adjacent Tollbooth. The Tollbooth steeple only stands today as it was saved by one vote. City fathers felt it 'got in the way of traffic. It's astonishing that they seriously contemplated demolishing something which stood since 1627'. Industrialisation saw the population boom, and city fathers became worried about 'hygiene' in the wake of epidemics like cholera. In Glasgow, unlike Edinburgh, it was decreed that all tenements would have no doors, to aid ventilation. Glasgow tenements were among the first in Europe with running water. 'Glasgow was ahead of the curve,' says Murphy. 'Municipal socialism here was tremendous.' Glasgow sent delegates to Europe who were captivated by the work of architect Baron Haussmann. He'd broadened Paris streets creating the city's distinctive boulevards. Swathes of old Glasgow were demolished around High Street. Edinburgh was dealing with similar issues like overcrowding and sanitation but chose 'conservation surgery. They're much more careful, preserving much more of the medieval fabric of the city. Glaswegians sweep it all away and decide they want a brand new city instead'. Slums AT the time, Glasgow slums were described as 'dung hills' with 20 people of both sexes and all ages sleeping in one room. The High Street's population density exceeded 1,000 people per acre, Murphy says. Compare that to the most densely populated parts of Hong Kong, one of the most overcrowded cities on Earth, which has 562 per acre. As part of the demolition work in the mid-to-late 1800s, Glasgow University moved from its original site to the west end. 'Those were the finest collection of post-medieval buildings in Scotland before they got demolished,' Murphy says. Glasgow city fathers bought up huge areas around places like Saltmarket and levelled them, but in an early act of municipal mismanagement they failed to notice that fashions were changing and developers were now more interested in the west end. The demolished sites 'just ended up as wasteland for a long time'. Then the City of Glasgow Bank collapsed in 1877, the biggest UK banking collapse before Northern Rock. 'It does massive damage to the city's economy, causing a depression in Glasgow.' That too slowed redevelopment of demolished areas. It's not until the mid-1880s that the economy improves. Building the City Chambers became a 'pump-priming exercise' to kickstart the city again. 'They spent in contemporary terms the best part of half a billion. It's a lavish exercise – that was the point. It's spend, spend, spend to get the economy firing on all cylinders.' The city centre certainly benefited. Come the 20th century, the centre of Glasgow was being described as 'a Beethoven symphony' thanks to its grid system and the vistas down wide, long streets. But places like the Gorbals and Govan were about to undergo Glasgow's second 'great tragedy' in the post-war period with more slum demolition. Populations had grown in these neighbourhoods as Glasgow became the empire's engine room. After the First World War, however, political focus centred on London. That really hasn't changed, Murphy adds. It meant Glasgow struggled to get going once more, and there was another effort to use building to drive the economy. An 'enormous Bank of Scotland on St Vincent Street' went up. It's still there and 'you could dump an Empire State Building on top of it', says Murphy. It and many other buildings in this period copied the architecture emerging in New York. 'That's one of the reasons why Glasgow has such an American feel.' Charles Rennie Mackintosh, who lived until 1928, 'loathed American classicism' as it eclipsed the 'Glasgow style'. Glasgow was still struggling to boom again when the Second World War broke out. That 'masked' the many problems besetting the city. 'Once the war is out of the way, you just begin to get collapse,' says Murphy. Municipal 'mismanagement' meant 'everything that could go wrong, goes wrong'. The old Glasgow Corporation was desperate to 'hang on to its population', but ongoing concerns around overcrowded slums were the focus of the Scottish Office. 'Glasgow falls between these two stools.' (Image: Niall Murphy, Director of Glasgow City Heritage Trust. Photo: Gordon Terris /Herald & Times Stalin A PLAN developed to effectively 'demolish the whole city centre and start again'. If fully enacted, Glasgow would have become a 'Stalinist city'. Buchanan Street would have been 'lined with 20-storey tower blocks and everything else demolished – City Chambers, Central Station, the School of Art, everything. It was completely laughable'. It displayed 'self-loathing', says Murphy. 'In some ways, we've never really moved away from that since then.' The scheme didn't advance, but when plans were developed 'to disperse Glasgow's population to New Towns' like East Kilbride, 'this was where it came from'. The intention was to 'deliberately reduce' Glasgow's population from 1.3 million to 750,000. Many warned this would 'massively impoverish the city, which is exactly what happened'. Glasgow, however, still saw itself as 'a world city – which it had been for two centuries', but it was being whittled away. Council delegates to America returned with plans resulting in the M8 slicing through the city and 'sterilising whole swathes of the centre'. It could have been worse. There were plans for a motorway 'bigger than the Kingston Bridge' over Glasgow Green, with a 'mast through the centre for a revolving restaurant at the top'. Post-war, city fathers began eyeing the Gorbals for levelling. 'They see it as a slum with 90,000 people. Yes, the conditions were dreadful, but it didn't need to be this 'bulldoze everything' approach.' When the Gorbals finally came down so did some 'great Georgian tenements'. The site of what's now the St Enoch Centre was bulldozed and for years was 'wasteland'. Glasgow's famed tenements were in dire disrepair by now. Ironically, Mary Barbour's rent strike helped the deterioration. Addressing high rents, made it difficult to afford factors in tenements for maintenance. Unlike most Scottish cities, Glasgow tenements were factor dominated. Tenements were owned by the middle-classes – like 'unmarried daughters of Victorian families' – who rented them out. The costs of factoring meant that, by the 1950s, tenements were dilapidated. 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The rubbish the wine bar fakes like Farage talk about the working class makes me sick SNP will be the winner as Reform outflanks Labour from the left Devastation IT was one positive story amid 'all the devastation in the late 1960s and 70s and the loss of population'. Sandblasting was another good news story. It brought colour back to blackened Glasgow streets and helped lead to an upswing in tenement living as old flats became more desirable. Come the 1980s recession, and deindustrialisation under Margaret Thatcher, Glasgow 'was massively thinned out'. At its lowest, Glasgow's population shrank to 570,000. Today, it's 640,000. Murphy describes what happened to Glasgow in the post-war period as 'urbicide, trying to kill a city'. He knows it's provocative, but isn't afraid to equate Glasgow's fate with what 'happened to Warsaw in the Second World War – the Nazis trying to destroy the Poles' spirit'. The Polish Resistance drew maps of Warsaw so that after the war architects could rebuild what was destroyed. 'They recognised the value of their city's heritage. We didn't until it was too late and whole swathes of the city were taken away.' Up to 'a third of the Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian city was bulldozed. We lose 90-plus per cent of our industrial buildings'. He adds: 'The difference is that while in Warsaw the motives were evil, in Glasgow the motives were good.' Murphy also evokes Chairman Mao, saying Glasgow's leaders tried to enact a 'Great Leap Forward. 'Unfortunately, once the vision encountered reality it failed as Great Leaps Forward tend to do'. Working-class communities 'bore the brunt of this brutal reshaping of Glasgow'. By the millennium, 'Glasgow had more tall buildings over 20 storeys than even Moscow'. Today, a 'donut of dereliction and blight… encircles Glasgow's city centre'. The destruction was ongoing into the early 1980s. There were even discussions in the 1970s to pull down the building where the Tron Theatre stands. Junior staff to Glasgow's head planner 'worked behind his back' to save the building. 'Glasgow's decline was precipitous,' Murphy adds. He blames a desire to imitate America by officials who 'genuinely thought that was the future and they were doing the right thing'. Instead, he says, they were 'sacking the city. What really breaks my heart is that you could have solved the problems without destroying the whole fabric of the city'. Ironically, planners copied American developments which had deliberately demolished black neighbourhoods for seemingly racist reasons. 'People were scattered to the four winds. There's a moral to that story.' The same destruction was inflicted on the Gorbals, Cowcaddens and Townhead. Communities disappeared – the city 'lost its soft connections'. Studies have shown links between city demolition, population resettlement, and death rate spikes and drug use. Clearances MURPHY says the 'Glasgow Clearances' of the 1960s and 70s could be linked to the Glasgow Effect, which sees Glaswegians experience lower life expectancies than other European citizens. 'If you sweep away everything that has informed somebody's life, you can destroy their spirit, which is exactly what the Nazis were trying to do with the Poles. We ended up doing it to ourselves. You look at these areas and there's nothing left.' Murphy often stages Glasgow walking tours and has seen elderly people returning to visit the city cry in places like the Gorbals when they can find nowhere they recognise. 'It really is Glasgow's tragedy.' The irony is, he notes, that Glasgow emerged mostly unscathed from the Blitz. We still see the consequences of this depopulation today. Part of the grand old India Buildings on Bridge Street collapsed recently. 'What do you expect?' Murphy asks. 'We removed the best part of 90,000 people. The buildings no longer had purpose. It's basic cause and effect.' Similarly, 'Glasgow turned its back on the Clyde'. Unlike many cities, Glasgow's river is underused and underdeveloped. Why? Because once again the populations which lived there were removed. To make matters worse, the back of the St Enoch Centre faces the Clyde creating this 'huge dead frontage which kills that whole section of Glasgow'. Depopulation caused many weird anomalies. The little-used West Street subway station sits in an area which was once thriving until 'the tenements of Tradeston were swept away'. To rebuild Glasgow's population, the city must bring people back to these 'wastelands' south of the Clyde which are infected with 'blight'. The part of the Broomielaw known as the International Finance District is 'horrible, you just get huge call centre footprint buildings, with little active frontage. People don't want to hang out there. We're a social species – why would we hang out in grim places?' Covid and homeworking have hurt the city. Central Station sees 33,000 fewer passengers daily, 'roughly two Helensburghs. That's why shops are shutting in the centre'. Glasgow, in the 1950s, had 700,000 people 'within a mile radius of the city centre'. Today, it's 28,000. Cowcaddens, before it was cleared, had 18,000. But Glaswegians shouldn't get too hung up on the current state of Sauchiehall Street, Murphy believes. The work will benefit the city in the long run. The 'avenue-isation' is just part of what's going on. The really important work is underground fixing decaying Victorian infrastructure like sewers. If these problems aren't addressed the city centre's population cannot grow – and that has to happen. Murphy says the council must 'improve their communications' – telling that story in a better way to Glaswegians would reduce how fed up citizens have become. Buchanan Street bucks the trend. 'It's a success story.' That's because it has two huge shopping centres at either end and large numbers of pedestrians walking between Central and Queen Street Station. It's a lesson in what good city design does. Murphy considers himself a 'critical friend' of the council. He says the current crop of councillors do understand the problems facing the city, but their hands are tied due to lack of funding from central government – in both Edinburgh and London. There's 3.3million square feet of empty space in Glasgow city centre, often in vacant upper floors. Decay GETTING that space back into residential use is key to changing the city's fortunes. But it's a chicken and egg problem. Who wants to move into decaying parts of town? Perhaps, Murphy suggests, artists could be encouraged to move in as was done to reinvigorate dilapidated Manhattan in the 1970s. However, that led to 'gentrification hell' and crazy prices. Compulsory purchase of abandoned buildings is another option. The Lion Chambers on Hope Street is an example of one of the city's most beloved buildings going to ruin. However, it's owned by multiple shell companies based in the Virgin Islands, Murphy says. That makes it almost impossible to trace the owners and serve them with compulsory purchase orders. Some lanes in Glasgow, which should be vibrant, are just dead space, used for commercial bins. In other cities like Amsterdam, lanes are freed up by storing bins underground. Today's councillors are 'hamstrung by the legacy of the past which has done enormous damage to Glasgow. So much of the economy was diverted away. What did people expect would happen? It was going to end up in collapse because you cut off the lifeblood'. He adds: 'Glasgow is one of the powerhouses of the Scottish economy and it isn't firing on all cylinders. We cannot have this degree of vacancy and dereliction. We now have nearly 150 buildings on the at-risk register. That puts people off investment.' The law needs tweaked, Murphy suggests, to empower councillors. The council is legally obliged to set aside money for statutory duties, around issues like education. That inhibits the council committing to spending money to fix the city. Even so, just repairing Glasgow's rundown tenements would cost £3 billion. Why not build our way to success, Murphy suggests, like America did during the Great Depression? Meanwhile in London,'it's gold-plated infrastructure'. The UK needs to 'invest in its other cities and stop running them down'. He talks of investors arriving in Glasgow at the turn of the millennium, exiting Central Station and wanting to leave. 'It's because of the blight. Why would you want your workforce among all this blight?' Why not tree-line rundown Union Street, for example, he says. It has extensive, empty upper floors, so making it more attractive would encourage people to 'move back' into the city centre. Though if people do move back, that will require the state to build schools and GP clinics. Murphy's biggest fear is that 'the decline into dereliction continues, the blight increases, and the rot just carries on spreading'. Is he predicting a future like Detroit? A ghost city? 'Technically, Glasgow is kind of the Detroit of the UK in terms of deindustrialisation and the buildings at risk. But our city centre isn't like Detroit. I really hope we can avoid that. We'll see.'
