1st December
Hm. Yes. Well. The building control officer came today and the upshot is that the builder (Polish) was right all along and the architect (Scottish and a tad eager), Structural Engineer No. 1 (Irish and lovely) and Structural Engineer No 2 (Italian and elegant/charming) were wrong. Not about the little window (we haven't got to that yet) but about the central spine wall that they all thought could remain if it had stood as long as it has. No, insists the building control officer (Indian). You are lucky the house is still standing. The steel frame is necessary but its dimensions should be bigger. Oh, and by the way, the drainage system is entirely illegal. The soil pipes MUST be moved and the internal manhole MUST be moved. And the main drain under the house isn't the best but could conceivably stay though...er...well. And why did the engineer stipulate hardcore when the floor below was hard enough. Too late now though. And so on. So I paid for the services of an architect without which I could not have engaged the services of the structural engineer, for which I paid, whose ideas then went to the building control officer, whom I have to pay. And that's before any building actually gets done. You get the picture?
Meanwhile I may have maligned overseeing architect Philip Hardwick - he of churches and railways and the Euston Station Arch that John Betjeman and others fought so unsuccessfully to preserve. But the 1960s was a decade of knocking everything down, Camden Council being especially zealous with the wrecking ball. My street only just didn't get flattened at the time, though maybe some will now argue it should have been. Anyway. I think Philip Hardwick had no connection (ahem) with the Midland Railway's expansion because he was a station architect, and not involved with where the lines ran. But I am loath to let the story go just yet because it could have been juicy. Let's see what I turn up when I go back to the Camden archives.