Gardener Alan Titchmarsh finds more than a well-kept lawn to admire on Richmond Green – but would like to dig up the concrete jungle
There are some wonderful Georgian houses around Richmond Green, in south-west London. Every time I walk round it I think which one would I like, and any of them would do. It’s all down to proportion – the Georgians had theirs absolutely perfect. The windows were large, so from inside the rooms were very light.
I think it’s the most elegant period of architecture there is. I now live in a Georgian farmhouse, and it’s fab.
My least favourite building is Alton Magistrates Court. Alton is a beautiful little market town in Hampshire that was blessed with some fine Georgian houses and eventually shops in its high street, but then, presumably in the 1960s, somebody came along and plonked down a large and very ugly concrete court house. Even the front of it looks like a back. It incenses me when I see beautiful Georgian or Victorian Gothic interspersed with some clumsy, unrelated modern building that doesn’t take into account what’s on either side of it.
Postscript
Fill My Stocking by Alan Titchmarsh is published by BBC Books, priced £9.99
No comments yet