Bland buildings

It was also a delight to see such a tasteful photograph of the often overlooked Leadon Valley viaduct in the Ledbury Reporter.

We are blessed with a heritage that far too many are quick to trample on or ignore. However, the bastions of Ledbury's architecture must surely be rolling in their graves at the latest additions to Ledbury's humble skyline.

While its need and purpose are undoubted, the new hospital in Bye Street is as a dull and boring a sight as you are likely to experience. I find it unfathomable that such an expanse of nothingness could stand in the same town as the breathtaking St Michael and All Angels' Church.

Then there are the newly converted shop fronts just up the road from the hospital. Taking into account the monstrosity that stood there before, it is a needed improvement, but the fact that it looks cheap and is in a vulgar juxtaposition with the Barrett Browning clock tower, next door, should not be ignored.

Surely this was an opportunity missed to transform a central building into something to marvel at.

The newest addition to our growing collection is the new Leadon Bank building.

Residents who live nearby will have to suffer the imposing presence that this building has already created. The location of this building (it's much closer to the rec' than the old one) is inevitably going to lead to complaints from the newly installed residents,of late night noise from the adjacent park.

Four hundred years after the Market House was built, it is cared about enough to be restored and re-opened.

In another four hundred years, who will care if the aforementioned just crumble to the ground? Who will care if it happens next week?

In the same decade that Ledbury has prostituted all the land on its outskirts to housing developers, to the tune of overcrowding our roads, car parks and schools, it is in serious danger of tainting the town's great architectural pedigree by allowing the construction of such crushingly bland buildings.

Robert Powell, Homend Crescent, Ledbury