Скачать или смотреть STIRLING - Old & New (The Architect's Dilemma)

Stirling's got a castle. What more do you need to know?

Most visitors to Stirling will visit the castle. Many will just visit the castle then go away again, without venturing beyond the castle esplanade into the city of Stirling itself. They want to see old things, and once they've finished looking around the castle they probably reckon they've seen quite enough old things for one day, thank you.

But Stirling itself has plenty of old things to satisfy the needs of the hungriest tourist. The castle's just one part of a conglomerate of old buildings, most of which line the city's streets, and which go some considerable way towards suggesting that Stirling should probably be a world heritage site. But it isn't.

Truth is, Stirling used to have many more old buildings than it does now. Sadly, in the 20th century, in the 1920s and 1950s, many of the centuries-old buildings lining streets at the top of the town were demolished. Okay, a few were renovated, but the harsh truth of the matter is that so many of Stirling's old buildings - houses, schools, breweries, etc - were demolished, that the character of the city, and especially at the top of the town, was changed forever. For the better? In my opinion, nup!

Many towns and cities in Scotland saw the mass demolition of slums in the 20th century. It was part of a plan to make life better for the lower classes; to give homes that weren't overcrowded, had running water, and were free from draughts and leaky roofs.

But at that time there were some people who saw what was coming. For in tearing down whole blocks and streets, in fact whole areas, of slum housing, the look of certain areas of the country was altered. Some people wondered why the face of the whole country had to be changed to deal with slum housing. Others reckoned that it would be cheaper to renovate rather than demolish, as the old structures were generally well built and quite sound in structure.

And that is the nub of the matter: to renovate or demolish, often the architect's dilemma, but more often than not the architect was just picking up the pieces left behind by a local council body who came to the decision to demolish everything in sight.

In Stirling, there was an attempt to make the new housing at the top of the town - in and around Broad Street, Baker Street and St Mary's Wynd - blend in with the few old structures that were allowed to remain. The inclusion of crow-stepped gables and arched pends gave a crude appearance of oldness. But it wasn't old. It wasn't what was there before. It was lacking all the shops and retail premises; the hustle and bustle of a community getting on with the business of living. In short, it was stark, bland, clinical... whatever you want to call it. It had no atmosphere.

Stirling's top of the town had lost something, its character and individuality, and it would never get it back.

This erasure of whole districts is not confined to just Stirling. It can be seen in other areas of the country, like the Gorbals in Glasgow, where a community was dispersed to high-rise flats; to a new way of life they couldn't understand or fathom. They might have had a nice new house with a toilet and water and heating, but they had lost a way of life; lost friends, and the community to which they had belonged.

As you walk uphill, to and from Stirling's Castle, just pause for a moment and think of those old days, when life was hard; but you had neighbours and friends, a pub or two nearby, a market across the street, and a way of life that, for many, has sadly gone.