Camden New Journal - News: ‘Nouveau riche’ damaging Heath, says green group

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Camden New Journal - by DAN CARRIER
Published: 04 October 2007

‘Nouveau riche’ damaging Heath, says green group

WEALTHY homeowners moving into Highgate are threatening views from Hampstead Heath and showing no respect for the area’s heritage, according to civic group the Highgate Society.
Michael Hammerson, the chairman of the society’s environment committee, has identified a series of planned building projects conceived by people who have recently moved into the area, that he believes have been designed as audacious displays of wealth. He believes they will wreck the look of Highgate.
Among the developments singled out by the society for criticism are three plots in the Fitzroy Park area.
Mr Hammerson said: “The driving aspiration of the nouveau riche is not only to get a good view of the Heath, but to make sure that visitors to the Heath can marvel at their wealth and architectural pretensions.”
Currently, Fitzroy Farm, an Arts and Crafts building in Millfield Lane is due to be knocked down and replaced with what Mr Hammerson describes as a “grandiose and dreadfully inappropriate pedimented and columned echo of Kenwood House”.
Heathfield House, the new home of Russian metals tycoon Alexandr Bronstein, is far from finished, despite taking more than seven years to build. Trees that protected the site from the Heath have been cut down and the roof is visible from the hills above the third Highgate Pond.
Down the hill from Heathfield, owners of a 1960s house on Millfield Lane will be told tonight (Thursday) that planning officers have given them the go-ahead to raze the the building and then replace it with a large home which will include giant picture windows.
Mr Hammerson fears the building will reflect the sunlight, again affecting people’s enjoyment of the Heath, while the Highgate Society’s official objection to the Town Hall said: “The new house is too large and too high and will adversely affect views of the Highgate ridge from the Heath.
“This is a special environment and vulnerable to unwise and badly designed over-development.”

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