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West End Extra - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Published: 22 February 2008

No way no how Noho Square

• YOUR five-star newspaper helped persuade our hospital trust not to sell the lovely Cayley Robinson Acts of Mercy panels which adorned the Middlesex Hospital reception.
Thank you.
The trust also left behind the exceptional, beautiful Italian marble chapel by the Victorian architect Pearson. More Byzantine in its ethos than Gothic?
Happily Westminster Council designated it architectural Grade II so it shall be conserved.
Today the four-acre site is being cleared of the time-expired hospital buildings. Good.
The brilliant developers Candy & Candy have arranged for their public relations unit to put it about that they wish to name their new structure 200 six-star apartments Noho Square. Does this bright idea do justice to 200 years of medical history and act as a cultured backdrop to a unique chapel which will be extensively visited in future. Is Noho (see Soho) essentially uninteresting?
Is the proposed name good enough for such a memorable site in our culturally important Westminster and Camden?
The new block of apartments will be centered on the Middlesex chapel.
It isn’t a square in any historical sense. It looks to be a quadrangle of structures creating a courtyard for the chapel. Naming the enterprise Middlesex Court might charm all parties.
Might readers care to comment on renaming four historic acres of this environment as Noho.
Put another way, ought we to welcome Noho by getting ready to shout ho ho when the buildings are ready for topping out in 2010 or 2011?
AJ Budden
Fitzroy Square, W1

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, West End Extra, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@westendextra.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Wednesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld. Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number.
Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

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