How old is old enough to let go?

It’s a curious thing. We hold on to any building from the Victorian or Georgian era as if it were a precious newborn. Yet the Victorians themselves voraciously demolished buildings and monuments to make way for their new world vision. While looted other cultures and consequently preserved much that might (might) have been lost, they paid skant attention to preserving their own past.

And now our towns are host to hulking shells of old Victorian mills, hospitals, bathhouses, schools and churches that are crumbling, but protected by law, and even worse, excoriating glances if you dare suggest adapting or demolishing buildings for the needs of our people alive today.

Stepping further back in time, we welcome the dilapidation of monuments as a measure their authenticity and worth. It just wouldn’t do to have a medieval monastery with an intact roof would it?

It’s relatively easy to write some rules into the statute to preserve old Victorian wrecks that blight the lives of the folk living next to them. It’s another thing to actually have the political will to invest in them. “We must preserve them,” they cry with no plan or backing for their restoration. Ultimately, only architects and visioneers will benefit.

So how does a building cross that line from blight to asset? I’m not talking about the technical distinction between listed buildings and scheduled monuments. But when does a stack of bricks with no windows shift from being “a bloody eyesore” to “a key part of our heritage”.

Nobody would say that sweetheart abbey is a blight on the landscape and a menace to the economy of New Abbey. But most would put Rosefield Mills in that category.

And now we’re facing a similar dilemma with Nithbank Hospital. It’s becoming a wreck, a playground for arsonists. It’s quite a simple facility; garden in the front, single multi-floor victorian building, port a cabins / disposable buildings.

Get rid of the disposables and maybe put new housing on it or a mixed use development.

Gut the hospital building tearing it back to stone skeleton. Let birds and ivy take over and plant a tree in the middle (inside the walls). Make part of it a climbing wall or just leave it as a monument to the early days of medicine. There’s plenty of material for some history interpretation , after all the first use of anaesthesia was carried out adjacent to the site.

Plant some more fruit and nut trees in the existing gardens, maybe throw in some bbq pits and some outdoor exercise equipment.

Let the birds take over. There are already peregrine falcons in St Michael’s . A few more along with some owls and bats wouldn’t do any harm. Maybe a swift tower or two and whack a 5G tower on the old structure so we can have a decent connection in this town.

A thoughtful deconstruction of Nithbank could offer the town a new amenity and if it’s position, sandwiched in between Dock Park and St Andrew’s primary is leveraged then we’d end up with a safe walking route for kids .

Hell I can even imagine an entire green route from the rowing club or mill green to the Crichton.

If we don’t do something radical, it’ll sit dwelling within potential for decades, falling into a state of ruin. A shit sandwich of Rosefield Mills and Nithbank with a prim and proper Dock Park preserved in aspic in between.