A great big ugly building in Kirkcaldy might be getting knocked down. Good!
A couple of years ago, this chunk of stone, broken windows and weeds was actually on the BBC’s Restoration programme. Griff Rhys Jones was very sycophantic. He said – on national television and everything – that it was a nice looking building. Not even the building’s representative on the programme could bring himself to say that!
Since the programme, it’s been uglified further by a great big massive sign saying, “Do not enter this building: you would actually die” (or words to that effect anyway).
If it were to have won the reality television programme, the former linoleum factory would have been turned into office space, a Muslim community centre and a playgroup. In short, they didn’t have a clue what they were going to do with it. Nowadays they’re saying that it could be, “a centre for Fife’s archives, museum storage and possibly a new home for Kirkcaldy Central Library.” They still don’t have a clue what they’d do with it.
It is now going to appear on a new Channel 4 programme called CHANNEL 4 SMASH, or Demolition, depending on which magazine you read.
The show will be aired in November, and viewers will get the chance to vote for Britain’s worst building and see it demolished at the end of the series.
But the head of Fife Historic Buildings Trust urged Langtonians to give the old factory — the only Victorian lino works left in the world — a chance.
The Victorian Lino Works Society must be absolutely devastated.
Fifteen years ago it was twice as bad – there was a derelict building (or wasteland of somesort, I can’t really remember) on the opposite side of the road. They swept it away and built some houses and flats. Why can’t they use the space currently occupied by this humongous eyesore for similar useful things? The only thing the derelict linoleum factory is good for is weeds.
Knock it down.
I really like that building – I was mortified when it didn’t win
‘Restoration’!
I noticed last week in Glasgow, that property developers have bought
similar dilapidated factories and are restoring them into flats. The
purpose is a bit soulless, but I’d prefer these old buildings were used
rather than replaced.
Besides, Cumbernauld is far more deserving of the award – although of
course I love its brutalism.
It is just a shame that one even thinks of demolishing a LISTED building which is part of our industrial heritage.
It should be restored, there are hundreds of uses one can imagine, and not replaced by some soulless modern cotteries.