Grade II Listed Road Marking....

[MdB]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-12059385

It seems strange listing a piece of paint but in this case I think it is appropriate.

 

[JohnB]

The original zebra crossing, where the photograph was taken, was moved several metres for traffic management reasons more than 30 years ago, and no original features remain.

Isn't that like listing a Barrett box built almost on the site of an olde worlde cottage? :roll:

 

[Gareth Hughes]

Yes, but then a previous culture secretary was all for listing 221b Baker Street at Grade I.

But... where would we be without dedicated researchers? The BBc have fallen for a myth:
http://www.grundoon.com/Abbey_Road.html

 

[Flyfisher]

This could set an interesting precedent and open the way for all manner of locations to be listed. I wonder why it wasn't awarded a 'blue plaque' or something similar instead? As MdB points out, it's actually only a bit of road paint - the historic nature is in the location rather than the fabric.

Does this mean LBC will be required in future before any road works can be carried out?

 

[JohnB]

More like an Irishman's shovel then. It's been resurfaced and repainted many times, and it's still as good as the day the Beatles crossed it .

 

[Tom]

I think the whole thing is ludicrous. It makes a laughing stock of the whole idea of listing anything. There must be a more appropriate way of 'protecting' it, surely?*




If it does, indeed, 'need' protecting :roll:

 

[Nigel Watts]

The crossing, which is just around the corner from my son's school, is certainly a popular tourist attraction. Presumably anyone wanting to dig up the road will now need to get listed building consent.

 

[Tom]

I wonder what they'll do in that case? Will they make them take up the whole crossing, to be relaid when work has finished? Or will they be able to trash the crossing and replace like for like, ie white paint for more white paint? Like I said, it's ludicrous and wholly inappropriate for such a thing.

 

[JoceAndChris]

I'm sure the paint wears off pretty frequently and needs renewing.

When I had the definite pleasure of teaching English to Japanese families in St J W and the city that crossing was on the list of Things to Do in Britain. It was an odd list, comprising Leeds Castle, Winnie the Pooh world, the Wedgewood factory, afternoon tea at the Savoy, the waffle shop in St Albans, the White Cliffs of Dover, Cardiff and The Crossing. Odd, but perhaps no worse than any list I'd have drawn up, with a real sense of fun about it.

I think the crossing is an international icon of our fine country and bizarre as it is must be protected now.

 

[Nigel Watts]

I like the idea of giving listed status to something that exists only as a set of instructions on how to paint some white lines on a road. Conceptual art got there decades ago.

This idea has potential. How about listing smells, like the ones you get downwind of sugar beet factories and breweries?

 

[Penners]

Sounds fine to me. Just don't you dare list the smell that we get for a week or so at muck-spreading time. I'd be happy for someone to demolish that without the need for consent.

 

[Flyfisher]

I would concur about the potential, though having frequently found myself downwind of the sugar beet factory in Bury St Edmunds, I'm not sure why anyone would want to go as far as protecting that particular smell.

 

[Nigel Watts]

After spending nine years at boarding school in a village which was also home to a sugarbeet factory I got quite fond of the aroma - a sort of mix of toffee, raw sewage and hay - along with the solid porridge, the cold sausages and marmalade left outside the dining hall after breakfast and various other unmentionables.

 

[Tom]

I rather like the smell from the sugar beet factory. It reminds me of jacket potatoes. However, I know plenty of people who hate it!

 

[philpjuk100]

I rather like the smell from the sugar beet factory. It reminds me of jacket potatoes. However, I know plenty of people who hate it!

NO! it smells like BURNED potatoes!

 

[Tom]

Yes, that's it! Like when you wrap them in foil and put them in the bonfire to cook! Yum yum

 

[philpjuk100]

Yes, that's it! Like when you wrap them in foil and put them in the bonfire to cook! Yum yum

No more like when the pan boils dry!

 

[Nigel Watts]

Potatoes don't have that sickly sweet overtone.

 

[Feltwell]

Ahh, good old Fred drift.......

I lived not that far from Wissington sugar beet factory as a kid, boiling sugar beet is one smell I could quite happily forget.

The oddest place I've ever visited for smell though has to be the Chirk in North Wales. As well as a spectacular Thomas Telford designed aquaduct, it's also home to a chocolate factory - which smells as you would expect it to really - and the Kronospan works where they make MDF and OSB ("Sterling Board" - a sort of board made of chunks of wood, often used as cheap shuttering or temporary fencing).

On a tour of the Kronospan works, I was told "If you find the smell makes you sick, just run for one of the doors on the side of the building, they're not alarmed" - the solvent smell was horrendous. Outside of the works, that smell mixed with sickly smell of cocoa is, if nothing else, unique.

 

[MdB]

I used to pass the Wrigley's factory on the way to work. You always knew which flavour they were making that day.