Church St./Portland St. site - added aggravation

This valuable site has been an eyesore in the city centre for 24 years. Now the owners have apparently decided that half an acre is not quite enough to do nothing with.  The hoardings, much to the inconvenience of pedestrians, have been moved out to the kerb lines both in Church Street and Portland Street.

Earlier post: The Church St./Portland St. development site

Listed Almshouses graffitied

A huge graffiti mural has been sprayed on the end wall of the Percy and Wagner almshouses in Lewes Road, dating back to 1795. It is thought to have been painted on or about 8 January. The mural, on the side of a charity's Grade 2 listed building is signed with an Instagram 'handle'.  A council investigation is underway

No permission was given by the property owner -  a charitable trust -  or the council, as the body in charge of authorising changes to listed buildings. 

Planning enforcement officers say under the Planning (Listed Building and Conservation Areas) Act, altering or extending a listed building without council permission is a criminal offence. The planning authority has spoken to the Chair of Trustees, who is responsible for the almshouses, requesting the wall be repainted within 14 days.  The council says the Trust are equally dismayed at the image and have told officials the wall will be reinstated within this timeframe.

The Trust will have the option to consider civil action against the perpetrator, for costs and damage to the property.

Removing graffiti from private buildings is the responsibility of owners. However the council can intervene to remove racist or obscene graffiti from any surface.

The Graffiti scourge.

From the Brighton & Hove Heritage Commission:-

In the past twelve months Brighton and Hove has become the victim of an epidemic of graffiti, artlessly and indiscriminately scrawled across every unguarded wall and render, or so it seems. No building is safe. Even security shutters are not safe. Property owners hardly dare put up scaffolding for fear of enabling access to these talentless vandals.
It is a well known fact that graffiti, if not removed immediately, quickly leads to even more graffiti which in turn leads to defacement of the whole neighbourhood, like a cancer, bringing the area down both aesthetically and economically as it increasingly resembles a ghetto. Our city already suffers from a large number of empty commercial premises and these are even less likely to be re-let if graffiti is allowed to proliferate. Read on.

'Alice' and 'Adolf' concluded . . .

Since the earlier post here, all is made clear:-

VERY Brighton. Guildford and Oxford eat your hearts out . . . 

'Alice' and 'Adolf' in Middle Street

A rather splendid graffiti taking shape in Middle Street based on the Lewis Carroll characters. This wall is available courtesy of Adolf Hitler. In WW2 one of the few bombs to fall on the old town destroyed several houses here that have never been rebuilt.

The cobbled cottage to the left is at the end of Blind Lemon Alley.

Subtle Graffiti

"Subtle" is not a word with which one would normally expect to qualify"graffiti" but these ghostly faces on a rusty wall-plate seem to warrant the conjunction. 

It is difficult to see how the images have been executed or to guess how permanent they are.

Graffiti

At the other end of the scale to the cretinous "tagging", which regularly defaces City walls, we have graffiti of this high standard. While not decrying the artistry & effort involved in creating something like this, presumably with the owner's permission,  I still don't like it. It is out of place. Old walls are interesting in their own right. There is something strangely satisfying about observing the effects of time and weathering on apparently inert brick, cement and stone. Old walls have character and lend atmosphere to the streetscape. They are a relief from, and contrast to, brash modernity which would be more the natural home for art like this.