The Xtra Diary - 40 year anniversary of the Charlotte Street Association

Published: 19 November, 2010

VETERANS of past battles to preserve the heritage of Fitzrovia made a historic building disappear at a party to celebrate 40 years of the Charlotte Street Association (CSA) this week.

As architect Max Neufeld, the association’s chairman, unveiled a chocolate cake in the style of an early 19th century building, he declared, to rapt applause: “I’m sure there will be many developers who will be envious as we destroy this Georgian house.” 

The association was created as a response to the destruction of historic buildings in Rathbone Street in the late 1960s and has campaigned and commented on an estimated 5,000 planning applications in its time.

Mr Neufeld said people had been outraged by the plans of steely eyed developers and had banded together “to be taken seriously” by the authorities. 

He said: “We defined our aim at that time as wishing to maintain the character, scale and mix of uses of the area. I think that’s an aim that is as valid today as it was 40 years ago.” 

Mr Neufeld recalled how, in the late 1960s, the site where the Rathbone Hotel now stands was full of shops, tailors, hairdressers and “sundry men whose goods were popular with the rats of the area”, while around the back was The Bamboo Club “from which bleary-eyed hippies used to emerge into daylight after a night of hallucination”.

“In other words”, he concluded, “a typical Fitzrovia mix.”   

Holborn and St Pancras MP Frank Dobson, who joined in to toast the association’s past successes, said the group had done much good work for the area.

“There have been times when my phone’s gone and it’s Max and I’ve thought, ‘oh my god what’s wrong now’. But he menaces people in a very good cause and I’m sure all his colleagues would agree we owe a vast amount to him.”

Also present at the party were society stalwarts Terry Burke, Ron Gauld, Roland Collins and Steve Mullin, along with councillors Milena Nuti and Sue Vincent.

The CSA continues to hold monthly committee meetings and has around 350 members but is always looking for more. 

To find out more visit www.charlottestreet association.yolasite.com

Next stop... Gadd show

THE fantastical rubs shoulders with the every day in Andrew Gadd’s paintings. Amid the sometimes humdrum scenes depicted in his work – which went on show at Agnew’s Gallery in Mayfair this week – lies a deep vein of mystery and allegory. 

Some readers may already be familiar with his “Bus Stop Nativity,” a modern slant on the story of Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus. It shows the three huddled in a bus shelter on a freezing winter’s night amid a scrum of commuters with plastic shopping bags and was pasted on bus stops around the country several Christmases ago as part of a Church of England advertising campaign. 

“That was all about playing with the similarity between the shape of the umbrellas in the background and the haloes,” Gadd told Diary as he prepared for the opening of his new exhibition, which runs until the middle of next month. 

• Andrew Gadd: The Day Begins is at Agnew’s Gallery, 
35 Albemarle Street, W1, until December 3. 
For more information call 020 7290 9250.

“THE Queen of Drury Lane”

Will go under the hammer at Bonhams next week. 

A portrait of Sarah Siddons, a renowned Shakespearean actress who attained the status of a celebrity in the Georgian era, will be at the famous auction house on Wednesday (November 24), where it is expected to sell for between £6,000 and £8,000.

Fighting for a dust cause

IT is inescapable, almost invisible and contains surprisingly intimate information about our lives.

Dust is commonly viewed as an annoyance. But it is not to be sneezed at according to Serena Korda, who is collecting particles of dead skin, wood shavings, insect cartilage, crumbs of toast and cinders for a new work commissioned by acclaimed science institution the Wellcome Trust.

“Dust donors” can pick up a collection envelope from the Trust’s headquarters in Euston Road and their contributions will be used to make bricks that will be inscribed with messages and displayed in an exhibition from March next year before being ceremonially buried.

The project, part of the Wellcome Trust’s “dirt season”, aims to get people thinking about “the filthy reality of every day life” and is a homage to the gigantic Victorian dust heaps immortalised by Charles Dickens in Our Mutual Friend.

Ms Korda told Diary: “Back then brick-making was big industry around Euston, which was an area of muddy fields and brick yards. Industry took dust from the dust heaps to make bricks that built new parts of London and also foreign cities like St Petersburg.” 

• To find out more, or to donate dust, visit www.wellcomecollection.org/laidtorest, email donateyourdust@uppprojects.com or call 020 7377 9677.