The Effect of the Planning Blight
In 1987 two students at Marylebone Lower House (the Lower School of NWCS) made drawings of the school neighbourhood. They stood at the corner of Penfold Street and Bell Street, looking in different directions. Looking north, Abul Akad drew massive new tower blocks built on the huge areas of bomb damage near Marylebone Railway Station, while Jamal Uddin drew houses in Bell Street which had hardly altered in a hundred years. His block between Bell Street and Broadley Street had slept under a pall of planning blight for thirty years. When building was finally permitted it was as small-scale restoration and infilling, instead of the wholesale demolition and reconstruction which had been favoured in the 1960s and later become so unpopular.
