AS A fellow architect, I don’t always agree with Matthew Laverack’s frequent contributions to letters, but I must support his comments on Stonebow House.

I have always considered the tower quite a respectable example of its period, but the car park is an over-assertive disaster and the units below add nothing to the cityscape.

David J Brown, Acomb, York.

 

• MATTHEW LAVERACK proposes an interesting solution to the Stonebow problem, but I suspect that Stonebow House could never succeed (visually) except as a free-standing tower, entirely shorn of its drear ungainly podium.

I confess I have never thought of this bleak 1960s incongruity as providing York with an architectural “mediaeval echo”, though, on reflection, I do believe I have previously heard it described as “That Bloody Tower.” It certainly exerts over the whole area the oppressive dominance of a Norman keep.

Perhaps Matthew would provide us with one of those beguiling artists’ impressions that our council set such store by. On economic grounds alone it is a plan that deserves consideration. Let us hope that the misprint identifying Stonebow House as “an exiting structure” will not be perceived by the malicious as an omen.

William Dixon Smith, Welland Rise, Acomb, York.

• Editor’s note: We apologise for contributing our own ‘eyesore’.