PizzaExpress
An application has been submitted for listed building consent for new signage and repainting for the Marches on Castle Street, which will shortly become a PizzaExpress (15/01581/LBC).
Proposed frontage for PizzaExpress
I agree with Shropshire Council’s conservation officer that many aspects of this scheme are wrong for Ludlow’s historic centre. The black painted frontage is out of character with our sensitive streetscape and there is too much lighting. It strikes me as a corporate design imposed with little regard to the very sensitive heritage context in which the building is situated.
I have raised four objections:
1) The black painted frontage is out of character with the best of Ludlow’s town centre buildings. The character of the town centre is preserved and enhanced by pointing out details in painting and décor, not by swamping it in a single colour.
2) The blue lighting around the frame of the portal is inappropriate in this historic landscape. If there is a need to highlight the portal, then that should be achieved in paintwork.
3) The PizzaExpress hanging sign at the front of the property is round. The tradition in the town centre is for square signs and that would be appropriate here.
4) There is a plan for an illuminated PizzaExpress roundel on the rear wall above the garden. The height of this will create light pollution and it will be visible from a good distance. The lighting should be removed from this feature.
A little bit of work now will ensure that PizzaExpress will be a good neighbour in our historic town.
Blue Boar
Just down the road, the Blue Boar on Mill Street has applied for advertising and listed building consent (15/01668/ADV; 15/01669/LBC). The conservation officer’s detailed remarks about lighting and planning need to be taken into account, but otherwise the scheme looks good to me.
I don’t like the design of the hanging sign but that’s a matter of taste, not planning.
This building has been disfigured by advertising banners in the past and I hope that this will not be repeated.
This pub has had a troubled history and I wish it well.
I am sure Adam will make the Blue Boar a very hospitable pub. Like you I find the cartoon boar a bit too boorish.
Pizza Express just might cite the black painted doors and windows as a precedent for their own colour scheme?
Am I being stupid but isn’t DeGrays painted black, as are several other buildings in the town centre?
Pizza Express in Coventry, in Hays Lane, has matched the colour of this existing historic street, namely a sort of slate grey. So it does not have to be all about corporate colours.
As for the pub sign proposed for the Blue Boar I like it.
it is a considerably better proposal than I had anticipated with the exception of the lighting – a corner of the square lit up in the way it is suggested will remove all sense of a little market town.