I WRITE in response to your October 12 article, which reports on the projected £7 million total redevelopment of the YMCA building on Deansgate, Bolton.

As a retired senior partner of Bradshaw Gass and Hope, the original architects of the building, and having been involved in a professional capacity with the YMCA over many years in the past, I know full well the difficulties that the building construction and, moreover, its layout, pose for an efficient, safe and apposite building of the 21st century.

The building layout has long outlived its original functionality; accessibility, layout and condition being past any modern concept of suitability, sustaining only make-do solutions such as stair lifts for vertical access, and suchlike.

Nevertheless, the YMCA manages to sustain and promote an extremely worthwhile and necessary service in this out-moded building, despite its inadequacies.

I fully support its hopes for a complete rebuilding of the entire building, despite the agony that would bring to themselves and to its tenants.

I would hope that all concerned would see the overall picture and I am sure that a fresh start would go a long way to rejuvenate that end of Deansgate.

However, there is another side to this story and it is one of design principle.

As the article states, Deansgate is a conservation area, although this building is not a listed building in its own right.

The reason for the conservation area status is to recognise the social and architectural history of the town, and aims to preserve such in visual terms as much as anything else. The YMCA building was conceived during the pre-First World War period when the Arts and Craft Movement was saturating design of all forms, and when a particular brand of it ­— Art Nouveau ­— was still very much prevalent.

The geometric red brick, terracotta and honey-coloured stone dressings, together with the mullioned windows and bay features, all speak of this era.

Match this with other buildings of similar era ­— Whittaker’s phase one ­— half-timbered black-and-white romantic, phase two with white faience and domes in neo-baroque, the much older Post Office building in classical style, banks in neo-baroque and 1920’s Art Deco, and so on.

It all tells a clear story of development, prosperity and status. It is very important to recognise all of this and preserve it in "living" terms.

The current proposal is described as taking its lead from the Crescent buildings, with their understated neo-classical grandiosity, but there are two problems with this statement: the YMCA has its roots in unassuming but determined Christian kindness, and not in grandiosity or civic pomp.

The arts and crafts style echoes this sentiment eloquently. The next problem is that the article goes on to describe the use of grey bricks, etc.

Well, the Crescent is from honey-coloured Darley Dale Stone in Ashlar work with pronounced classical and Egyptian detail typical of the inter-war period of civic building. Bradshaw Gass and Hope were, of course, equally responsible for this design, too.

Horses for Courses.

There should be a concerted effort to interpret the original YMCA building ethos in an updated sense, retaining the use of geometric red brick and honey-coloured stone; it may even be possible and appropriate to incorporate parts of the structure or details as part of that.

These avenues must be explored and developed in order to retain our sense of heritage and reflect the history of our town.

Much has already been lost and, if the Central Street scheme fronting on to Deansgate ever goes ahead, much more is likely to be lost.

I am not advocating stultification; far from it; but we must understand, appreciate and seek to uphold the history and heritage that is proudly ours in this town, without sacrificing it to bland modernity and "progress".

Mark Head

Retired architect

Bolton and District Civic Trust Executive