It has been many months since I have visited the summit of Snowdon. Last time was before the winter set in, and it was essentially a building site. Today I venture up there on a scrambling course more of that in a later post. What alarmed me now all the scaffolding is down, and the stone work is essentially complete is that rather than a summit station and cafe we have the highest Pill Box in the UK. I mean the place looks like a fortress from the outside. As towering stone walls dominate the front of the building, and to be honest the summit of Snowdon.
I remember many years ago now going to the public enquiry in the Victoria Hotel, and some architect say that the angle of the roof will mean that from the summit very little will be seen because the view will be along it. Well I can categorically say that either the architect needs to measure again or the builder thought, yeah, whatever, we’ll build it like this instead.
Whilst before the old porta-cabin of the summit was described as the highest slum in Britain by prince Charles, I am left with several miss givings over this new summit fortress. In fact I would love him to pass his judgement and sum up this monstrosity in a sentence. If Armageddon happens this building looks like it would hold up to a nuclear blast or two.
The dressed stone that adorns not only the building but the garden wall and country house steps that lead up to the summit, are set as a desperate juxtaposition with the ‘natural’ stone that has every available angle other than a right angle. Sadly its designers feel that a natural building material equals a natural look. Sadly they are wrong, there are simple too many straight lines and right angles in this building for it to ‘blend in’.
Lesson learnt? Even award winning architects are shit at designing summit cafe/stations on the snowdon. Mind you it was probably designed by committee, which given the lesson learned by millennium dome which was famously filled with attraction designed by committee, perhaps we should have expected it to look awful and be as functional as a chocolate tea pot. Still next time we need to waste £9 million we can have it rebuilt!
There was an argument about building it out of local slate, rather than imported slate. To be honest I didn’t seen any slate in the main structure, its all ugly fake looking rock. In fact looking back at the photos I realise than they have used rock that has no good reason to be on the summit of Snowdon, it is grey and boring. Snowdon rock is full of impurities that giving it hue and colour.