Heritage buffs oppose razing of Parliament Buildings' British ancestor

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Heritage buffs oppose razing of Parliament Buildings' British ancestor

Archiseek / Canada / News / 2006 / September 19

As MPs streamed back into the House of Commons on Monday for a new session of Parliament, heritage experts in Canada and Britain were battling to block the demolition of a 150-year-old factory in southern England hailed as the architectural ancestor of Canada's original Parliament Buildings. Bulldozers in Bath are poised to raze the Newark Works, a 50-metre-long stone structure designed by British-born Thomas Fuller the leading 19th-century Canadian architect whose surviving masterpiece, the Library of Parliament, was recently refurbished and unveiled at a ceremony in Ottawa. The threatened industrial building in Bath, initially used for manufacturing construction cranes, is believed to have been Fuller's last project in Britain before he moved to Canada, gained renown as the top architect of the Confederation era and won the new country's most important commission.

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