Race against time to save artwork from lost building
CAMPAIGNERS are facing a race against time to rescue the work of a celebrated sculptor from a condemned building in Solihull.
This month there were fresh calls to save an eye-catching frieze, in the entrance hall of the old Lucas Industries site, in Shirley.
Plans to pull down the former home of the now defunct manufacturing giant were approved 18 months ago and form part of a major redevelopment of The Green business park.
But conservationists are desperate to have the artwork by William Mitchell – recently dubbed “the People’s Prince of Cement Sculpture” – salvaged before bulldozers move in. The issue has returned to the spotlight just months after another of the designer’s friezes was painstakingly removed from a pool house scheduled for demolition in Sheffield.
Jenny Marris, from Brutiful Birmingham, a group set up to protect valuable sites from last century, said it would be “a travesty” to lose the artwork.
“It would be tragic not to relocate it – we haven’t got anything else like it in the West Midlands. If it’s free-standing it wouldn’t be too much trouble to take it elsewhere. These things are not impossible, it’s just a question of having the will and spending a bit of money.”
She said that designs from recent decades were disappearing at an alarming rate and there was a danger that no record would be left for future generations.
Meanwhile, a Birmingham-based member of the William Mitchell Society was worried it might prove difficult to find a suitable home for the Shirley frieze before time ran out.
“I think it’s unique. It’s one of the most beautiful ones he did, it’s such a colourful one. It would need to be inside somewhere, I don’t think it would survive for long outside.”
The exact value of the piece is unknown; public artworks tend not to undergo valuations in the same way as those in private hands.
Cllr Laura McCarthy (Lib Dem, Elmdon) has raised the issue with the council after a resident, who was keen to see the piece preserved, fired off an email to various borough councillors.
She described the frieze as “absolutely stunning” and said that it would be a real shame to lose it.
“I think at the minute the idea is to find a way to relocate it elsewhere, but it’s not clear where that would be.”
Suggestions have included a councilowned building or premises at the nearby Blythe Valley Business Park.
The demolition of the former Lucas site, more recently known as the TRW Technical Centre, was approved by the council in February last year, despite some objections.
The Twentieth Century Society had been among those to raise concerns about the plans, describing the site as “locally significant”.
Last year M7 Real Estate, which is overseeing the development, had pledged to create a photographic record of the building and that “over and above this” it would consider the possibility of salvaging the frieze.
Asked for an update this month, a spokeswoman said: “A number of options for the frieze to which you refer are being considered, but no decisions have yet been made.”