Passport to Norton Folgate
This is Norton Folgate looking into the City. It’s all po-mo stuff, the Gherkin, Broadgate on the right with its huge steel and glass blocks.
But if you look the other way, the view changes. Small Victorian houses, little shops, some fantastic old pubs with those old style decorated frontages, all curlicues and pinnacles.
It’s a step back into the old days. And it’s a view that’s going to disappear if the developers get their way.
Naturally, there’s a residents’ group opposing the plans. So far, it’s a typical story of developers versus residents, new building versus history.
But there’s a surreal twist. The residents have discovered that Norton Folgate – that little strip of road between Bishopsgate and Shoreditch – has separate legal status. Or had, anyway – according to an ancient document.
So they’re preparing to declare independence.
It really makes you wonder how far they can go. Road blocks? Passport controls? Of course they would fail Frank Zappa’s criterion for a country, that it must have a beer and an airline. There’s room to install a microbrewery in Norton Folgate – but nowhere to land even a microlight! (Except the road itself, of course…)
Now this idea of local independence is a very British thing. Any fans of old film will probably know Passport to Pimlico, an Ealing Comedy in which the south-west London district declares its independence after finding an ancient charter, and even manages to stop an underground train at the border. Then there’s the Principality of Sea-Land, an WWII sea fortress off the Suffolk coast – still unrecognised by the UN, though. And there was always the People’s Republic of Tooting in the great comedy Citizen Smith.
I suspect it’s a very British sort of bolshieness. French eco-campaigner José Bové ran for President of the Republic. Over here, he’d be establishing the Green Republic of Cold Christmas*, and making himself president of that, instead.
Anyway, I’ll be following the saga with some interest!
Photo credit – Chris Eason, on Flickr
* Cold Christmas exists. It’s in Hertfordshire.
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