Salvaging Vauxhall's Past
LASSCO (The London Architectural Salvage & Supply Co.) has recently bought one of Vauxhall’s most prized possessions, Brunswick House.
Built in 1758 – a stone’s throw from the fashionable Pleasure Gardens and once home to the Dukes of Brunswick - this beautiful Georgian riverside mansion once stood amid three acres of crowning parkland. Now it stands at the corner of one of London's busiest intersections, flanked by modern high-rise buildings - a lone reminder of a more elegant past. Prior to LASSCO, its fortunes were in steady decline. In 2003 it was placed on English Heritage’s 'Buildings at Risk' register and was at that point being used as the local squat. Vandalized and stripped of many of its original features, including valuable chimneypieces, its future was anything but certain.
However, since purchasing Brunswick in the winter of 2004, LASSCO, with the assistance of English Heritage, has embarked on its full restoration, injecting it with a much-needed lease of life. Great strides have already been made, though much is still to be done.
For LASSCO, Brunswick provides the ultimate ‘salvage’ backdrop (many of the items on display themselves rescued from buildings both grand and humble throughout London); for the public it represents a vital and yet tenuous link with Vauxhall’s, and indeed London’s, colourful and elegant past. With restoration well on the way, it is hoped that this wonderful building will continue to delight and welcome the public for generations to come.
posted by LASSCO Press at 2:28 AM
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