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Green light for flats obscuring Woolf's famed view

Lisa YoungCornwall
News imageBBC The view from the garden with Godrevy lighthouse in the distance across the sea. In the foreground beyond a boundary wall is a digger at work, a site office container and a white van. Across the road is a large building with an atrium between its two halves.BBC
Councillors have granted permission for the development of apartments in front of Virginia Woolf's former holiday home

A sea view which inspired the writer Virginia Woolf will be obscured by the development of a block of flats.

Cornwall Council has approved adjustments to the plans for a five-storey building in St Ives, of 12 apartments in front of Talland House, Woolf's childhood holiday home.

The view from the Grade-II listed house across St Ives Bay to Godrevy lighthouse inspired her to write To the Lighthouse among other works, leading local author Patrick Gale to call the plans "a preposterous piece of cultural vandalism".

The committee noted the original planning permission had been granted in 2009 and the proposed amendments made little change.

News imageTalland House viewed from the front. It looks like a French-style villa with a more recent extension to the right. There are three storeys. There are bay doors on the ground floor and the windows on the first floor have balconies. The house is white. The garden extends in front of it.
Councillor Cliff Crawford said the first floor of Talland House would still have a view to the lighthouse

Windingbrook Developments has already started work to deliver Elvan House, named after the type of granite discovered on the site.

Managing director Richard Gartside said the revised scheme would deliver the same number of homes as the proposal originally granted permission in 2009 and "the overall scale and massing of the building would remain broadly the same".

News imageThe view from the garden at Talland House with Godrevy lighthouse in the distance across the sea - all seen in the gap between two buildings, one of which has a balcony with potted plant on it.
The view from Talland House across St Ives Bay to Godrevy lighthouse inspired Virginia Woolf in much of her writing

Councillor Cliff Crawford said: "Very little changes are being made to what has been approved.

"It [Talland House] will still have the view of the lighthouse from the first floor so it doesn't totally take that sight out."

Councillor James Ball said the the committee's hands were "slightly tied" because planning permission was already in place.

He said: "We are where we are unfortunately – there's already permission in place for this application and if we refuse it today then there is still going to be something built there anyway and it's still going to take the bottom view out across the bay."

After the decision was taken, Emeritus Professor Maggie Humm, vice chair of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain, said: "The view is in all her modernist novels. It's in Jacob's Room, The Waves and, of course, [one of her most famous works] To the Lighthouse.

"This decision is hugely disappointing and will horrify Woolfians around the world for whom Virginia Woolf's Talland House and its view of Godrevy lighthouse is inspirational, as it was to Woolf herself."

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