The former Black Boy pub in Leicester is to be redeveloped with a touch of facadism

Over the years this blog has followed the fate of The Black Boy in Leicester, a closed pub in Leicester where I was once known to drink.

Today a BBC News report suggests that all the campaign to 'save' the striking building from the 1920s has managed is that a bit of facadism will be thrown in when the site is redeveloped to built a five-storey block of flats:

Plans to tear down a 1920s pub so flats can be built on the site have been recommended for approval.

The Black Boy pub in Albion Street, Leicester, has been closed since 2012.

An application has been submitted to build 26 studio flats and 12 one-bed apartments on the site, retaining just the facades of the former public house.

Despite the officers' recommendation for acceptance, the report quotes them as finding it 'disappointing' that the scheme did not preserve more of the building:

They described facadism as a 'superficial approach to building conservation that does not conserve the building as a three-dimensional piece of architecture and involves the loss of the integrity of the heritage asset and substantial harm to its significance'.