Church will go ahead with changes to historic wall
St Andrew's Church says it will go ahead with an expansion plan that will remove part of its landmark stone wall facing Nathan Road.
'We believe that the proposed plan is a sensitive compromise for the development of the church for the benefit of Hong Kong people, while preserving the beauty of the site and the adjoining Nathan Road,' the church's vicar, the Reverend John Menear, said in a written reply to the South China Morning Post yesterday.
His comment came after members of the Antiquities Advisory Board expressed concern at a meeting on Tuesday that the best preserved part of Kowloon's main road would be lost after the church at 138 Nathan Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, which was built in 1906, replaced part of the wall with granite and the glass frontage of a new auditorium.
Menear said the present plan involved reconstruction of a 16-metre central portion of the original stone retaining wall, using its original stone, and reconstruction of remaining walls in white granite panels to match the stone of the church's lychgate. Glass doors and windows would constitute only 35 to 40 per cent of the total facade.
'We do not understand why this [further revision of the plan] should be necessary,' he said, citing heritage office remarks that the current plan 'strikes an appropriate balance between the development need and the preservation need'.
The church, having already obtained approval from the Buildings Department, had volunteered to seek comment from the Antiquities Advisory Board and guide representatives through a site visit. The vicar said some board members who had rejected three rounds of compromise offered by the church 'seemed to be anti-development'.
At Tuesday's meeting, three members expressed concerns that treasured old features of Nathan Road would be lost if the wall were rebuilt.
Bryan Wong Kim-yeung, one of those who expressed concerns, said: 'I cannot emphasise enough that I all along very much appreciated the church volunteering to come to us for advice. But speaking as a heritage adviser, inevitably I'm inclined towards preserving historic elements as much as possible.
'It's understandable that the church wants to make its activities more visible to the public with the new facade, but from the conservation angle it's better to create an entrance out of the stone wall so that a larger part of it could stay.'
He said he hoped the feedback would not deter private building owners from approaching the board for comment in future.
