Sir, – Mr Campbell's (October 12) and Jo Huddleston's (October 19) letters were most interesting and one hopes that many Farnham residents

visited the Falkner exhibition at the Museum of Farnham. Surely the facts are that Harold Falkner left Farnham a better place than he found it?

Mr Campbell's headline "Farnham must adapt to

prosper" and his assertion that "it must continue to require modification" only states what has been happening for many years.

Surely, in a very long history, the town, in recent decades, has never experienced such

demolition and redevelopment near its well preserved town centre.

We all want a splendid

development in East Street but could someone please inform us of any other similar recent town centres in the UK that are worth travelling to see?

Modern national policy, as English Heritage sees it, is to include the historic environment within new development and Mr Campbell's company may have contributed to this viewpoint.

For, in its European Award winning development in the Lion and Lamb Yard, older structures were retained,

largely at the insistence of councillors.

One doubts that such an impressive award would have been gained if, as was

originally intended, these buildings had been demolished.

English Heritage state that "People care about the Historic Environment" and it would appear that most would like to see historic buildings retained in new schemes.

Unfortunately Captain Burden and his colleagues wish to return to the 1950s and 60s when local authorities vied with Mr Hitler and carried out the demolition of thousands of interesting old structures.

Keeping a listed Brightwell House in a hopefully exciting architectural development is now "state of the art".

A restored Brightwell House would add immeasurably to a proposed new building scheme. Even Waverley council is not over-enthusiastic with the architectural merits of the

nearby Woolmead shopping centre which totally wiped out a large interesting area of old Farnham. Will we be better off (architecturally speaking) with the new one? One sadly

suspects not.

J Price

Crondall Lane, Farnham