"WAS it necessary for all these buildings to come down ?" asks the Worcester News (Thursday, September 15) in a caption to an old photograph of Lich Street.

As one who watched the transformation with a heavy heart, I can only try to explain popular thinking at the time. Worcester had long had a surfeit of old buildings, many of which were unhygienic and had fallen into a sad state of repair.

A programme of "slum clearance" had begun before the Second World War and a large part of Birdport had been swept away and replaced.

There followed six years of inactivity during which buildings deteriorated. There were very few who appreciated the merits of the old.

"This place could do with a few bombs dropping on it" was a commonplace expression, often among people who had come here to escape the bombing. There was a tendency to look with envy on places such as Plymouth, Birmingham, or Coventry where the war had swept away the old and the modern was arising.

Few people could see merit in preserving what was old until the example of places like York caused us to realise we were destroying our irreplaceable heritage. "Modernise and build a beautiful new city for the boys who returned", was the clarion call, no one seemingly realising that we had returned to the city we loved and would have settled elsewhere had we wanted something different.

What a pity the Evening News and Times did not publish this and similar pictures at the time and ask the same relevant question.

JOHN HINTON,

Worcester.