I’ve been told the building on the far left is sinking year by year. Which is odd because I’ve also been told by someone else that the building on the right is sinking (and that the column on the top was added to stop this, though you’d think you’d combat subsidence by adjusting something at the foundations and not the roof).

The block of flats I lived in recently is, allegedly, also sinking. So’s Wreake Valley College where I went to school and so were the council buildings in town before they were demolished. I’ve no doubt you know of some concrete building you’ve been told that’s sinking too.

How did mid-century architects in Leicester, with all their experience and technology, screw up repeatedly like this? The truth is, I suspect, they didn’t. It’s largely a myth (though I guess there could be one example that set the ball rolling). But myths tell us something about the teller.

Brutalist architecture is by its nature confrontational to conservative tastes. So people created a sort of Icarus tale: these clever-clever architects thought they could make a massive and weird looking building but their arrogance brought them low. Simple soil defeated them.

Which is ironic. Post-war architecture was an attempt to make an architecture for the common people and not the rich man or aristocrat. But the common people were like ‘Thank, I hate it’. So much so it created a sort of folklore.