Plans to turn an historic World War One laundry into holiday lets have been given the go-ahead despite being branded "embarrassing" and a "stain on the sensibilities" of local residents.
The owners of the Category B listed house Auburn in Dirleton, East Lothian, lodged plans to extend the property and replace the laundry building at the back of the property with two holiday apartments.
However the design of the new building sparked a storm of protest from local residents with one community councillor calling the design "a cuboid from another planet."
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Tony Thomas, agent for the owners, said the reaction had been a disappointment after more than two years of working with East Lothian Council's planning team to come up with a suitable design for the holiday lets.
The design retained the features of the industrial laundry building which would later be used as an art gallery in the village.
Mr Thomas told a virtual meeting of the council's planning committee: "This application will result in a development of the highest quality, protecting and refurbishing Auburn House whilst replacing the decaying and derelict buildings on Manse Road with attractive, energy efficient and sympathetically designed holiday accommodation.
“We should celebrate that we have an applicant with the means and commitment to take on this project who has been willing to make these compromises. Without them these buildings would continue to deteriorate.
"We should be grateful to have an applicant with the patience to see this through - two applications, two and a half years and significant changes made. Many would simply have walked away.”
However Derek Carter, a retired landscape architect representing Dirleton Village Association, told the committee: "The industrial laundry was erected as a basic low cost structure during the first world war in 1917.
“It has no architectural merit or conservation value so why copy any of its features into a new building?”
And Martin White from Dirleton Area Community Council said: “Far from making East Lothian a more wonderful place it could be an embarrassment to East Lothian, to the council and to Dirleton.
“It could even be a kind of laughing stock because it is slap bang in the middle of the conservation area which demands things worth conserving should be conserved.
He added it looked like “someone has dropped in a cuboid from another planet”
Mr White said: "The bar has been set at ‘it’s okay as long as it looks equivalent to a hideous laundry building that we were demolishing rather than conserving’."
Alfred McClintock, chartered engineer, who lives directly across from the old laundry building said: "When I moved here 14 years ago it was in full knowledge that sooner or later the old laundry building would be demolished and something built in its place.
“Little did I imagine it would be replaced by an almost identical flat-roofed blockhouse. How can the developer have such a paucity of imagination?”
He added: "“Do we really want to give this our blessing in the conservation village of Dirleton and allow it to be forever be a stain on our sensibilities when it could be so much better”.
However East Lothian Provost John McMillan said protesters had a "purist view" and he was supporting the plans.
He said: "It is a difficult decision for the village but I think this is a very good proposal which in some ways preserves history, and encourages the village of Dirleton to develop."
And planning convenor Councillor Norman Hampshire said: "I know we have a view that conservation areas and particular buildings have to be retained but conservation areas across East Lothian have architecture of a whole range.
"The building does have history with it, there is a reason it was built there in that style."
The committee approved the plans by five votes to three.
