Finsbury Circus "Bulldozed For Crossrail"

The Evening Standard is all of a flap: Finsbury Circus "is to be bulldozed for Crossrail", they say, with the flower beds and bowling green due to be torn up to make way for improvements to Liverpool Street Station. What?! we hear you cry. That's shocking - Finsbury Circus is one of the few green and pleasant spaces in the City! Utter madness! Get the pitchforks! etc

But... as so often happens, all is not what it seems. We here at Londonist take it upon ourselves to read boring planning documents so you don't have to (it's all part of the service). The application lodged last week is to remove and store the listed gazebo for 5-7 years while work takes place, but we think the important phrase is to be found on page 5: "the re-erection [fnar] of the gazebo, shelter, and restoring possibly both the fountains to working order within a restored Finsbury Circus gardens" after the work is over.

So, yes, Finsbury Circus is going to be torn up but it'll all be put back again afterwards - possibly with the bonus of restored drinking fountains. It's a bit miserable that we'll temporarily lose the use of the area for several years, but this is Crossrail we're talking about: it will all be worthwhile (and be nowhere near as disruptive as the Tottenham Court Road works). And it's yet another timely lesson not to believe everything you read.