I am grateful to Tom Woolley (arq 6/3, pp198–199) for taking the trouble to point out that David Lea's pottery buildings at Cheriton can be used to demonstrate a thesis on sustainability. In doing so he adds further weight to my general argument that small-scale, tightly budgeted projects may lead to architecture of substance. But the central point of my article (arq 6/2, pp130–143) was, as is clear from its title, to explore the relationship between ‘Necessity and Poetry’. In pursuing this I took Lea's proposition, quoted in the article, that, ‘Light, Surface, Material and Space are the four basic elements of architecture’, as my reference and worked with these in elaborating my theme. It was my judgement that the point was well enough made. To have raised, explicitly, the question of sustainability would have confused the issue.