So, I went out for a little walk. Up Entry Hill, through South Stoke, down into Combe Hay (anyone wants to make me a present of the Old Rectory in that village yes please, ooooh, yes, yes, yessssss) and back up through Odd Down.
Which meant that I went past lots of posters demanding “Stop South Stoke Plateau“. A development of some few hundred houses on the southern edge of Bath.
And there’s something really fun about this. Here’s the map of the Green Belt. Yes, South Stoke is inside that Green Belt. As is Combe Hay, Midford, that whole valley. So, obviously, no development there.
So what is being complained about? The “South Stoke Plateau” is actually the arse end of Odd Down. Inside the City boundaries and outside the Green Belt. But they’re whining even about that.
It’s also right by the main road down to Radstock – and, pertinently, to Peasedown St John. Which is just on the other outside of the Green Belt. So that’s where all the south Bath housing has been put these past few decades. Leading, of course, to vast tails of commuters along that 5 mile stretch of road.
They really are complaining about housing being built in just where housing should be, even by current idiotic constraints. Not in the Green Belt, in empty space between the City and the Green Belt. I actually walked through the development yesterday and while not to my taste it’s perfectly acceptable.
And finally, something that Bathonians will grasp. “Save South Stoke” works. “Save Odd Down” doesn’t. Guess which phrase they’ve used for this development wihch is in Odd Down, not South Stoke?
– The “South Stoke Plateau” is actually the arse end of Odd Down. Inside the City boundaries and outside the Green Belt. But they’re whining even about that.
A quick check of the satellite view shows why. The development goes right to the edge of South Stoke, essentially making the village part of greater Bath. Not a single field to separate them, just a large garden. The people in the big house will probably be pissed off with having a housing estate next door so will likely sell the garden for housing (permitted?) to fund their escape. Perhaps they’ll buy the Old Rectory in Combe Hay.
Way too late to object, of course; the time for that would have been the time of zoning. And failing that, that was the time to move.
Ah, I see Sulis Manor (the big house) is now a school facility and the grounds have already been earmarked for development. So that’s not right to the edge of the village, it’s through the heart. End of village. Yeah, that sucks.
Should grant permits to build them all up to 80 feet.
Or there ain’t no climate emergency which Bath and North East Somerset Council has declared.
“anyone wants to make me a present of the Old Rectory in that village yes please, ooooh, yes, yes, yessssss”
Sorry, the owner has plans to knock it down and build a fifteen-storey block of flats extending to the boundary of the plot. And why not? It’s his money, and loads more people benefit that way.
https://www.alamy.com/the-old-rectory-in-combe-hay-somerset-uk-image468689393.html
Be surprised if that’s not Grade I listed. It’ll def be Grade II*
Grade II
https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1135965?section=official-list-entry
What the heck is a hipped dormer. Sounds like a thing the NHS have a waiting list for.
“Bathonians”
Shouldn’t it be ‘Bathers’ ?
So, I went out for a little walk. Up Entry Hill, through South Stoke, down into Combe Hay . . .
Odd that you didn’t do a street tour of the town estates and retail parks but aimed for the greenbelt. If you get your way with planning you’ll have to buy a treadmill.
On my last few visits home I’ve taken exactly those walks. Through the urban areas. One up, for example, Englishcombe Lane to Whiteway down into Twerton by the church, along past the football ground and so back into the centre. I even wrote about it here, snarling with anger at how that Green Belt kept the proles in tiny hovels while the green belt itself was kept pure and pristine for the middle classes.
Find another thing to criticise me on.
My god, those shoes.
Yes, I remember the thread (with pics). The notion of the poor downtrodden folk kept living in slums so the hooray-henrys can sip champers in paradise belongs in a 1960s Labour Party political broadcast. There’s no reason our big towns and cities couldn’t be glittering and efficient Singapores and Hong Kongs – except the basic fact that people in the towns and cities are a bit shit. If we expanded them into the countryside then the countryside would become shit as well. Everywhere would be shit. A dirty, worn patchwork quilt of shit.
It seems likely the middle class have taken over the countryside in the wealthy parts of the country like yours. Around here it’s still pretty working class. The horse riding girls I speak to occasionally are local; the other day I pulled the car over to let by two lads in brown coats and flat caps riding bikes as they took the hunt hounds out on a lolloping run along the lanes.
Enjoy the countryside but keep your ideology out of it.
PJF
Everybody knows that the countryside is racist.
Look at scarecrows eh ? Crows are black after all.