Blood, Sweat and Scones by Keith James Bell

Author:Keith James Bell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
Published: 2017-08-21T15:04:06+00:00

* * *

One day I received an unexpected phone call from Ruth Ellis, the owner of Kepier House, the other grade one listed building in Durham City. She was upset as she had met some engineers in the field in front of her house who were surveying the land for a road that was planned. It was the first she had heard of this and wondered if I knew anything. I did not so she went on to tell me that the engineers had spoken of a plan to put a bridge over the river and a three lane road through the valley. I said I would investigate and get back to her. I found out that such plans did indeed exist and the road was to run around the back of Crook Hall, just behind the pond and then join the A690 next to the mainline railway bridge opposite Highgate. I was informed by the council at County Hall that all relevant people had been consulted including all ‘hard to reach’ groups. I pointed out that some of ‘the easy to reach’ people had not been consulted including the landowners and the residents of Sidegate, a street less than a mile from County Hall and adjacent to where they were going to build the road.

After this short, and somewhat terse, conversation I visited all my neighbours asking whether or not they had heard of this so called Northern Relief Road. They had not heard a word and were furious about the plans. Thus the campaign to ‘Save our Valley’ was born. We campaigned for almost a year with a lead group of campaigners made up of Peter Smith, Angela Teirney, Tim Clarke and myself, supported by an individual who did a great job of developing a website. We were helped by a group of local residents and the wider public, including many thousands of visitors to the Hall. Objections to the council plans came from far and wide. Letters were written to the local councillors, MPs and Euro MPs. We received funding for the campaign from a number of sources including Lush Cosmetics. The local press, including the Advertiser Group, were also a great support. We felt passionate about our cause. We had worked so hard at Crook Hall to create something special, a quiet peaceful oasis. Now there were plans to run a road through the fields which backed onto the tranquil gardens. It would change the atmosphere forever. We were frantic. We felt that if the plans went ahead we would have failed in our duty to protect the Hall during our ownership.

Eventually the plans for the road were shelved. I would like to think this change of heart was in part due to our campaign and the efforts of all those involved. Other helpful factors were that the Olympics had sucked a lot of funds from public works and there were black clouds forming over the general economy. The danger had disappeared for the moment.

The threat to the setting of the Hall and Gardens was to raise its head again a few years later.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.