The Devon Gardens Trust wrote to DCC this week in response to the Straitgate Farm planning application. The DGT is part of The Gardens Trust, "the Statutory Consultee on development affecting all sites on the Historic England Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest". The Gardens Trust warned:
The water supply to the fishponds comes from a spring located just below the extraction site at Straitgate Farm, a mile to the west of Cadhay. The fishponds have relied on the spring as a source of water for over 500 years. If the proposed extraction disrupts the spring and the water supply, the fishponds which are an essential and important future of the gardens at Cadhay, will be turned into a quagmire, to the considerable detriment of the historic designed landscape.
We've posted about the mediaeval fishponds before. They are integral to the setting of Grade I Cadhay.
It’s our open afternoon this Friday 4th May. 2-5 pm .— Cadhay House (@CadhayHouse) May 1, 2018
Open to everyone. So come and visit the #Walledgardens#lakes #flowers #countryhouse #creamtea #cakes
We look forward to seeing you.https://t.co/Z55o2D7ZXu pic.twitter.com/KO4aKN3855
We've also posted about how even the 1967 planning application for Straitgate left an area unquarried in an effort to protect the spring for these ponds.
Not only have AI's current plans made no such allowance, but recent water levels at PZ2017/03 - the nearest piezometer to the spring - have put the base of AI's proposed quarry AT LEAST 1M BELOW the maximum water table at this very location. No wonder people are concerned.
Locating a quarry upstream of these precious listed assets - allowing a profit-hungry-multinational to remove a million tonnes of sand and gravel from the hill above the spring supplying water to the ponds of this "glorious Elizabethan manor set in an unspoilt landscape" - is just asking for trouble.
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| Photo: Matt Austin |
