Chairman's Remarks - Trust Annual Report 1990
Much to our regret Mrs. Barbara Carpenter Turner stood down as President of the Trust in April this year. A founder member and our President for many years, she has made an immense contribution to the success of the Trust throughout its life and will be much missed by us all, although we hope that as an "ordinary" member her influence will not be at an end.
Mrs. Carpenter Turner has been succeeded by Sir Peter Ramsbotham, who has been a Vice President since 1982, takes a keen interest in our affairs, and is already proving a valuable counsellor. He is only the third President of the Trust in the thirty three years since it was formed. The original President was Sir William Andrews and Barbara Carpenter Turner the second. We are fortunate both in the distinction and the continuity of our Presidents.
Sadly, during the year we learned of the death of Charlotte Lady Bonham Carter, a Vice President of the Trust and a well-known and much loved figure, particularly in Hampshire.
We are proud that a member of the Council of the Trust, Mrs. Pamela Peskett, has become Mayor of Winchester, and grateful to her for continuing to play an active part in the Trust during what must be a hectic year.
David Spicer, unfortunately for us, has resigned from the Council as he is moving away from the district. He has been an active member of the Heritage Centre Management Committee and we are grateful to him for all that he has done for us.
During the year we co-opted onto the Council of the Trust Mark Dodd whose re-election will be proposed at the forthcoming Annual General Meeting. Mark served on the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments after National Service in Nigeria and reading history at Cambridge. He then joined the BBC and retired as Controller of Overseas Services (World Service) in 1988. He has lived in Winchester since 1984. He is not new to amenity societies having been a founder member and Secretary of the Hoddesden Society, where he lived previously.
Clarissa Turner who succeeded Gill Graham as Secretary of the Trust in 1988 had to resign early this year due to a serious illness and is very much missed by us all. I am glad to say that she is now very much better. Fortunately Mrs. C. Devas came to our rescue at short notice and is already proving invaluable.
At this point it is perhaps appropriate to mention the retirement of the Winchester City Director of Planning, Jack Thompson. There would be something wrong with any conservation society that invariably saw eye to eye with its local Director of Planning and neither we nor, I am sure, Jack would claim that this has been the case! Nevertheless, we consider that the City has been fortunate in its Director of Planning and we wish Jack Thompson, who has been both a good friend and a fair opponent of the Trust, well in his retirement.
The year has been a busy one for the Trust. In addition to our routine (but essential) preoccupations such as Development Control and landscape matters, the M3 and Peninsula Barracks have both been major concerns, the Chippindale Venture a successful innovation, and a solution if only a short term one has been found to the problems of tenure at the Heritage Centre. We are becoming increasingly and, I believe, constructively involved in Traffic Problems and the possibilities of Park and Ride in Winchester. We are concerned about the state of the Buttercross and the Westgate and the future of the Hockley Viaduct. We deplore the apparent inability of the authorities to insist on appropriate shop fronts particulalrly when large retail groups are involved and we consider that Winchester compares badly with at least some other historic cities in this respect. We understand that there are additional powers that the authorities can acquire to control such matters in sensitive areas and we feel that this question should now be reviewed.M
Like most inhabitants of the City, we feel that far too much building is going on simultaneously, and that Winchester has become an uncomfortable place in which to live, work and visit. We hope that this will be a temporary phase, particularly with the completion of the Brooks Shopping Centre, though we are far from happy with what is appearing from behind the hoardings - an architectural hash as the Trust predicted. And now the tree planting and street furnishing on this site seems to be going the same way (see comments under Landscape Committee).
Thus we have plenty to keep us occupied, but are fortunate in having so many able and willing people to help both on the Council of the Trust and on its various Committees. To all of them I am most grateful and if any member would care to become more actively involved I would be glad to hear from them. No voluntary organisation can have enough volunteers.
Financially the Trust is in good shape. As will be seen from the accounts revenue exceeded expenditure and I am glad to report at a time of falling markets that the value of our investments in Gilt Edged Securities on 17th September 1990 was £179,535 compared with a cost of £160,870.