Landscape - Trust Annual Report 1994
The City's trees have figured prominently in the deliberations and actions of the committee during the last twelve months. The danger posed by disease to the magnificent copper beech in Eastgate Street at the time of writing the last annual report proved to be all too real and it was felled last September. The slightly battered but still splendid chestnut tree which had stood at the Five Corners end of Tower Street for much more than a century was declared unsafe and taken down in March and a fine beech in Petersfield Road was removed on the same grounds early in the summer. In June the County Council felled one of the silver maples planted in 1977 outside its headquarters at Queen Elizabeth II Court to commemorate the Queen's Silver Jubilee. The Trust is firmly of the opinion that, with the co-operation of the highway authority, the tree in Petersfield Road could have been made safe and it objected vigorously to the felling of the silver maple which it considered arbitrary in the extreme. It accepted the loss of the chestnut but was very disappointed that in spite of entreaties by the Trust the owner of Tower Court refused to plant a new tree to replace it. Happily, the City Council has now belatedly taken enforcement action on replacement.
The committee is pleased to report that the City Council was persuaded to adopt a plan prepared by Gillian Bauer to make good the loss of the copper beech in Eastgate Street by the planting of limes on the opposite corner of Friarsgate. A number of difficulties had to be overcome but the first of the trees were planted in the spring, with the Trust making a significant contribution to the cost of the work. This initiative has led to all concerned agreeing to meet in mid summer each year to agree on a tree planting programme for the coming autumn and winter, co-ordinating all aspects of the work entailed. Encouraged by this success the committee suggested to the Trust Council that a sum for tree planting should be included in future annual budgets and was delighted at the very generous response of £1,000 for the current year.
Last year the committee reported its undertaking to survey all the trees within the area bounded by the former walls of the City. The work has progressed steadily and is now well on the way to completion. The number and variety of trees recorded has been extremely revealing. Several unusual species have been found and some quite exceptional specimens noted. When work began a total of a thousand trees was not anticipated, but in the event it will almost certainly be exceeded.
Throughout the year the week by week monitoring and commenting on planning applications to fell or prune (mutilate!) trees has gone on. This invariably requires an inspection to be made on site before a comment or objection can be written and the time this takes up can be considerable.
The City Council's repairing and traffic calming schemes have included work on the south side of Romsey Road as far as St James Lane, the High Street end of Staple Gardens, Middle Brook Street and Stanmore Lane. The committee's criticism of the replacement of old and weathered natural materials by coloured and textured concrete kerbs and blocks continues to fall on deaf ears it seems. This is despite the publication by English Heritage of an excellent leaflet warning of the damage such replacement has done to historic areas. Under foot, cities and towns throughout Britain are beginning to look all too increasingly alike.
On a happier note, the Committee was pleased to be invited by the City Engineer to be involved in the selection of new seats in the High Street to replace the rather crude ones which the Tour de France cycle race necessitated moving. The new seats of robust but not inelegant design have now been in place for several weeks and have attracted favourable comment.
Signs unfortunately continue to proliferate. The one way system introduced in the High Street required more than a dozen extra signs and particularly bad examples have appeared between St George's Street and the south end of Parchment Street. The coming into being of the new Healthcare Trust has led to sheer anarchy in Romsey Road with the replacement of the admirably designed and co-ordinated black and white sign system of the former authority by weakly lettered signs in marzipan colours or aggressively lettered signs in strident blue and white in a very unhappy mixture.
Looking to the future and to conclude with some optimism: as this is being written, the old by pass is being broken up and the work to recreate the lower slopes of St Catherine's Hill and reunite it with the ancient landscape of the Itchen Valley has begun. It will be some years before the results will be mature enough to be fully appreciated but the possibility of an area of beauty and lasting value being gained is very great. What must not now be lost is the opportunity to create at Bar End a fitting gateway to Winchester from the south off the completed M3.