Landscape - TrustNews Spring 1994
The second half of the year began as it was to end with the first hint of the likely loss of a tree which had formed a landmark in Winchester for longer than anyone can remember. At the end of June the magnificent Copper Beech in Eastgate Street opposite Friarsgate was reported as diseased and an application made to fell it. The City Council called in experts from Alice Holt Forestry Laboratory to examine and report on the tree hoping that execution might be stayed, but to no avail: the tree was felled at the end of September.
The Chestnut tree in Tower Street - subjected to drastic surgery -
its survival is in doubt
At the end of November an application was made to fell the very large Chestnut tree in the corner of the car park of the flats built a few years ago at the north end of Tower Street. The top of this tree was subjected to rather drastic surgery two years ago which spoilt its appearance to some extent but it retained a commanding presence on an elevated site which gave it added prominence. As this is being written the advice of experts is being considered, but the tree's survival is in extreme doubt.
In the autumn concern also began to be expressed about the great Plane trees in the garden of the Warden's Lodging at Winchester College. The loss of historic trees which add so much to the beauty of the city is almost too painful to contemplate but the fact has to be faced that the majority of the city's stock of fine trees are much advanced in years and face a limited future.
During the last six months, the committee has regularly objected to the felling or excessive pruning of a number of trees, among them the very large Pine in front of Cornerways in Abbey Hill Road, and very recently the Laurel at the foot of Castle Hill beside the Westgate, which, since it was planted in 1976 has grown with commendable vigour. Quite a few of these objections have led to permission being refused, the most significant case being the abandonment by the City of its own proposal, to cut down all the Sycamores on the south bank of the Itchen Navigation between Gamier Road and Hockley.
Trees planted where these cars are parked could help fill a gap
left by the Copper Beech tree felled opposite in Eastgate Street
August saw the headlines captured by the publication of Huw Thomas's and SAVE'S proposals for an alternative redevelopment scheme for both the Upper and Lower Peninsula Barrack sites. In as much as this retained and enhanced all the existing landscape features of the site as well as all the present buildings, it was welcomed by the Committee, but shortly afterwards the City Council found itself obliged to give planning permission to a modification of the earlier proposals already commented on.
The Committee, while understanding growing anxieties about security and privacy, (the two are often linked) was particularly dismayed at the way in which first a thoroughly unsightly chain-link fence on concrete posts capped with barbed wire running for more than a hundred yards, was put up on the corner of Romsey Road and Chilbolton Avenue, and then a close boarded fence was erected on the boundary at Weeke Cottage in the Stockbridge Road creating a completely sterile back drop to Weeke Pond. No notification of the fence was published although the City was consulted and agreed to it, and although the planning application for the second was objected to, the work was eventually allowed after negotiation. In the Committee's opinion, at Weeke a brick or flint wall or combination of fence and hedge would have been altogether more appropriate.
Objections were made to a scheme of extreme crudity to provide more car parking at the hospital in front of the Butterfield Block by demolishing the old X-ray Departments on the Romsey Road frontage, and tarmacing the whole area, with one or two shrubs to provide token relief. The scheme was withdrawn: now that the hospital's car parking problems are being solved elsewhere, the Committee hopes that some attempt will be made in the near future to properly landscape the approach to the hospital, perhaps along the line of Butterfield's original scheme of which good photographs exist.
In August English Heritage published a leaflet entitled "Street Improvement in Historic Areas". The Committee commends it to the Trust. In paragraph after paragraph it echoes the concern the Trust has been expressing for the last three years about the recent treatment of Winchester's floorscape of roads and pavements.
The Committee was much more favourably disposed towards the application in November for a supermarket at Winnall than it had been towards the Tesco application at Bar End. It still hopes that the suggestions it put forward for alternative Park and Ride arrangements at Bar End will be adopted and the opportunity will be grasped to develop a major tract of new landscape between the completed M3 and the City, embracing the playing field and water meadow areas, the Itchen Navigation, St Catherine's Hill and the site of the former by-pass to create a wonderful new public amenity. The outcome of the Tesco Public Inquiry will determine the fate of this exciting possibility.