New road to be named after campaigning couple
Parish council honours pair’s efforts to preserve green space
A couple who spent years opposing housing being built near the Vinters Valley Nature Reserve are to have a road on a new estate there named after them.
Boxley Parish Council has been asked to suggest road names for the development going up on part of the Maidstone Studios site at Grove Green.
One of the names they have selected is MacGrory Drive.
Donal and Lida MacGrory were the driving force behind setting up the Vinters Valley reserve in 1987.
Mr MacGrory became both a parish and a borough councillor, principally so that he could promote the park, while his wife was the reserve’s first nature warden, serving until 1999.
Sadly Mr MacGrory died nine years ago.
Mrs MacGrory, who is now 84, said they had both shared a huge passion for the reserve and devoted much of their lives to defending it.
She said: “We fought to keep every bit of green space possible.”
But she was comfortable with her husband’s name being used on the new estate. She said: “What’s done is done and I think Donal would be pleased that his efforts had not been forgotten.”
Other roads on the 77-property development will have names reflecting the area’s papermaking past.
There is to be a Parchment Close and a Whatman Drive, while a block of flats is to be named Valley Heights, reflecting the fact that it is the only development of flats in the area.
Boxley Parish Council chairman Bob Hinder said: “It is the prerogative of parish councils to recommend road names, and members take it seriously and choose names that can reflect and in some ways preserve local history.
“The parish council wanted to recognise the long and recent past of the site and was extremely grateful that Lida MacGrory gave permission for the family name to be used.”