Debate over crematorium site continues
Dr Ian Richardson’s comments (Observer December 2017) on the crematorium debate are no more informed than those of Rev Colin Renwick.
I have already referred to the disgraceful situation surrounding funerals – burials and cremations alike – and that includes excessive waiting times for both types of service each exerting pressure on the other.
Dr Richardson extols the virtues of the former hospital site as suitable for a crematorium knowing full well there are households immediately adjacent and others facing the site at a short distance.
That is exactly what the crematoria industry including Westerleigh said they don’t want.
The hospital with its valued social history lasting 120 years was important to the community, the last functioning marker to Bannockburn’s long, proud social and industrial past. It was unceremoniously flattened, a particular loss to the geriatric patients the doctor would visit. They would have appreciated the panoramic views he described.
Many of the mature trees he refers to are to be felled to provide road widening and car parking. It will be landscaped with immature trees and shrubs but will remain visible from the road and the above households.
On his visits to the hospital he did so on a road that did not require mitigating measures. He would not have had to sit in a lengthy cortege queue in a centre lane with heavy traffic flying past on both sides.
It is on the wrong side of the road for cortege convoys coming from Stirling there will be little margin for error. That is not satisfactory for the increased risk a bottleneck presents to the community, bereaved families or general road users.
“Stirling merits its own crematorium,” says Dr. Richardson. I have never heard a crematorium described as a meritorious acquisition but nevertheless Stirling will generously pass this particular meritorious prize to Bannockburn for safekeeping.
Like Dr Richardson and Rev Renwick, I will suffer no personal detriment to my domestic circumstances if a crematorium is built at the hospital site. However, unlike them I will resist any proposal that will have a deleterious effect on some of our residents and our community at large and I will not sit in dumb silence whilst they propose that imposition on Bannockburn.
John Fowler Benview, Bannockburn