The bare cheek of it! Naturists fight ‘peeping Tom’ flats plan
FOR more than 80 years, naturists have flocked to a leafy corner of Britain to play tennis, swim in an outdoor pool and unwind in the grounds of a sprawling estate.
Shielded by tall trees and sited on top of a hill, the nudists of the White House Club in Surrey have had no worries about prying eyes.
But now they fear that their tranquillity is threatened by a plan to build blocks of flats on the boundary of the club’s five-acre grounds – and they are ready for a fight.
Nick Mayhew-Smith, a 48-yearold naturist who has attended the White House for 20 years, said: ‘The club has been there a very long time and is as much part of the landscape as anything else. If you put high-density housing around it, it runs the risk of jeopardising the privacy and tranquillity of the club.’
And a spokesman for the club said: ‘The reason we join a club is so we can have privacy and can be naturists in front of our fellow naturists. We don’t know who will be looking at us from the windows and balconies.
‘Some of our members are open about their naturism but some people don’t tell their friends, family and work colleagues about it because they don’t think they will understand.
‘We have members from babies to great-grandparents and from all walks of life – the judiciary, doctors, nurses, teachers, electricians and plumbers.
‘We don’t just let anybody join the club and that is why we don’t want anyone looking in on us.’
The club, which opened in affluent Warlingham in 1933, has a membership ranging in age from two to 90. The joining fee for 2016 was £318.
The club’s large, traditional clubhouse in a private road has eight bedrooms for guests to stay in and a fully stocked bar. Apart from tennis and swimming, naturists can enjoy naked pingpong, basketball, badminton, bowls, barbecues and music nights. The naturists say their idyllic retreat is threatened by the plans of developer Aventier Landbank.
The row began last year when Aventier applied to demolish four homes adjacent to the club grounds and replace them with three-storey blocks containing 36 apartments.
This was rejected on the grounds there would be insufficient parking. But now the company has reapplied to build 24 flats on the same site.
Joey Macedo, chief executive of Aventier, said: ‘There are no windows or vantage points in our design which will be overlooking [the White House Club].
‘I think there is more of a perception that they feel they will be overlooked rather than the reality.’
He added: ‘We have also communicated with the club that we will put up temporary screens during construction as a goodwill gesture.’
Tandridge District Council is due to make a final decision next month on whether to grant planning permission to build the flats.
The nudist club made similar objections six years ago over a scheme to build a high-rise complex of 167 flats.
The council eventually granted planning permission, although that development has not yet gone ahead.
Mr Mayhew-Smith added: ‘No one in their right mind would choose to build a naturist club next to a high-density set of housing blocks and I think that’s a courtesy that ought to go both ways.’