This town has lost its pride

I AM a resident and shop owner in Ashbourne. I have been passionate about this town. Recently, however, my love affair with Ashbourne has been dying and I have been thinking of contacting you, but after a walk through the town centre today I felt compelled to do so.

We have the bones of a lovely town which is slowly but surely disintegrating.

Apart from the chaos of the shocking traffic, which surely puts people off visiting, and the terrible parking, Ashbourne seems to have lost its pride.

The streets are dirty; we have just witnessed broken glass and debris on St John Street and Church Street; and there is a general feel of neglect about the town.

We have some beautiful buildings, especially on Church Street, and some of those look in a state of absolute neglect.

If everyone cared for their premises, be it domestic or retail and took some pride in the town, then surely it would be a much more desirable place to live or visit.

I’m not talking about costly changes, just tidiness and cleanliness and a bit of tweaking in the form of planters, etc, and it could look a whole lot better.

As “Gertie” said in a recent edition, we haven’t even achieved a pleasant walk from the retail park to the town.

I try and promote this to my customers but it isn’t appealing to most people once they’ve done it. Why can’t we just finish that path?

It always strikes me that the road sweepers are out in force the morning of Shrovetide, tidying the town ready for it to be decimated by the boards of visitors... but often the town isn’t cleaned properly afterwards or on a regular basis.

I do my bit promoting Ashbourne, I keep my property and my shop front as tidy as possible, so I’m asking other people with responsibilities towards the town to do their bit, too.

It could be such a beautiful place to live and visit.

We, like many other similar towns, have far too many empty premises, which doesn’t help the appearance, but we have a lot of new business that have recently come and made a real effort to improve the look of town and that is what we want.

So I’m appealing to everyone who lives or works here to just open their eyes and do a bit to tidy up.