Wildflower area lifted ahead of building work

SUSAN Bywater queries the need for the frequent mowing of the former Western Park Golf Club site, which is now a haven for wildlife (“Don’t mow course site, wildlife is thriving there,” Mailbox, May 5).

The site contains an area of wildflower meadow which was lifted and transplanted when the Kirby Frith housing area was proposed for development in the West Leicester Local Plan in the late 1980s.

This locality was previously part of the golf course and was replaced by an extension of the course to its north-west.

Also in the lower part of the golf course once stood Kirby Frith Hall. This was the centre of a small rural parish, long since absorbed by Glenfields civil parish. It was gutted by fire in 1931 and subsequently demolished.

When the Kirby Frith housing development was allocated in the late 1980s, it was first proposed to be called de Havilland Fields, an oblique reference to the adjacent former Leicester Airport of the 1930s, which is now the site of Braunstone Frith Industrial Estate.

This name was not well received and I, working in the city planning department at the time, suggested Kirby Frith, which was adopted.

Whenever a major development was proposed, for many years, a planning brief would be prepared, and the Kirby Frith planning brief was one of the last of its type before computer technology took over (and the only one for which I did the lettering and some artwork.

Keith Dickens, South Knighton