Use your vote to save our local heritage

An open letter to RBWM councillors:

At your council meeting on Tuesday, February 8, please vote to save part of our heritage which could be lost as a result of the Borough Local Plan (BLP).

The Willows, on the edge of Windsor, is one of the oldest complete estates in Windsor dating back to the 1800s and the Duke of Sutherland.

Its distinctive buttressed walls with rounded coping stones enclose the whole of the Willows Estate, extending between Windsor Marina to the west, and Sutherland Grange to the east.

Part of it borders our precious greenbelt which is soon to be lost to the development of 450 houses – AL21 in the BLP.

Some of its (heritage) boundary walls are planned to be swallowed up in the development – used as party walls to new build and inevitably destroyed/modified/rebuilt, because the walls are only 1.2 metres high, so completely unsuitable for the purpose planned, as they stand in their original state.

It is within the Borough’s power to protect these walls.

The whole of The Willows Estate is a Nondesignated Heritage Asset (NDHA), and as such is legally entitled to some protection from developers.

In addition, the borough has a number of policies in place (including Historic Environment HE1) which purport to protect such assets.

An easy solution to the problem – there are orchards and allotments planned as part of the AL21 development, and some of these could easily be located alongside the heritage walls.

The land next to the walls is good quality agricultural land (Grade 3a) so suitable for this purpose, and the walls would consequently be left undisturbed with their heritage value remaining visible for all to see.

Please help us if you can.

Register your concerns at the council meeting so that they can be taken into account when the planning applications for AL21 start arriving in the very near future.

Thank you.

On behalf of:

A TAYLOR, L JENNINGS, L GILLES – Willows residents R ENDACOTT, chairman of West Windsor Residents Association