Tiny village fears influx of 5,000 homes
THERE’S a church, a school and lots of green fields in the tiny Gloucestershire community of Churcham.
But the village, which sits between the A40 and the A48, could soon look very different if thousands more homes are built on the edge of the village.
Developers and council officials are preparing to create a new town the size of Coleford between the Forest of Dean and Gloucester.
Residents of the village – which has a population of about 650 people – fear it will create chaos on an already overburdened highways network.
But leaders at Forest of Dean District Council say they agreed to consider developers’ proposals because they have to find land for thousands more houses than they originally thought to meet revised Government targets.
The cabinet have already agreed in principle to put 2,000 more homes in the new local plan, but parishioners say this is only the first phase and eventually there could be another 4-5,000 homes in total, which would dwarf the current settlement and overwhelm local infrastructure.
There is currently only a small primary school and a farm with a business park in the village, as well as the church.
“This would turn our rural community into an urban one,” said John Francis, chair of Churcham Parish Council. “This development is twice the size of Newent and six times larger than Huntley.”
According to officials traffic fears could be resolved by cycle routes and a park and ride near the Highnam roundabout but Mr Francis is not convinced.
“The transport hub will consist of a park and ride and a cycle path at Highnam.
“You need a density of 30,000 homes to get a train station so the train station is a non starter.
“So 7,000 to 8,000 cars all on the existing road network it will be chaos.”
This would turn our rural community into an urban one ... This development is six times larger than
Huntley JOHN FRANCIS
ON the morning of October 16, 1970, Bernard Faraway was attending a routine meeting at the council offices in Bristol. Little did he know that he was about to hear some news that would turn his life upside down.
Bernard was the piermaster at Clevedon and at approximately 10.30am, a disembodied voice at the end of a telephone line, breathless with excitement, told him that his beloved pier had collapsed.
He rushed back to Clevedon and couldn’t believe what he saw. “It was like a dream and it broke our hearts”, he said to a journalist some years later.
The sight that greeted Bernard’s return to Clevedon seafront was indeed distressing. The seventh and eight spans of the pier were cantilevered into the muddy waters of the Bristol Channel. The pierhead, an embarkation point for the Campbell’s steamers that still occasionally chugged up and down the coastline, was an island.
Eyewitnesses who saw the pier collapse spoke of the seventh trestle on the southern side giving way and the adjoining decks sliding into the water in a cacophony of grinding metal and splintering wood. It apparently took 20 minutes for the broken spans to settle.
Afterwards there was an eerie silence punctuated only by gasps and exclamations from those who had witnessed the tragedy. It wasn’t long before this turned to anger. Who was to blame? Why had this happened?
It quickly became apparent that the collapse had occurred whilst a load test was being undertaken.
Clevedon Pier partially collapsed into the sea 50 years ago tomorrow. So what went wrong? Phil Curme , chairman of the Clevedon Pier and Heritage Trust, reveals the story behind the disaster, and explains how it highlights the need to make £400,000 annually to cover running costs and essential maintenance.
Three workmen from the local council had been using water-filled bags and measuring instruments to look for movement when weight was applied.
A rumour quickly spread, which endures today, that the three hapless workmen had taken a tea break and inadvertently left a tap running.
The newly formed Clevedon Pier Supporters Club were indignant. The work was not properly supervised, they said. Was the water tap left on thus causing excessive loading?, they angrily demanded in a letter to Cleve don Urban District Council.
Others pointed to the lack of main
tenance and the fact that with the decline in the steamer trade, the tolls were never going to cover the pier’s costs. Even Sunday opening, the building of a dancehall on the pierhead and the installation of slot machines were never going to be enough to create financial stability, they said.
So, what really happened? Well, the pier received very little maintenance pre-Second World War and none at all during the conflict. In 1952, the pier’s insurers flagged their concern and began insisting on certificates of safety from specialist consulting engineers.
Eight years later the consulting engineers, Messrs. Underwood and Partners, started insisting on physical testing of the structure, having observed that “one third of the metalwork has been lost through rust”.
Initially the tests – 50 lb per square foot – were undertaken using demountable water tanks obtained from the Ministry of Defence. To prevent overfilling, a hole was cut in each tank and covered with an asbestos sheet. In the event of a problem, the asbestos plug could be broken and the water released.
Later, for reasons of economy, nine 100x2ft thin polythene bags were used. The pier was tested in this manner five times in ten years and after each such event one span was painted. The trestles were left as they were because they were thought to be sound.
Mid-morning on the day of the fateful test – October 16, 1970 – everything seemed to be going to plan. Seawater had been pumped up to deck level and the plastic sacks on spans seven and eight were filled.
Shortly before 10am the testers broke for a tea break. Half an hour later, the assistant engineer in charge took a reading and found there had been movement on one of the marker boards.
Rushing back to what is now Scarlet’s Cafe, the assistant engineer, having ascertained that the board