Prison unit ‘should be turned into living museum’
FEMALE POLITICIANS from around the world were yesterday praised as being “heroines” during a landmark House of Commons event to mark the 100th anniversary of women getting the vote.
The Women MPs of the World Conference saw 120 women from 86 countries gather in the Commons, with some speaking alongside UK female politicians.
British Women’s Minister Penny Mordaunt highlighted the presence of human rights activists, women who struggled against injustice and protected others from domestic violence, advocates for girls’ education and those that have worked to end female genital mutilation or help the most marginalised women.
She praised them for both their public achievements and balancing their work with motherhood and caring responsibilities, their “daily battle to be taken seriously”, and sexual harassment, intimidation or abuse.
Ms Mordaunt used her speech to highlight how much progress has been made in the last century, pointing to a ventilation shaft in the chamber “where women would peer through having gathered in the attic space where they viewed the proceedings below that affected their lives”.
“Often they would hear men voicing the widely held concerns that if women were given the vote it would be the end of everything, the downfall of the family, society, nation,” she said.
“But those women knew, even then, that the opposite was true, that without their rights being secured, and their lives being fulfilled, family, society and nation could never really thrive.”
Ms Mordaunt, who is also the International Development Secretary, said the women in the chamber had “come to support the spirit of their cause”.
“I see a chamber filled with powerful, strong and courageous women. You are heroines too.” PLANNERS HAVE been urged to reject a plan to transform the site of the country’s first purposebuilt prison into a 21st century leisure and retail hub.
Residents have appealed to Hambleton District Council’s planning committee, ahead of it examining the authority’s joint scheme with developers Wykeland Group to launch what has been described as “Northallerton’s most significant regeneration scheme for decades”.
While the authority says the £17m Treadmills scheme on the 3.5-acre site of Northallerton Prison – which closed almost five years ago – will create “an exciting new retail, leisure and business destination”, some residents claim it will exacerbate traffic issues, wreck heritage features and dominate the surrounding area.
The plans include a fourscreen cinema with three restaurants underneath, a newly-created civic square and performance space, as well as a heritage centre displaying memorabilia and archives from the jail, shops, offices, flats and car parking.
The council says the conversion of the site’s five remaining listed former prison buildings, including the 1818 female wing, would be carried out sensitively.
But in a letter of objection over the scheme, Diane and Brian Jennings, of Romanby, said such was the historic importance of the women’s block that it should be preserved as a living museum.
Echoing other objections, they added the planned cinema was totally out of scale and sympathy with the nearby listed buildings.
They stated: “The proposed plans will totally destroy this valuable and irreplaceable part of the history of Northallerton and our nation. Northallerton Prison is famous throughout the country and should be preserved physically, not just in pictures on a wall or screen to view, in a foyer as proposed, or by calling the site Treadmills.”
If the scheme receives planning consent it is anticipated building work will get under way in the spring.