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AS
you can see
from the picture above, works is progressing nicely at Sleeper's Point,
the new apartments development next to the Railway Hotel in Pillory
Street. By July, when the picture above was taken, the pavements of the
development were being laid in the archway to the left.
And I think they will undoubtedly be an asset
to the area - better than the coal yards that used to be there, no
matter how necessary the yards were.
But don't think I am going back on my objections (Letter
from Nantwich, November 2005) to the influx of new homes. I still
think we are getting too many for a town the size of Nantwich.
Someone commented to me that they didn't approve of a four-storey
building on the Pillory Street site as it would dominate the Railway Hotel. But,
as I told them, I would rather see a four-storey development on one site
rather than have two lots of two- or three-storey developments on
separate sites to attain the same number of homes. If we must have more
houses, keep them all together on a single site. In any case, from the
road you can only see three storeys (that's all the front section is).
Now, this is where I show my ignorance of natural things. I have tried to
find out before and failed (so if you know the answer, please tell me).
I understand that water is not an element that is continually
regenerating. Mother Nature doesn't take some hydrogen and some oxygen
(in a ratio of two parts to one) and mix them together to top up the
Earth's water supply. What we have now is all we'll ever have. (See
below for an answer).
Is it any wonder we are starting to
have water shortages? Just think how much water is "tied up" in a home:
in the toilet(s) cistern and bowl, in the hot and cold water tanks and
pipes and
in the central heating. Multiply this by all the new houses being built
and wonder no more about where the water has gone.
And that is on top of all the water sitting in bottles on supermarket
shelves, in water dispensing machines, etc . . .!
Yes, I know the water we use gets recycled in one way or another, but
every new home takes its share of the resource and retains it until it
is used, replacing it with the same amount from the natural stock, ad
infinitum.
I have to admit that the developments are changing the look of Nantwich
to the extent that - in the main - they are better than what was there
originally, in the town centre particularly. But I still feel that too
much development will alter the character of Nantwich to the extent that
it will not be the town that has attracted so many tourists. Especially
if the town begins to look like any other in the U.K.
And with the way people tend to move around these days with their jobs surely, even with a
growing population, we have enough houses now. At one time "Only two left", "50%
sold" could be seen on the developers' advertisements, suggesting to me that there should
be a moratorium on new homes until all unoccupied ones had been sold.
I know that developers need to keep building in order to stay in
business - and if they disappear who will build homes in the future -
but there has to be a line drawn somewhere. Surely?
lJust
look how many new developments are currently available in Nantwich: Castle Court;
Chatterton House;
Fairfax Court;
Keepers Chase;
Kensington Court;
Kingfisher Park;
Kingsley Village;
Lyndale Court;
Mansion Gardens;
Millers Croft (formerly Millstone Court);
St Anne's Court;
Sand Martins;
Sleeper's Point;
Swallowfields;
The Cedars;
The Orchards;
Welsh Row;
Wilbraham Court |
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