|
MORE than 30 fire fighters were called to
tackle a blaze in Stapeley
 Manor
in which one wing was badly damaged.
According to a Crewe fire
station spokesman, quoted by The Sentinel the next day (November 25,
2008), fire fighters, who found flames
licking through the roof when they arrived, went into the manor to
tackle pockets of fire.
The possibility that children
might know something about the blaze was raised by the front page story
of The Nantwich Chronicle (November 26) which asked: "Was anyone
inside?", adding "Children seen near historic home just before it went
up in flames."
Given that it is planned to
demolish the manor when the Water Gardens site is re-arranged to
accommodate housing and offices (see here),
you might think "So what if part of the manor has been burned down? It
will all be down soon."
Well, it is more than a year
since the houses/offices plan was announced and, as far as I know, no
start has been made on the development. There has been a slow down in
similar housing developments generally. Could it be on the cards that
the plan will not go ahead? There is, we are told, a demand for
affordable homes (the Stapeley plan includes some) but has the overall
demand been overestimated?
l Without
meaning to trivialise the incident, I have to ask why, in all the
television news pictures, films, newspaper photographs and now, real life, is the
crime scene boundary-marking tape always deployed upside down?
Obviously, the police officer walked the opposite way to which the
manufacturer intended when he unrolled it. |
