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the Eton versus East Chiltington chronicles |
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In February 2021 the
residents of East Chiltington learned that Eton College had plans to destroy
their way of life by concreting over vast swathes of Sussex downland to
build an unasked for and entirely unnecessary new town. | |
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typist - |
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STOP ETONBURY... I must get Uiop
to add it to that list -
name
for a new town west of Lewes - yes he'll do it - he's almost like
my right hand. |
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artist - |
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hey typist! - you're not on mute. You seem to be
talking to yourself again |
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typist - |
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sorry I write notes to myself too |
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artist - |
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that's one way of getting readers...
it's a very small village isn't it? |
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typist - |
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yes - all the good writers are busy doing
letters |
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artist - |
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you seem to be repeating yourself too |
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typist |
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no one's going to read my words anyway - when
they see your new picture - it says it all. | |
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Eton vs East Chiltington
- first 17 weeks of news
hello Etongrad! signs in the
lanes South
Downs Eton by dog Final Spring in
Novington Lane? consultation? -
the burglar analogy the simple ma££s
of planning gain 1st cut to the
new town - via Plumpton news
archive timeline - Feb to May 2021 DontUrbaniseTheDown
- why our supporters object the landscape
survey assessment walks East Chiltington |
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the story so far -
Friday - June 25, 2021
Property speculators working on behalf
of Eton College want to build an
entirely new town (3,250
houses that's the new offer - formerly bid in 2012 as
5,000
houses) on open farmland fields along the boundary of the South Downs in
a rural parish (of 150 households) called East Chiltington which is half in
and half out of the National Park... Chiltington? - the East was acquired
in modern times to help the Post Office in the 19th century - is a place
which sounds
almost
like a Saxon village in name - but true to its roots remains -
astonishingly still extant- a sparsely populated handful of single track
lanes, homesteads and micro hamlets which have (with a few exceptions) been
scattered around the
landscape
in the way you see them now since long before the Norman Conquest.
East
Chiltington? - never heard of it. That's why it's stayed special. And as a
non nucleated village it retains the look and feel of a South East England
scarped downland settlement which began to disappear elsewhere in the 14th
century. Where is it? On the northern side of the South Downs National Park and
5 miles west of the city of Lewes in
East Sussex. It's a 5
miles walk (or 11 miles drive) over the Downs from the Falmer campus of
Sussex University.
The
story
timeline - chronicles the public's growing awareness of the Eton
new town threat to Lewes - and what was being said about it - from the end
of February (when it first flared up in local conversations in the lanes
affected) upto June .
summary - in those first 4
months...
- national newspapers and BBC tv
visited East Chiltington and reported the story
- every party candidate in the county council elections said they would
oppose the scheme. Lewes MP Maria
Caulfield she would oppose the Eton new town scheme and would call it
in if necessary
- Parish councils surrounding the communities in the harms
spatter-zone of the Eton initiative agreed to work together to oppose
Eton-Welbeck's hostile plans.
short
term strategic outlook
The Axis forces now hold both ends of
North Barnes Lane:- Fairfax at Plumpton, Eton-Welbeck at East Chiltington.
In the first half of July we expect to see a decision on the Fairfax plan at
Nolands Farm
and the start of so-called consultation
by LDC on
its new plans in which Eton-Welbeck will advocate that their site be
included and favoured in the call for sites. | |
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news about Eton Versus East Chiltingtonsee also:-
timeline
from 1st awareness to May 2021 |
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Editor:- June 25, 2021 - a
new
article in NationalWorld by
Rosie Pearson
- co-founder of the
Community Planning Alliance - reveals the scale of resources which rural
residents - who are under attack by unwanted new town developments - may need
to muster to defend their green spaces against concrEtonization. Among other
things the article says...
"Rosie Pearson... cut her teeth in a
campaign against the biggest new settlement proposed anywhere in England. The
new town known as West Tey, with up to 28,000 homes was hugely unpopular with
local people. The campaign group had to raise over £100,000 to
fight 4 local authorities." ...read
the article
Editor's comments:- Rosie won her campaign
to stop the new town and has since been providing valuable insights to hundreds
of groups around the UK.
You can keep up to date with her group's
objector ninja activities by clicking on her name above and in the usual ways.
DUTD has recently aligned
with her meta campaign group and East Chiltington is on their map / radar.
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Editor:- June 21, 2021 - In a new episode of
the Sunday
Chat - Richard Vobes
- discusses the Eton new town plans in East Chiltington. Among other things he
says...
"It's just abhorrent that somebody can take what
is farmland that has been farmed for centuries and they're the custodians of
and then sell it prevent it from being farmed for future generations. It
doesn't seem right. It doesn't settle with me at all that somebody can say no -
from now on I'm the one that's going to make the decision and take a profit and
not let anybody in the future farm on this piece of land."
Richard said in his Sunday Chat he'd publish a
video
of his walk around the Eton new town site on Monday. And he
did. ...watch
the video | |
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A story in the Guardian
(June 19, 2021) headlined - Eton v the sea trout: college's land sale
sparks fears of river pollution - includes a statement from Sam St Pierre,
vice- chair of the Ouse & Adur River Trust
- who said...
"If the Bevern got further polluted, the trout here
could disappear they could just go extinct in this particular stream. And we're
not talking about acute pollution. We're talking about the kind of general
low-grade pollution that you would get as run-off from urban development. If it
degraded the spawning area, the sea trout could just disappear and a vitally
important population could be wiped out." ...read
the article
Editor's comments:- I used to see the sea trout in
the Roman's winterbourne which ran through my garden in
Chiltington Lane.
OART were surprised how far up the water
courses these fish had come when I showed them in 2016.
The first few
times I saw them, I thought I had imagined it. They were swimming up the current
between Christmas and New Year. But others saw them too and Sam St Pierre
(quoted in the Guardian story) walked with me along the stream to see for
himself the spawning area which in summer is just a bunch of ponds connected by
the gravel bottom.
That's why the shade of trees along the banks is
important too - apparently - to prevent the water temperature getting too hot.
These fish, up to 2 feet long, swim all the way from the sea into Chiltington
Lane. An amazing feat of nature. That's why we have to be careful about water
runoff from hard surfaces.
The Eton site would terminate millions
of years of nature's adaptations and co-survival with past inhabitants here who
may have lacked Eton's grandeur but who were closer to the authentic realism of
nature.
Protecting the sea trout was a pivotal part of an
earlier
successful campaign against a caviar farm development - which was orders of
magnitude smaller and less damaging to the environment than the Eton slot
machine town would be. The sea tout had
their own
signs and placards
all
along these lanes. | | |
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Consultation in
developerspeak and greenwash
Editor:- June 18, 2021 - Consultation
is a word which the residents of East Chiltington and Plumpton are going to
get tired of seeing soon (adding to the weary list of Eton, new town, etc).
In a new article -
consultation in
planning - the burglar analogy - I take a serious look at what this word
really means for objectors to the obnoxious plans which surround us.
I've
based my interpretations on how I've seen "consultation" used in the
wild in real planning applications by land developers and also by the planning
department in Lewes District Council. ...read the article | |
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How many more Sussexes can
we afford to lose?
Editor:- May 17, 2021 -
How
many more Sussexes can we afford to lose?
GB lost an area of
grassland to #urbanisation equivalent to the counties of Sussex and Suffolk
combined in just 25 years - according to a satellite based research study by
UKCEH.
One thing which doesn't help.
£2
million / acre gain in value by land promoters getting planning permission
to redesignate fields for houses in Sussex. (Source - UK gov data and
developer's own press releases.) ...read
more (on my linkedin page) | |
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Editor:- June 11, 2021 - WrongThingWrongPlace.com
today unveiled ETON GREED - a new artwork in the Eton versus East Chiltingon
chronicles.
ETON GREED will be appearing in a number of specially
created contextually related articles in coming days.
ETON GREED is
#6 in the series - planning protest artwork in East Chiltington. | |
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A story in The Argus (May 29,
2021) headlined -
Residents
slam Eaton College plans to build near South Downs - added some
amusement to its reporting of the grisly Eton vs East Chltington chronicles
with its re-spelling of the principal antagonist's name to "Eaton"
(sic) in the main headline and also in a related photo caption - although
these little touches may have changed by the time you read this.
Among
other things the Argus report quotes an Eton-Welbeck spokesman who said... |
"The plans being developed
represent an innovative and sustainable response to the need for local housing.
All development at scale in England is likely to be controversial but we are
committed to engaging with our local partners, stakeholders and the community to
develop our plans with the needs of the district and the wider area as a central
focus."
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...read
the article | | |
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the landscape assessment walks in East Chiltington |
What do you like in this
landscape?
What makes you happy being here?
Do you
recognise the dogs?
Was it really that long ago? |
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Editor:- May 20, 2021 -
Published today - a new article - the landscape
assessment walks in East Chiltington - looks back at an event which
has particular relevance today - when we're thinking about what it is we're
trying to protect. ...read the article | | |
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May 17, 2021 - Plumpton Parish
Council announced that an Inter-Council working party has been formed to fight
the Eton College 'New town' threat and will also work together to oppose any
unplanned and unwanted development.
This group is made up of
councillors from East Chiltington, Plumpton, Chailey, Hamsey, Barcombe,
Wivelsfield, Streat, Westmeston and Ditchling. | |
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No Eton New Town
say new signs in East Chiltington |
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news:- May 10, 2021 - At the
weekend signs began appearing in the lanes and hedges around East Chiltington to
alert friends and visitors to the risk that this countryside they're
enjoying now will be lost forever if Eton College succeeds with its devastating
new town plan. ...read the
story | |
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earlier
news reporting from the very start |
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Commuterton,
ConcrEton, Covid Asylum, Downsview, Dunfarmin, East ChiltingTown, East
Plumpton, Etonbury, Eton-cum-Chailey, Etongrad, Eton Mess, Etonot Green,
Etonplex, Great Blighton, Gridlock, Least Chiltington, New Newick, No Eton New
Town, Quidsinbury, Rurallerton, Wealdtown, West Cooksbridge, Wivelsfield Down,
WrongThingWrongPlace, | | |
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above
- a view of the site scroll down to see more |
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"The Eton scheme
aims to subvert the local plan against residents' wishes to take advantage of
flaws in the planning system which will earn $3 million / acre for changing the
zoning from agricultural to housing for their 500 acre plot which they bought in
the 1990s. New legislation... would make this carpet bagging harder. So it's a
greed driven project which is already creating harm and anxiety in a small
community. Intra-colonialization... if that's a word." |
Zsolt Kerekes
commenting on a
Don't
Urbanise The Downs post (on linkedin June 27, 2021). | | |
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Final Spring in Eton's new town zone?
views
below as seen at and close to the Northern edge of the Eton owned site in East
Chiltington (March 17, 2021) | |
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Final spring?... the headline I used
above - does that remind you of something?
For me it was half a
thought away from Silent Spring. I was going to leave it there.
Sound
familiar? Evoke any ideas? I'm sure it does for many of you. If not... Well
anyway - it does no harm to say more about it here. And we're getting
closer to connecting some ideas. | |
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the new town site - March
17, 2021 |
Silent Spring is a book. Many would say it's
the classic book which sparked the fire of the ecological movement.
Rachel Carson's book was published in 1962 and what it said still had
the power to both sadden me and shock me to the core when I read it in the
1980s. If you haven't read it yet It's a true story by the way. I can tell you
this without spoiling the plot - the villain of the story is the agro
chemical industry and its indoctrination of farmers by scientific and economic
sophistry to kill nature which got in the way of business.
How could
they do that? I thought - when I read it. My education was in electronics not
touchy feely biological stuff. The book made me angry that people could do such
stupid things. Didn't they know better?
Of course - by the time I first
read that book - 20 years had passed since its publication - and we ALL knew
better - mostly because of the impact that Carson's book and the movements
it helped to educate had filtered through into the public at large.
What's
Silent Spring got to do with Eton-Welbeck's new town plan for East Chiltington?
Surely I'm not suggesting that DDT or some other modern kind of
organophosphate pesticides are going to be sprayed over the site to clean it
beforehand like some kind of bulk air freshener?
No. But similar kind
of nature impacting idea... (maybe)
Here's my thinking. Pesticide
residues can break down in the soil after a period ranging from weeks to months
- and then the ground can be usable to grow something. The soil is not as good
as it was before. And you might have killed most of the bugs and insects and
birds for a long way around - and you also might have ruined the health of
anyone who was breathing nearby - but you can still grow some stuff.
Especially genetically modified crops whose DNA have been tuned to benefit from
that kind of soil spring cleaning. |
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What's this got to do with the new town? (These
ideas seem a million miles away...)
We're getting closer...
I
think concrete is the modern equivalent of the 1950s DDT villain which Carson
wrote about in her book.
Once you have covered fields in concrete
- they will be lost for hundreds of years as a natural ecosystem which cleans
the air, drains the floodwaters and feeds us.
In some ways -
concreting over precious green fields - when brownfield sites are available - in
the 2020s in South East England - is more reckless and careless of the well
being of future generations than spraying the 1950s fields of North American
farms with plane loads of pesticides.
We should know better. And stop
such things happening.
Going back to my title - Final Spring - someone
who saw an early draft of that said to me - isn't that a bit strong? Didn't I
know that the first phase of the
planning
consultation would take 2 years. Nothing's going to be built till then.
What
I said was - yeah but - I've seen how things have happened on other development
sites in other places... In those other places - the sites get cleaned up as
part of a multi year preparation. Inconvenient trees and hedges get hair cuts.
So that by the time the plans are ready to be submitted - the original sites
are much tidier than they were at the start.
So... when such
developers get around to filling in forms which ask questions - like:- will
this affect any trees or hedges?
Tick the NO boxes, here,
here and here. Nice and easy. Shiny new photos in the ecological survey report
to prove what a clean site it is already.
Nature likes a bit of a
mess.
So when I wrote - final spring? - I did mean it - as a
cry of warning. Because if things go the wrong way - and accidents do happen -
then I fear this could be the last time you see these places looking as
untidy and natural as they do now. I would be happy to be proved wrong.
Better
still. Stop the plans in their tracks. At every stage. Protect the future. We
don't want to be the dupes portrayed in a future concrEton rewriting of Silent
Spring. | |
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Rachel Carson resources |
And no birds sing (BBC
radio 2012) - "looks at the explosive impact of Rachel Carson's 1962 book
Silent Spring and its role in the growth of the environmental movement."
The
Environment in History - lists books recommended by the
Rachel Carson
Center for Environment and Society |
final words on final Spring |
Remember me saying something about the damage
which would be caused by Eton-Welbeck's unneeded new town in East Chiltington?
And my new field equation...
DDT(1950s) = concrete(2020s)
where
"=" means "is just as bad"
permalink for this
article above
Now take a look at these statistics below. | |
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Natural grassland covers
5.8% of UK land area (in forests and semi natural areas).
Artificial
surfaces cover 8.3%. That's 43% more! |
Those statistics on UK Land
Use come from a study
Review
of Key Trends and Issues in UK Rural Land Use - Report to The Royal Society
(157 pages pdf) (August 2020) - which (among other things) also says this.
"Landownership data is notoriously difficult to obtain in the UK
and even today information on who owns rural land in the country remains
clouded in secrecy and difficulties. Church and Ravenscroft point towards - the
problems of identifying owners, especially in areas where land registration is
incomplete (many areas of rural England) and land is rarely bought and sold
(registration only taking place as a result of such a transaction).
The current landownership structure of England is outlined in Table 4.2" |
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read
the report | | |
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Editor:- July 9, 2020 - British grassland -
greater in area than the size of Sussex and Suffolk combined was lost to
urbanisation in the 25 years between 1990 and 2015 - according to a
satellite based research study and
report
published today by the UK Centre of Ecology &
Hydrology (UKCEH).
"This information on how land cover has
altered is crucial for understanding the impact of these changes on our
environment, and helping us plan for the next 25 years" said
Dr Clare Rowland - who
led the production of the UK Land Cover Map 2015 and has been working with
hydrologists to map land cover change and impervious surface to understand the
impacts of urbanisation on the quantity and quality of water run-off.
Professor Bridget Emmett,
Head of Soils and Land Use at UKCEH, says... With a growing population, the
increasing demand for housing, food and fuel must be balanced with protecting
the wildlife and ecosystems that bring a range of vital benefits for humans.
Knowing what we have on our land surface and where is crucial when it comes to
planning developments and environmental improvements in the future, and our maps
are therefore essential tools for government agencies, water companies, land
managers, NGOs and researchers" ...read
the report
Editor's comments:- I was unaware of the above
report when I wrote my Final Spring in Novington Lane article. But the dogs in
the street knew that there was a serious problem emerging from the
land-gain
landgrab of greenfield sites by land promoters which were showing their
visible signs of pain all over the "save our village / greenfields /
rural landscape" web sites which I found on Google when the news about the
Etongrad
Armageddon hit us in February 2021 - when we were all closely confined in
UK lockdown #3 wondering what to do next.
In retrospect - the instincts
which guided the (anonymous to protect them) naming group to choose a
suitable legacy name for the anti Eton Mess campaign group in East Chltington
(to replace the temporary placeholder names used to kick things off by the
group's founder Marc Munier) have proved to be well placed too.
In
that context Don't Urbanise
The Downs chosen (in March 2021) to be contextually easy to remember
when placed on future road signs with their message of No Eton New Town -
proved to be an inspired choice from both hearts and minds points of view. | | |
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Eco Towns, Garden Cities,
Garden Villages - I thought I understood English but it was a Developer who
spoke them. Any idea what they mean? |
The simple words eco
and garden when prefixed to village, town or city
can add up to create semi-descriptive phrases which are power loaded with
wildly different connotations depending on who you are and the context in
which they are encountered.
So you can't blame developers sprinkling
these wordplay sauces liberally around their prospectus chalkboard menus
to make their crunchy concreting dishes appear less ashen on the
palette de jour. It's only natural!
On the other hand - countryphiles
and rural protection campaigners who are at the unsolicited receiving end of
these communications commonly report nocebo effects - including headache,
nausea and a bitter aftertaste - due to a belief that jumbling together
good words to disguise nature harming projects doesn't make their digestive
outcomes any sweeter.
I was looking for a learner's guide to help
me understand DeveloperSpeak And in a few clicks I found a very helpful
phrase book on www.designingbuildings.co.uk
Here are links to translations of some DeveloperSpeak phrases
which we might encounter more often in upcoming discourses on wrongthingwrongplace.com
eco town /
garden town
/ garden city
/
garden
community /
garden
village
Other competing interpretations are available. | | |
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