Maidstone Studios Planning

Vinters Valley Brief History

2006-10-08T09:07:00.000-07:00

A brief history supplied by Helen Morley

This reserve is a former pleasure grounds and parkland of a grand manor house that was lost in the 1950s by arson. A house has stood on this site since the 1200's starting as as a simple manorial one roomed hall up to a massively extended and opulent mansion that was in competition with fellow landowners such as Mote House. Vinters once had a 700 acre estate and was owned by the renowned Whatman family who were papermakers and sons of Maidstone. The grounds around the house were landscaped by the famous Humphry Repton who produced one of the glorious red books that he is known for.

In its heyday, its owners were wealthy gentry who employed many local people to tend the extensive kitchen gardens, manage the landscaped pleasure grounds and avenues, stabling, farming and forestry. Many of these local tradesmen were lost to the First World War and the house was run by a skeleton staff. During the Second World War, the family left the rambling mansion and it was used by the military for training the many soldiers who went to defend England. After this, the last of the Whatmans died off and the house began a gentle slide into obscurity. It became lost to nature in the same way that Heligan did, and was fenced to deter the small boys who enjoyed its dangerous and spooky environment (not that it stopped them!)
Then a property developer bought it and it mysteriously burnt down. (He co-incidentally happened to be the mayor of Maidstone and the chair of the planning committee at the time!) and he then proceeded to sell much of it off for residential homes. Finally he was stopped (although not before retiring as a millionaire) and the council bought the last 90 acres. They then planned to develop it further for industry, but not before two local residents - Donal and Lida MacGrory - discovered it during an illicit dog walk. They fell in love with the lost garden and vowed to save it from further development. Lida worked on the site as unofficial warden (until her eventual employment) and Donal became a councillor for the Borough and Parish, with the express purpose of rescuing it from the "inside". Eventually, with the growing support of local people; they won and the embarrassed council handed it over to the newly formed Vinters Valley Park Trust as a public open space.

The reserve was formally opened with a 99 year lease in the early 1980s and has been managed by a part time warden and an extensive volunteer team of managers and trustees ever since. It is a small local charity that depends almost entirely on the generosity of local people who have come to love this quiet and exotic place. It has been managed as a nature reserve, conserving the relics of the Victorian era such as the Sequoias, Barrel Bridge, Bamboos, Chusan Palm trees, waterfalls and grottos with the well established local flora and fauna. Local school children have helped conserve the site as well as enjoying pond dipping, surveying, building dead hedges and generally rolling in the grass since the 1960s when Lida brought them in to share it. The residents have adopted trees and signed up to the newsletter, as well as volunteering with practical tasks and dipping their hands in their pockets when we needed them to.

The site still remains a surprisingly rich natural place, with rolling cow grazed parkland and ha-ha's, woodlands, icehouse, exotic trees, former kitchen garden, flower rich meadows, lakes, streams, springs and marshes. It is home to a surprisingly diverse flora and fauna including nationally important invertebrates, kingfishers, dormice and water rail to name a few.

There has been extensive development around the site in the last 20 years including the M20 to the north and new industrial park as well as housing to either side. Within weeks of the motorway opening, the small but stable population of badgers became extinct. It is becoming even more isolated and the vital links with the surrounding natural spaces around it, are becoming eroded. It is vital that these links remain and that the stream that runs the length of the reserve is not further polluted by road wash off. One of the last sections to be developed by the Council before it's hand over, was on green belt land (as was the other 600 acres that the council permitted the development of) and this was the TV studios and former Mobil building (now a computer centre). The council only agreed to the development of this green belt land on the basis that this would only ever be brown field land and that no further development of it, could be permitted.

To view the letter from Steve Songhurst, Warden of the Nature Reserve click on the link to Boxley Parish Council. He also has a potted history and deals with the much earlier times back to Roman Britain.

Thoughts,Comments,Ideas,Arguments

2006-09-29T19:45:00.000-07:00

Use this area to post any ideas or thoughts that might be useful in formulating our presentation.

Contacts

2006-09-29T15:47:00.000-07:00

We will try to post as much information as we can to this blog but for those who would prefer email please send your email address to me at peter.rabbatts@talk21.com and I will include you in group distribution.

Letter To Paul carter KCC

2006-09-29T15:00:00.000-07:00

Paul Carter
Langley Park House
Langley
Maidstone
Kent ME17 3NQ

September 29th 2006

Dear Mr Carter

Planning Application MA/06/1549N

I write with regard to a planning application submitted by Maidstone Studios to build 142 new dwellings on their site at New Cut Road. These dwellings are 14 individual house and 128 apartments in 5 storey blocks.

The Boxley Parish Council has unanimously objected to this plan along with many local residents who have written to the planning authority. I appreciate that at this stage it is probably not something that you would want to be immediately involved with. The purpose of my letter is to voice some wider concerns that hopefully are within your remit and which may come into play should this plan be either passed or go to appeal.

1) Infrastructure. The ability of the now private utilities to supply any new development is not taken into account. Water is a much publicised issue. We have not reach drought conditions yet but supply is on its lower limits, the water companies seem unable to control leakage yet with each new development greater demand is placed on them. As private companies they are in clover, as demand increases and supply decreases then profits shoot up. According to most pundits it would need to be the wettest winter on record to bring us back to adequate water stock such as to avert more problems next summer. Unfortunately as we take away more and more open land there is less space for rain to soak in, it just hits tarmac or tiles runs off and is lost to the system.

2) Roads. This proposed development in particular would place more strain on a local road system that is already beyond being able to cope with peak demand. As there are no services on the proposed site all the 144 occupants will need to travel to shops, jobs, schools etc. If they want to walk anywhere they will have to cross what is already a busy and dangerous road. If the Notcutt site is also developed then we may as well give up our cars if only public transport was not such a farce.

3) Schools. There are no places left at local schools and one, Detling, is due to close.

4) Quality of Life. I appreciate that people need homes. Someone currently homeless or sharing will have a huge improvement in their life quality if they move to a place of their own. Equally established residents have their quality diminished by the creeping overcrowding and lose of open space etc. A difficult balance.

The Grove Green residents held a public meeting on September 28th at Grove Green Community Centre to discuss the above. There are obvious planning concerns with this development which centre on the density proposed and the impact on the local environment particularly Vinters Valley Park.

It has also drawn out wider concerns as detailed above that the infrastructure, schools, roads and utilities etc don’t have the capacity to deal with rampant development but these do not seem to concern the planning authority. We are surprised that KCC Highways seem to have accepted this development proposal seeing no significant impact on the local roads. 142 dwellings using an existing congested junction as its only access is bound to have an impact.

I would appreciate your views on the above and any help, as our County Councillor, that you can offer.

Regards

Introduction

2006-09-28T22:25:00.000-07:00

Thank you to all those that attended our meeting, Thursday September 28th. We will use this blog to keep everyone informed and hopefully exchange ideas. Whilst we initially want to stop this particular plan for 142 dwellings we feel it raises a much wider issue of how our elected representatives make decisions that affect our environment and quality of life. Iam neither "nimby" or luddite but this headlong rush to build boxes that meet Government targets for the Council and huge profits for the developers cannot be right. We all live on someone elses green field, Grove Green destroyed a lot of open farmland.

Councillors

2006-09-28T16:10:00.000-07:00

Here is the link to the list of Maidstone Borough Councillors.