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AN ELVASTON MYSTERY
In all the trouble and strife
created by the situation regarding Elvaston Castle and
Country Park, there is one paradox that is never far away
from one's thoughts on the situation. Here we have a
beautiful country estate, a haven of peace and
tranquility, an oasis in an ever encroaching desert. Just
across the road and slightly south west of the park is
what at first sight looks to the untrained eye like
another area of farmland, once mixed pasture and arable,
just missing it's grazing cattle, or it's growing crops.
This is, of course, merely an
optical illusion, a mere moment, frozen in time. It is,
in fact, about to become an extension of Alvaston and
Chellaston. Alvastchell perhaps? You see, you must
retrain your eyes to look at things in the same way that
developers and sellers of real estate do, or dithering
councillors, who can't quite make up their minds which
way to jump, or when, in case they get their timing wrong
and lose their jobs!
Here, for instance, in what appears
to be open countryside, is, in reality, the space for an
estate of over 2000 houses, which someone wants to build.
This is what my spies have told me, and, believe me, they
are everywhere! Naturally, all the boxes that are crammed
into every available space will have names that evoke
memories of what once stood in their place. Hawthorn
Crescent, Goldfinch Mews and the like.
On another border to the estate,
(Raynesway), the council is planning to build 'Pride Park
Two', or similar. Naturally, we can hardly wait for even
more traffic jams, fumes, and pollution. Still, think of
the job creation. Perhaps we can have another stadium
with insufficient parking, so that everywhere else,
perhaps even the nice new houses in Goldfinch Mews can be
littered with other peoples cars for hours at a time at
weekends!
However, I digress! Forget about the
things on the nasty side of Elvaston, slip around to the
fields on the opposite side of the lane to the main
entrance - surely you'll escape things there, won't you?
Yes, unless the gravel extraction plans are given the go
ahead. You know what these cash-strapped councils are
like, need some money? Oh! Thank goodness! Here's a
developer, here's some more public property, phew, a
close thing that time! Nearly ran out of cash!
Which brings us round to the real
paradox of the Elvaston fiasco. Why would Mr. Brian
Ashby, an apparently likeable and intelligent
businessman, with a successful multi-million pound
international company, Norseman Holdings, who lives in a
very large house at Turnditch, want to buy the lease on
the one last jewel of a park left in this area. A park
which people enjoy when they visit from anywhere in the
world, come home from anywhere in the world, or where
families visit on holidays and high days, some of whom
can't afford to go elsewhere, but who love to spend some
time at Elvaston.
The place still holds the magic for
everyone. People still wonder how the aristocracy lived,
how the estate workers lived and went about their daily
lives, what the gardens created by William Barron were
like, who has come and gone in it's great history? More
than this, it gives them a chance to laugh and play and
to move and breathe away from the confines of their
houses, flats and living areas, some of them possibly
very cramped. Further more, their money has already
bought and paid for it.
Mr Ashby is a family man, his
children are all grown up now but he must remember what
it was like to enjoy their wonderment, to run and laugh
and play with them, to watch them grow and develop, in
places that were harmonious to their development ? Why
then, does he want to buy one of the only places left in
this area where families can still do this? Why does he
want to take away the opportunity for peaceful
recreation, in what is still at present a semi-rural
location, from so many people? From the disabled
children, who used to enjoy the horse riding?
From the parties of schoolchildren,
who used to come on educational visits to the working
farm? From the people who used to visit the Derbyshire
Wildlife Trust's offices there, wondering what they had
seen, heard, or found? From all the people who enjoy it
still, even though it has been neglected to such a
terrible degree, by County Council Officers who just
couldn't care less about us 'po folks in the south?'
Surely, he isn't that much of a mean spirited man? What
price yet another golf course? What price yet another
hotel? Or is just a case of 'I own this country, I own
that country over there?' to quote from Politician, by
Cream. Or is it that being so successful means that you
don't care about anybody other than yourself?
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