The location and context is clearer in this video. The massive crane on the Hiscox site is prominent in the background, in the view from Rowntree Wharf.

It’s not just the noise. I think many people near the busy brownfields will identify with this. Another short video, and a very powerful personal perspective, again from ‘yorkeye’ on YouTube.

I was interested to see a piece in the Press recently regarding a letter written by council leader James Alexander to Nick Clegg. It included his response to the idea that Government could ‘help fund proposed council tax reductions for people living near big new housing developments’.

I imagine the communities referred to are those living on the edge of the built-up areas, near the green belt, rather than those of us in the centre and suburbs. Here near the ‘brownfields’ we’ve been accommodating building sites for years. When I started this site there were many, mainly flats being built. It quietened down because of the recession, but now we’re off again with cranes looming over the Walmgate and Hungate areas. And of course many smaller developments too, in the suburbs. Building sites very close to buildings where people live and work.

I know I’m not alone being rather bemused and a little frustrated by some of the green belt lobbying, by people who are living in houses built in the last few decades on what was greenfield until recently.

Much of the lobbying to protect the green belt relies on our romantic attachments to any undeveloped ‘green and pleasant lands’. But it should be more honest. A lot of it is simply because those on the outskirts don’t want to lose their views and don’t want to live near a building site.

As the above videos illustrate, residents in the city centre have had to accommodate both of those things, the loss of views and the nuisance of building site noise. Perhaps the residents near the fields should accept that they too need to be more accommodating? We can’t build it all on the brownfields.

The post Living near the (noisy) brownfields appeared first on York Stories.

Just one field. One bit of one field. Greenfield/green belt land. At Knapton.

I’d been out on my bike up Acomb way and it being the longest day, with some daylight left, I thought I’d visit Knapton, a place I knew well in the 1970s and early 80s. I’ve cycled through here only a couple of times since, during the day, rushing, on my way to somewhere. Which is an entirely different thing to approaching slowly and stopping and having a proper look. I thought I’d do that, partly for nostalgic reasons, partly because the Local Plan has focussed my attention here.

I thought it would be ruined, so many places are if you go back after thirty-odd years with childhood memories in your mind. But from Acomb it’s just the same. You turn off Beckfield Lane, go up Knapton Lane, nice houses, tree-lined verges — an extension of Acomb’s apparently ever-increasing girth — and then the houses stop, and there’s open land. Just a field, either side of the road, separated from the road by a path and a bit of verge and a low hedge. On the left there’s a tree in the hedge, by a gate. Where I took the photo above.

It was possibly because it was evening, and quiet, with no one else around, but it’s a rare thing to feel such a sudden change of atmosphere, quite a profound change. When discussing it with a friend later I wondered if it could be something measurable like a drop in the temperature as soon as you’re away from buildings. All I know is that I felt, within a few metres of the end of the Knapton Lane houses, like I was in a completely different environment.

I’ve just been reminded that it’s called Ten Thorn Lane on the maps. But for us it was all just Knapton Lane: it went to Knapton.

Perhaps at one time it had ten thorny shrubs. Maybe the hedges at the edges of the fields here were first marked out by ten hawthorn saplings, long long ago, before anyone can remember.

I remember that we used to come up here for walks and look in the hedges for birds’ nests. Or came up here to cycle round on our bikes, somewhere quiet, safe, but away from our suburban streets. Also I think we were brought here when very young by our parents, when they fancied a stroll and wanted to see a field rather than someone else’s house across the road.

Maybe all those things made me stop at the field gate and think what a special place it is. Maybe other people wouldn’t have any of that, and would just see it as a boring field.

And it is just one field, before the houses begin again, of Knapton itself.
But before them, not far from the field gate, this sign.

And a little further along, this sign. The photo isn’t that clear – it says ‘SAY NO TO TRAVELLERS SITE AT KNAPTON’ and ‘please contact the York Council Planning Office’.

After passing a few bungalows, there’s a junction. Old Knapton is here. A tiny place.

We’re turning left and going down the marvellously named ‘Bland Lane’. This could be named after someone with the name Bland, or it could be a good example of ‘say it as you see it’. There’s nothing much of obvious interest on Bland Lane, and as I recall there never was. After a while you reach the Wetherby Road.

At the junction, more signs.

It’s only another field, between here and the outer ring road (A1237). On this field a showpeople’s site could be built. It’s in the Local Plan as a possibility. There’s more information in the links at the bottom of the page.

There were two roads we used to cycle along from that small crossroads at Knapton village. They both ended at Wetherby Road. The other has been truncated by the ring road cutting across it, so I didn’t bother exploring that one, but headed back to the main street of Knapton as the sun was sinking low.

This is really the only ‘facility’ tiny Knapton has. The Red Lion pub.

Nice to see it’s still a pub. Alongside it an attractive house with flowers spilling out from the railings. And opposite and adjacent some more nice old properties, including one with an atmospherically overshadowed entrance, obscured by greenery. And a few newer ones built around the back since I was last up here.

Off the main street, from the crossroads we just passed, is ‘Back Lane’, which, as its name suggests, just runs round in a small semi-circle behind the Red Lion and a few other properties before ending up again on this short main street.

And it is very short, and suddenly you’re at the end of the buildings, and there’s a brick-built pinfold, which I don’t recall ever noticing before. Perhaps it was covered in ivy back then. Or perhaps I was too young to recognise a pinfold or care about it if I did.

And then it’s not long before you meet the ring road. I’ve approached this bit from the other side but it still disorientates me. You need to cycle along it for a few metres before you meet the other bit of what used to be the road to Poppleton. Me and my mum, me and my sister, used to leave Beckfield Lane up Knapton Lane and cycle to Poppleton on minor country roads. The reason I mention that is because I want to stress how much Knapton has had to accommodate change already. The outer ring road skirts it so closely it’s remarkable it has managed to still seem rural — at least on the summer evening when I passed by.

Across the ring road it’s a different thing altogether. The cut-off section of road between the outer ring road and the A59 — what used to be the continuation of the road from Knapton — is strangely grim and depressing and not as I remember it at all. It’s not a through route anymore, it’s a bit of road with a small industrial estate or ‘business park’ on it. It’s as if it’s not the same road. I just wanted to get out of there as soon as I could.

I emerged near what used to be Challis’s, and is still a garden centre, with a Park & Ride site forming opposite, and Poppleton across the way. I turned right and cycled home, thinking about how tiny Knapton is. How it’s survived the ring road being built so close, how it needs looking after and protecting. That the place has managed to stay special, and I don’t know how it’s managed that, but it has.

I’m not sure if it can also cope with a concreted yard filling a large part of the green area separating it from the ring road.

Footnote

Political and personal agendas obscure the facts in this debate and in all of them, and it can be time-consuming trying to get to the reliable and objective information. I’ve made an effort to read up on Knapton, and on the Local Plan background documents regarding these controversial sites, and on the gypsy, traveller and showpeople’s communities and traditions. The links below are to documents and websites I found most interesting and illuminating. Please feel free to add further suggestions via the comments.

Elsewhere on the web

On Knapton:

Google Map to accompany this page

Lovely document with historical information and detailed analysis of Knapton village: Knapton Village Design Statement

On the Local Plan:

Gypsy, Traveller and Showpeople Accommodation Needs Supporting Paper (PDF)

Not an alluring title, but everyone should read it. It’s more interesting than it sounds. The main CoYC document relating not just to the proposed site at Knapton but to other proposed sites. It explained some aspects I was totally ignorant about. It certainly demolishes the notion which seems to be circulating that the local authority is just randomly shoving in travellers’ pitches.

More on gypsy and traveller communities and showmen:

Brief history and background to Traveller communities (from Haringey Council, PDF)

Irish Traveller Movement in Britain

‘Room to Roam’: England’s Irish Travellers and linked report (PDF)

Showmen’s Guild of Great Britain and Showmen’s Guild (Yorkshire section)

The post Knapton and the Local Plan appeared first on York Stories.

Or something.

I’m still trying to work it out and find my way through the information/misinformation.

The Local Plan is massive and complex, and just thinking about it may bring on fatigue and a sense of quiet desperation, so let’s calm and reinvigorate ourselves before contemplating it by focussing our eyes on something green. And brown. A bit of open land, green field/green belt between Rufforth and Knapton. Pictured in springtime a few years ago.

An earlier page discussed ‘brownfield’ land, and how the word makes it sound all dead and rubbish. Whereas ‘green belt’ is an appealing and emotive term, evoking a sense of the last vestiges of ye olde countryside preserved. Our modern-day walls maybe, protecting us not from enemy invaders as our old stone defences did but from ‘urban sprawl’, from being joined to Leeds, or worse, Copmanthorpe.

For some months now I’ve been thinking about the ‘green belt’, trying to think of it in terms of specific bits of land, instead of in that rather vague way I’ve always thought of it before.

I thought of the open land to the right of Wigginton Road as you approach the city. I don’t value it for any picturesque qualities it has in itself, but because it creates a gap, which means that just for a moment, as you’re travelling along Wigginton Road, you see the Minster rising up on the horizon from behind the roadside hedge and framed by far-off trees. Like our medieval ancestors might have seen it. But I think the land there is part of Bootham Stray, so is presumably protected from development anyway.

I don’t have a photo of that view, so here’s a similar view from Bad Bargain Lane (the far-flung track-like part of it).

There’s pressure to find space for housing, and the Local Plan suggests some green belt areas which may be used. And of course, that isn’t popular. It’s not the whole green belt most campaigners are worried about, it’s particular bits of it. Maybe the bit their homes overlook or the bit they walk their dogs on at the moment or where they go to get some greenery and quiet. Understandable that residents would be upset at the thought of losing a place they value or a view they value.

But then all our homes spoiled someone else’s view, ‘concreted over’ a place previous citizens enjoyed as a green place. And surely no one who bought a 20th century built house on the edge of York expected that they would have a view of green fields forever, and that this was their entitlement? That somehow their street or area was the last phase in the city’s expansion?

Another view from the track leading to Bad Bargain Lane, on an evening in April, some years ago. (Can be enlarged.) Perhaps this idyllic scene has already been built on since. I must cycle out there sometime to have a look.

Those campaigning to protect the green belt often state that we should ‘build on the brownfield sites instead’. What they mean, I think, is ‘build it all somewhere else and not near me’.

Though the larger sites (Nestlé South, British Sugar, Terry’s, York Central) still haven’t been built on, there’s been so much new housing development in recent years on the smaller ‘brownfield’ sites that it’s hard to keep up. Off the top of my head, just near my part of town: on Heworth Green; near Haxby Road school; on Shipton St School; on the Groves WMC site; on the Abbots Mews hotel site; on Clifton Garage site.

Then there are the massive blocks built as student housing on Lawrence Street, off Walmgate, on Carmelite Street. The flats on the Hungate site. And so on.

All that building affects those nearby, and many of us living near these sites have lost our views, our open spaces, have seen towering tall things changing the horizon. But it’s what happens. Always has, always will.

Looking back, rather than forwards, I’m sure the cowkeepers of Clifton weren’t happy when the fields around here were covered with terraced housing in the late 19th century. But I’m rather glad that happened as otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here in one of them typing this, and would have nowhere to plug in the laptop. If you’re in a late 20th century home at the edge of the built-up area then your house spoiled someone else’s ‘green belt’/green field view within living memory.

Those brownfield developments, as I’m sure we’ve all noticed, are often apartments, tall blocks, making the most of the available land in prime locations by building as tall as possible. They’re a far cry from those 1920s and 1930s semis out in Acomb and Burnholme and well, everywhere, with gardens front and back. Looks like we might need some more open land to build some new houses like that? Do the people who already live in nice houses out in Skelton etc not think other people deserve a house with a bit of space around it?

So many small apartments have been built in the last decade or so that I think planners must have forecasted that the majority of the population would be divorced, or young and childless, or a student. Some couples, despite the austerity and misery, have managed to stay together, and some even managed to make children, and they perhaps don’t all want to cram into small city centre apartments.

Just a few thoughts from a non-expert, just observing it all and trying to make sense of it. Comments welcome below. Facts are particularly welcome. I’m finding it difficult to split fact from fiction and spin and propaganda, and I’m sure I’m not alone.

I’ll leave you with this roadsign on a narrow lane near York, where an even narrower lane apparently leads to ‘Farms only’. It isn’t only housing development threatening the green belt. If we believe the more inflammatory comments made recently on the Local Plan, this could soon read ‘Wind Farms Only’.

Elsewhere on the web

Local Plan consultation, on the City of York Council website

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