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Professor Green’s letter (September 23rd 2010) solicited some interesting questions not least the time scale Ilkley is supposed to be conserving. A look at the town cen-tre tells one it is a fiction compared to towns with a real sense of conservation who would not allow the desecration allowed of late. Gone are assets which made Ilkley unique while in their place objects so pseudo as to be a joke. A look once more into the history book - C1844 to 1900 - shows development so vast even a moderate NIMBY would have a monumental breakdown.
In the thirty years I’ve known the town Ilkley has gained much, lost much and by comparison conserved little. What has been conserved is open to question as to was it worth conserving in the first. Professor Green points to estates in West Ilkley. What of those just below the Moor? Craiglands Park, Wells House estate, the former Semon Home, either side of Westwood Drive and the many and varied developments on both sides of the river. One might say the effects of 1859 have stayed with Ilkley long after Darwin left. Again it is open to debate how On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection can be a likened to town planning and conservation but there are similarities. The town’s pavements had weathered along with the nearby buildings for over a century. A century of relative pedestrian safety.
Now even the fittest are tripping and falling on Ilkley’s sidewalks thanks to new paving. (One sidewalk so mentioned was repared late autumn of 2011), I know to my cost having fallen on more than one occasion since 2004. That the proposed supermarket development will harm Ilkley’s con of conservation area is a very thin excuse. It is our small traders who need conserving, likewise the welfare of those who live near to or along routes to The Shed.
Ilkley’s waterways are also set to suffer if the development goes ahead. Public health and welfare is more important than supposed town centre con-servation so too is Nature Conservation.
In the thirty years I’ve known the town Ilkley has gained much, lost much and by comparison conserved little. What has been conserved is open to question as to was it worth conserving in the first. Professor Green points to estates in West Ilkley. What of those just below the Moor? Craiglands Park, Wells House estate, the former Semon Home, either side of Westwood Drive and the many and varied developments on both sides of the river. One might say the effects of 1859 have stayed with Ilkley long after Darwin left. Again it is open to debate how On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection can be a likened to town planning and conservation but there are similarities. The town’s pavements had weathered along with the nearby buildings for over a century. A century of relative pedestrian safety.
Now even the fittest are tripping and falling on Ilkley’s sidewalks thanks to new paving. (One sidewalk so mentioned was repared late autumn of 2011), I know to my cost having fallen on more than one occasion since 2004. That the proposed supermarket development will harm Ilkley’s con of conservation area is a very thin excuse. It is our small traders who need conserving, likewise the welfare of those who live near to or along routes to The Shed.
Ilkley’s waterways are also set to suffer if the development goes ahead. Public health and welfare is more important than supposed town centre con-servation so too is Nature Conservation.
