Lewes Forum thread

Sad to see Crosshaven being demolished.

Very sad and to be replaced by 7(!) non-descript unimaginatively designed boxes, disapointing!

Oh, for goodness sake. It was an architecturally unremarkable house on a massive plot. The fact of something being old doesn't of itself make it worth saving. Would you rather 7 new homes got built on greenbelt?

Dear Someone Else,
You have no soul. It was a lovely house with more character in its chimney pot than anything that will replace it. The concreting over of gardens to build more houses does just as much harm to wildlife and ecology than building houses in fields does. Our gardens are havens for wild animals and insects and should be protected as much as 'green' fields.
Yours,
Malling Resident

Time for you to take a flight over the British Isles on a clear day, Malling Resident, to see just how little of this prosperous industrialised country of ours has in fact been concreted over. We are not Hong Kong Island!

Richard Bashford - Project Manager, RSPB said:
"Gardens are mini nature reserves on our doorsteps and vital habitats for all sorts of wildlife. Many much loved species rely on green spaces like gardens, such as the song thrush and house sparrow, both of which have suffered massive declines in the last few years. House sparrow numbers have plummeted by over 60 per cent and we have lost almost 75 per cent of song thrushes. If more garden space is turned into buildings they will likely decline further and the wonder that children experience on the doorstep will dwindle.
"We hope that the new measures will protect the habitats of species that have become synonymous with English gardens and demonstrate a rich eco system in our own back yards such as frogs, toads and bumble bees."

Local: was that response necessary?
Can't we discuss things without it turning into childish twaddle?

Shame to see this nice big house demolished to make way for more 'family' houses being built with tiny gardens. I guess we should be grateful that most of the housing estates in Lewes were built at a time when good sized gardens came as standard.

Tell that to the homeless families who would be grateful with a roof over their heads and a tiny garden.

Yes, let's concrete over the whole of Lewes so all homeless people can have their own brand new house. Better still, lets give them loads of benefits so they can still keep buying alcohol, not working and have even more kids.

@Employed nice to see the "Daily Heil" hasn't influenced your vast knowledge on the subject then.

Malling Res - Happy to confirm that I have a soul, but I'm just not mawkishly sentimental. The argument about preservation of green space is ludicrous in this context. It might apply to a plot in Dalston but not a patch of grass 200 yds from Malling Down nature reserve.

And I don't think it had a great deal of character; it was just vaguely appealing because it was older than the very average houses in the surrounding streets.

Even with seven dwellings on the site, it will be nothing like the plot density of say the houses on Albion Street or in English's Passage, so I don't think the overdevelopment argument stands up either.

But what really grates with me is the idea that Lewesians complain (as they often do) that their kids have to move to Newhaven, Ringmer, Hailsham or wherever because of a lack of available housing, and then people also moan when an unremarkable, unlisted house in an unremarkable area makes way for a better use of the land. I don't believe that it's acceptable to argue one side of this unless you have an answer for the other problem.

@Not all change is good.
Irrespective of what Mr. Bashford states the EU's agriculteral methodologies are being considered as the real cause of our birds population reduction. Though given time i expect they will eventually flourish again. Nature has a goos way of dealing with itself until we get involved and get it qrong everytime!
I doubt that concreting over green stuff, however frequent is having as much impact
as the EU.

Have I missed something? Where is this house? I thought I knew Lewes!

Employed, you sound a right selfish person. You probably have a job and a house and possibly parents that are always diving in their pockets to help you. Well not everyone is that lucky and it's not always their fault, so come down off of your high horse and stop talking like a prat.

There does seem to be a lot of people just against change. The loss of gardens argument is quite weak. There could be 7 new gardens created each of them feeding birds. Noone is saying we should knock down the Canon O'Donnell hall and replace it with housing as that will create gardens. While we're at it, think of all the gardens that could be created in the Phoenix industrial estate, the old timber yard by Waitrose, the police mechanics at Western Road. Get rid of them all i say and build some houses with gardens and parking spaces.

Houseman - I'd be very happy to see the development of those areas (although we need some light industrial space too) but I hate the loss of the large houses with big gardens which developers are now targeting. Just wish that I could afford to live in one of them!

I'm very sorry that you defaulted to abuse, Mall Res. It was a serious point; I find that many of those who constantly bang on about how little green space there is left in the UK, never see the country from the air.

I cant see how 7 houses on that plot could be called Family houses, The plot is not that big, unless they are going to be 3 or 4 storey's high, that will blend in nice then, this is where greed comes into play as gardens dont make money. Will they be affordable houses.

Local, I couldn't agree more. You only have to look on google earth at the UK to see the small amount of urban areas in this country. Or a bit closer, go to the chalk pit pub and look over the whole of north Sussex for as far as you can see.
I do believe only 6% of the UK (England ?) is built on.

Kendo Caster, I have heard a rumour that the hobbits are moving in so there should not be a problem with size.

"I do believe only 6% of the UK (England ?) is built on"
That's because it includes Scotland. It's more like 13-15% in the South East (including London). But still....
" Get rid of them all i say and build some houses with gardens and parking spaces"
The most expensive parts of Lewes are those without much in the way of gardens or parking spaces. Space is difficult in Lewes because of the downs and the floodplain. I think it is one place where we can justify building at high density - parking spaces are just a waste of space in a town where there are very good train links. Lewes needs more car clubs and underground or edge-of-centre parking - look at how historic towns on the continent manage things - we are so backward.

In terms of space, we are not as crowded as we think, but still much more densely populated than anywhere else in Europe outside the much smaller Low Countries / North-West Germany area.

Absolutely right. Cars are a fact of life. No new house should be allowed without providing at least one parking space

I live and work in Lewes and have never needed a car, all areas are within walking, bus or cycling range. If they can put up 7 new houses on the site of 1 then good on them so long as they advertise them as having no parking, then maybe the only people who will buy them will have to be local and have no need of the stinking automobile!!

You obviously don't go very far afield, Ayatollah! Perhaps you could advise me how to get from Lewes to Bletchingley (Surrey), Tintern Parva (Monmouthshire) or Kenilworth by train, with luggage and 2 dogs.
Even Ovingdean is a nightmare to get to by public transport, though I concede it's within cycling distance for someone fit and fearless (I do not come in either category).

Crosshaven looks like an over develoment. Although it looks quite spacious now that the house is down, I think that when we have 7 properties built, that is going to mean quite a lot of cars going in & out of a limited access area into Church Lane. I also wonder how easy access for a fire engine would be into what is going to be a fairly tight development.

There's an awful lot of blather about overdevelopment from people who think they might know what the problems are, when the simplest thing to do is look up the plans on the LDC website. The ref is: LW/11/1124/NP.

There are 7 three bedroom houses with gardens, five garages and additional parking spaces. It's really not that tight a site. It's not a thing of beauty but I've seen worse. The only contentious issue, I'd have thought, is the access to Church Lane and the conflict with queuing traffic and the school.

Drone - from memory the requirement is that a fire appliance has a reach a point no further than 45m from any point of any new property, and is not permitted to reverse more than 20m. The Crosshaven site complies with that easily. If it didn't, it would not be possible to build it. Of course, there are dozens of pre 20thC houses in Lewes which don't comply, and they are far more likely to burn down.

Has the application actually been approved ?
Last year the town council objected- see below

"Members expressed serious concern that the site is too close to a major junction and school, and access was too awkward, to allow for any additional dwellings on this site. Members were not confident that the proposed junction alterations would avoid the creation of severe and dangerous traffic conflicts and strongly OBJECTED to the scheme, and to any proposals for additional dwellings that would use this access."

of course it was approved you nutter. do you think they would be knocking down the house otherwise?

"Good train links are no use at all unless your final destination also has them. I regularly make journeys to places where train links are non-existent or so poor that you're likely to have jumped under a train long before you get on one"
That doesn't mean you have to own one, does it? I simply hire cars when I need them for difficult journeys, it works out cheaper than owning one given that I get most places i need to (including my daily job) on the train. The way forward is car pools or car clubs.

I am contractually required to provide a car for work and couldn't do my job without one. That applies to an awful lot of people - carers, social workers, district nurses, estate agents, surveryors, loss adjusters - anyone whose job requires them to visit several places in the same day.
Even if that weren't the case, I also make frequent overnight visits to a town in Surrey that does not have a direct rail connection and would take the best part of 2 hours each way by rail. Add to that frequent visits to friends who are more local, but don't have good transport links, and hiring a car is simply not an economic option. I would need to hire one for at least 5 or 6 days a week.
Unless someone has almost all their friends and family within a fairly narrow radius of Lewes or the A23 corridor, a car is virtually essential. Public transport is not going to get any better, car ownership will continue to increase and making parking more difficult won't stop that. It will just make people more cross!

OK Mercian, so everyone who owns a car gets rid of it, and simply hires one whenever they need to drive anywhere. What would that solve? There would be just as many cars on the road at any one time as there are now, and therefore exactly the same problem with parking that we have now. I am not convinced about car pools/clubs either. I can see it working if you live next door to someone who works at the same place, doing the same hours as you, and does not need to use a car during the day or at the weekend, but otherwise it would be impractical.

Oh dear. Oh dear.
I was not suggesting for a moment that everyone should give up their cars and hire them. I am fully aware that lots of people need cars for their job.
I am talking about a particular instance, in Lewes, which has scarce development land, a dense developed urban pattern and a high quality public transport link to London and Brighton as well as local shops and services. Lewes is extremely expensive, indeed much more so than the villages or other local towns.
I am not saying every scheme everywhere should have no parking and am certainly not in favour of trying to prohibit the car. I am talking about one place with particular issue. Capice? Not a general debate.
This would suggest that land in Lewes should be developed at high density with little in the way of car parking. People who work in the town, or use railways to travel to work can choose to live there; people without a car will be able to walk to the shops etc.
For those who need a car, there are plenty of other options. Indeed, as they need/have c ar they can live anywhere and do not need to be close to a public transport link. They have a whole host of other, much cheaper options throughout East Sussex that are not on the radar for those who need to be close to a railway station.
Having said all that, I'm not sure how the one in four British households without a car cope if it is so essential.

Sorry. What I meant in that last paragraph was "They have a whole host of other, much cheaper options throughout East Sussex that are not on the radar for those who do not need to be close to a railway station." In other words, people who commute by train can live in new builds in Lewes and only get cars when they need them. Meanwhile, those who need to drive a car regularly have plenty of other cheap options thoughout Sussex where they have plenty of parking, but are not within walking distance of a train station.