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It’s a wake-up call for all those who love the Heath
• THE revelation of the nature and scale of the Fitzroy Farm development (No truck with plan, April 24) is a wake-up call for all those who love and value Hampstead Heath and its immediate environs.
There are at least five things to be said about this development on the very edge of Hampstead Heath, near Millfield Lane: it is disproportionate, inappropriate, unreasonable, unnecessary and totally self-interested.
It also carries a contagion; if given final approval by Camden Council, it will almost certainly lead to a plague of other such disruptive, self-seeking building site conditions lasting many long and disagreeable years.
It is the antithesis of everything Hampstead Heath stands for and has been. It is about making money while Hampstead Heath saved from developers by public subscription under the 1871 Hamspstead Heath Act, stands for the very opposite, putting nature and rural landscape above money.
It is an unlooked for irony that the attractions of an unspoilt, unbuilt upon Hampstead Heath should be the attraction for a massive building development, lasting an estimated two and half years, at its very edge. The developers, reported to be an offshore hedge fund, appear to have perceived the scarcity value of the unspoilt charm and simplicity of this rare spot for another speculative killing.
This is not granny extension (not even a grand one) or an incremental improvement to what is there but a radical, lengthy – an estimated two and a half years – destructive plan involving the removal and inward transportation of huge quantities of material. The site is literally only a couple of hundred feet away from the Kenwood swimming pond, which in turn is part of a fragile and scarce water linked eco-system that is threatened by such major works close to its banks. Unconducive and toxic materials could and probably would, over a lengthy two and a half year period, leach into these ponds, to the disadvantage of their wildlife and vegetation.
It could lead to contamination that would render them unsafe for swimming and wildlife. It is a danger too great for contemplation.
Years of noise, disruption and dangers to the health and safety of everyone; men, women, children, animals, residents, strollers and the many swimmers is guaranteed.
The area around Fitzroy Farm, with Hampstead Heath as its backyard literally over a fence, is miraculously preserved, low-density, old Middlesex countryside. The hamlet of houses and lanes around Fitzroy Farm with its garden allotments, is a rare inheritance from a quieter, gentler domesticity in a rural setting that we can all still appreciate and enjoy in 2008. It could almost be Agatha Christie’s St Mary Mead with Miss Marple herself appearing unexpectedly out one of its lanes. This development and all that must follow, would kill the spirit of this spot.
Transforming it perhaps into another version of the now vulgarised, brutalised, security gated camera swept Bishops’ Avenue and colony of the non-dom super rich.
Camden Council must be persuaded by all of us to refuse permission for this development.
Robert Sutherland Smith
Chairman, United Swimmers Association of Hampstead Heath, N2
Access must be denied
• BUILDERS seeking to use the rough track off Millfield Lane to reach the proposed and disputed building project near the Ladies Pond would be exercising a right of access over land they do not own.
Were they to use wheelbarrows and arrive for work on bicycles it is hard to imagine they would get into trouble.
As they seem to be insistent upon using the access so that the road surface will be inevitably altered and a health and safety hazard created for walkers, cyclists and possibly others, their use of the lane for construction traffic is intolerable.
It is therefore unacceptable.
Camden Council and the Corporation of London jointly have guardianship of the lane in dispute and, some would, say ownership.
Accordingly they must inform the putative developer that an alternative means of access must be devised. Without this being attainable the project must sink. It would seem to be as simple as that.
With the benefit of hindsight, it would be less disruptive to the public interest if Camden planners and the inspectorate learned from Little Green Street and Dalby Street experience and declined to grant planning consent for inaccessible projects.
Peter Cuming
Talacre Road, NW5
Down on the farm
• THE Fitzroy Farm development on the edge of Metropolitan Open Land (No truck with plan, April 24) is due to be heard for the final time at the Camden development control meeting on May 15.
Residents, the Highgate Society, and the Heath all oppose the developers and fear for public safety, local amenity, and damage to the roads.
Name and address supplied, N6
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