Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2013 11:33 am
I've had a impassioned email regarding plans by East Yorkcestershire Council to rip up the sett paving in the centre of the town, sell it off to the highest bidder, and replace it with summat else.
OK, so we hear about this sort of thing every week, but what makes this different is that the local community has set up a group to campaign against the enforced removal - SOS - Save Our Setts.
This heartens me for several reasons. First of all, they've got the terminology right; they *are* setts, and not cobbles as would normally be reported.
Secondly, this is a local community fighting to maintain the distinctive character of their town and opposing the homogenisation of our urban centres, where everywhere starts to look the same: same shops; same hardscape; same sense of futility.
Thirdly, this is a bid to retain a little bit of local paving history and you don't often get community action to preserve paving. The setts have adorned the centre of town since 1829. That's almsot two centuries of service to the townsfolk. Apparently, the council are trying to make out that, traditionally, the streets of Beverley would have been paved with......bitmac!
The group has a website and a petition, which they'd love you to sign, but if nothing else, please have a look at what they are trying to preserve via this Flickr site.
I haven't been to Beverley for donkey's years, and I've no particular abiding memory of the setts, but surely, if the paving is deteriorating (and there's nothing to suggest that in the photies I've seen) then the setts can be re-laid using modern techniques and materials, and so preserve the town's heritage while improving the usability of the pavements.
This small, local campaign offers an insight into what is happening to too many of our towns and cities - faceless, uncaring bureaucrats failing to see the beauty of what they have and disregarding the feelings of the local community in their soulless quest to turn Britain into one big branch of Tesco-Starbucks-Argos.
Have a look and see what you think....
OK, so we hear about this sort of thing every week, but what makes this different is that the local community has set up a group to campaign against the enforced removal - SOS - Save Our Setts.
This heartens me for several reasons. First of all, they've got the terminology right; they *are* setts, and not cobbles as would normally be reported.
Secondly, this is a local community fighting to maintain the distinctive character of their town and opposing the homogenisation of our urban centres, where everywhere starts to look the same: same shops; same hardscape; same sense of futility.
Thirdly, this is a bid to retain a little bit of local paving history and you don't often get community action to preserve paving. The setts have adorned the centre of town since 1829. That's almsot two centuries of service to the townsfolk. Apparently, the council are trying to make out that, traditionally, the streets of Beverley would have been paved with......bitmac!
The group has a website and a petition, which they'd love you to sign, but if nothing else, please have a look at what they are trying to preserve via this Flickr site.
I haven't been to Beverley for donkey's years, and I've no particular abiding memory of the setts, but surely, if the paving is deteriorating (and there's nothing to suggest that in the photies I've seen) then the setts can be re-laid using modern techniques and materials, and so preserve the town's heritage while improving the usability of the pavements.
This small, local campaign offers an insight into what is happening to too many of our towns and cities - faceless, uncaring bureaucrats failing to see the beauty of what they have and disregarding the feelings of the local community in their soulless quest to turn Britain into one big branch of Tesco-Starbucks-Argos.
Have a look and see what you think....
