The Fairways

Herne Bay Golf Club Developments

I have a copy of the Herne Bay Golf Club Development Vision Document and here is a section outlining the purpose of the document.

The Document is designed to help inform the Council of the

‘Deliverability’ and ‘Sustainability’ credentials of the Site, and provide a

robust evidence base to assist the Council in considering the Site as a

suitable mixed-use allocation in the emerging Local Plan delivering the

following:

• Residential (approximately 400 dwellings);

• Retail (circa 2.9ha);

• Commercial (Employment opportunities circa 0.95ha);

• Medical (Doctors’ Surgery and Care Home);

• Leisure (Public House circa 800 sqm);

• Sports Hub 8.2ha (inc. new sports pitches/Astro Turf); and

• Education (in connection with Herne Bay High).

Copies of the document can be downloaded from the link below

http://quinn-estates.com/future-developments/downloads/quinn-estates-herne-bay-vision-doc-july-2012.pdf

I don’t expect anyone to actually download it, except me for research as it is the subject for my blog and I always knew development of this kind was inevitable.

No signs of the dozers on site yet as I doubt planning permissions are fully in place.

A twinge of sadness as progress marches on and I look back to when I was a child playing, getting muddy in those non-descript places that were quite common back then. Here is a list of the non-descript areas I grew up playing on!

The Quarry

The Orchard

Behind the pre-fabs

The Marshes and along the river, these were mixed with private company land the formally owned local authority land footpaths and the woods, the Abbey etc.

But these were odd spaces where you could ride your bike, build tree houses and dens, fire stones at bottles with catapults and if you didn’t look out: get stuck in quicksand!

That is why I’m interested in this space as it would have been one of the places I would have played in as kid. I walk my dog there and I am half heartedly playing there, drawing little maps and that, naming trees and stashing golf balls in secret places?

Where have those spaces gone? The’re used up?

The ‘Golf Course’ is a rare example of one of those spaces, and I hope the kids make the most of it before the hoardings go up and the diggers arrive.

Plotted Numbers

I have done 3 walks over the Golf Course now, specifically to plot the layout of the numbers put down by someone.

marking what?……Who knows?

Was this related to the mysterious 4×4 visit; as they appeared pretty soon after that?……who knows?

There are definatley x2 number 16 and they more or less go around the edges of the area. Some of them are on corrugated metal, but most of them are on green roofing felt squares about 12×12 inches?

Now I have found most of them I am rather disapointed with the layout. Most of the missing ones 1-9 are probably on the section where the tatooed man lives and I’m not walking round his patch. I already did this a little bit and managed to escape un-noticed.

I thought this number thing warrented a new base map. The old one was drawn by be with estimated shape and scale. This new one I have based on a better scaled map I found on the internet, it is no doubt based on an OS map of some kind and probably shows the actual shape properly. I have added the footpath which goes under the A299.

I’m done with the numbers now they are uninspiring, I’d hoped for an interesting shape!

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All’s Quiet

I went over the Golf Course the other day half expecting to see changes. Diggers or areas cordened off, hoardings or something to indicate building work starting. But no all’s quiet:

Except I found a blue tent. What I wanted to do was tell my dog to go and check it out, make sure it was empty before I did. I could not do that as it was just on the other side of a boundary fence running along the Brook of Plenty. The fence was actually down and the posts used as bridges across the brook at that point where the tent was. Lots of barbed wire still attached, so I alone had to negotiate the brook to check the tent out. Cosmo did not fancy the barbed wire obsticles and I encouraged him to stay on golf course side of the brook, he tried to out flank the fence and obsticles, to no avail. Tent empty, flapping in the wind. Loads of bottles and rubbish strewn all around, not exactly in harmony with nature and idillic brook beside it.

Kind of sad looking at this scene, as it shows a total disregard for something ……. which I can’t quite describe….all take, and give back nothing in return…a one way relationship to the natural world, in that it is there to be used up. Left behind only contamination.

I checked out the areas where trees have been felled and what I am calling the ‘new earthworks’. The removal of these trees has diluted the sensation of corridors, which were a hang over from the fairways when it was a golf course. A kind of random tree positioning is the result. Interesting to position new houses amongst a random treescape I thought.

Moving on I found two traffic cones placed close together…to close to be goal posts, and they were on the tatooed mans side of a brook? I saw this brook marked on a map as the Herne Drain.

And I also saw a couple more numbers on the roofing felt squares. I looked under them (like the tatooed man did). Nothing. But as I walked I began to form a theory that they were around the perimeter of a shape. On my next visit this will be my objective to prove or disprove this hypothasis!

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Updates:

Hector has gone, been dragged around the park 3 times! Totaly gone been dug out removed from history and the soil smoothed over.

Other trees have also been removed and areas of soil smoothed out. Small green squares of roofing felt (about 1 foot square) are placed all over the place. They have numbers sprayed onto them, the highest number I saw I think was 29.

I did see the tatooed man get out of a 4×4 right in front of me, and lift up one of these squares of felt as if to look underneath it, and then put it back down, odd?

Official footpaths have been marked with posts with yellow arrows indicating which direction to take. My friend Sue said, ‘look this one tells you to go up this tree’! ….’What….So it does!’ There is also a new foot bridge where the path crosses the Brook of Plenty.

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I found some photos of Hector and Achilles before Hector was duffed by Achilles. I was really amazed that I had taken them. Looking at them now you can see Hector really leaning, because I guess he needed light, being mostly in the Shadow of the neighboring tree.

I stayed up last night and did some drawings…….I enjoyed doing them.

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