Council plans floodlit sports pitches at Canons

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Merton Council has shocked people with crude and damaging plans to construct floodlit sports pitches in local woodland and on the site of former tennis courts in the heart of the conservation area.

The development contradicts the Council’s own planning policies to protect wildlife, avoid light pollution and care for local heritage.

Mitcham Cricket Green Community and Heritage has campaigned for the old tennis courts in the grounds of the Canons to be brought back to life.

One of our objectives is to encourage recreation and this community facility has stood idle and wasted for years. Now it faces the prospect of being lost forever as Merton Council has plans to develop two “multi use games areas” and floodlight them till 9.30pm every day and all year round.

Eight towering floodlights will be erected and a swathe of woodland will be lost from the nearby and much loved copse.

The Council’s own reports show that such development can have a devastating impact on the local bat population. The light pollution will also have a highly damaging and urbanising impact at the heart of the Conservation Area. The grounds of the Canons are valued for their sensitive lighting and quality of the night time landscape. This was recognised in the development of the Cricket Green Charter and is enhanced by the Council’s own policy deliberately to provide subdued lighting in the area.

All this will go.

The planning application even fails to provide any guarantees that the new facilities will be available for use by the local community.

With underused facilities already available nearby at the KNK Stadium and Cranmer School it is no surprise that a Council study of sports pitches concluded that provision in Mitcham is “significantly better” than elsewhere in the Borough.

There is no excuse for such a devastating development.

We are asking Merton Council to think again and return with plans to restore the old tennis courts for use in daylight hours by local people. We are even offering to help with the fundraising.

Read our full views on the plans for floodlit sports pitches at the Canons.

If you agree, let Merton Council know your views – the information is at Merton’s web site here, and you can submit your views online here.

Mitcham Cricket Green hits cinema screens nationwide

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Earlier this year there were film crews around Mitcham Cricket Green, based at Brook House. The crew was working on a new Alan Partridge movie.

That movie, Alpha Papa, opens in cinemas on August 7th.

The movie features Steve Coogan, of course, but also a host of other big names including Colm Meaney, Sean Pertwee and Anna Maxwell Martin.

For locals, none of the movie names may matter all that much. For us it will be the sight of Cricket Green and its surroundings on the big screen that make the movie worth going to see.

And if the trailer is anything to go by, there will be plenty of Cricket Green on show. Watch it for some glimpses of the very, very familiar.

Glebe Court added to Mitcham Cricket Green Conservation Area

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We are delighted that Glebe Court has been formally added to the Mitcham Cricket Green Conservation Area.

We’ve long lobbied for these iconic 1930s flats to be included.

A redrawn Conservation Area is part of the Cricket Green Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Plan, a document that describes the features of the Conservation Area in exquisite detail, breaking it down into a number of ‘Character Areas’ whose special feature are described.

The Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Plan is also a piece of council policy that can be taken into account in planning and other decisions that affect the area. It includes a Management Plan which makes recommendations for future work to improve the Conservation Area.

The Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Plan was formally adopted by a Council Cabinet meeting on 1 July. The final version of the document is not yet available, though the draft presented to Cabinet can be viewed here.

Anyone with an interest in the Cricket Green Conservation Area will find it very interesting. As well as being full of information, it contains some excellent photographs.

Why we are against bringing buses into Fair Green

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We are in the middle of the second phase of the Rediscover Mitcham consultation.

Merton Council is asking people what they think of a whole raft of possible changes to the Fair Green area. A consultation document has been sent to all 22,000 homes in the CR4 postcode.

We welcome the activity we’ve seen so far to help regenerate Mitcham town centre. In particular we are very positive about efforts to reinvigorate the market and support shops and other local businesses that’s happening through the OneMitcham project. Visit OneMitcham on the web and on Facebook to learn more about what the project is doing.

However we have major concerns about one of central proposals that Merton Council seems very keen to push through as part of its plans.

The Council wants to build a road dedicated to buses (and usable by cyclists) through the centre of Fair Green. It says this will mean 5,000 to 6,000 extra pedestrian trips per day will be made into the Fair Green area.

We have done some research on these figures. Among the things we’ve discovered are:

  • The figures are in most cases four years old
  • The figures include both people boarding and leaving buses with more than half leaving Mitcham by bus. We wonder how much this  can really be claimed as ‘extra’ pedestrian trips

Please read our full report on the Mitcham Buses proposal.

We don’t doubt that Fair Green needs people visiting it in order to help it be more successful. But we think improving the range of shops and market stalls, and enhancing the open, car free aspect of Fair Green is the way forward.

We’ve heard plenty of people say Fair Green will be much less pleasant with a road through it, and very few have told us they want a bus street. Add to that the fact that we don’t think the figures stack up, and we can’t support the idea. 

We support the Mitcham Society’s campaign against the buses.

You might like to read a leaflet the Mitcham Society produced in April when the first Rediscover Mitcham consultation was taking place. In it the Mitcham Society  explains that the road would bring up to 90 buses an hour into the Fair Green and that its own survey of local businesses showed a massive 80 percent were against the idea.

You might like to go to the Council web site to see the Rediscover Mitcham consultation document and complete the survey so that your view gets counted.

Cricket Green Conservation Area boundary walk a great success

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To celebrate Civic Day (22 June 2013), Mitcham Cricket Green Community and Heritage organised a walk around the boundary of the Cricket Green Conservation Area.

Even a walk around the edge of the Conservation Area allowed us to look at a large number of fascinating things. For example in our 5 kilometer (3 mile) walk we saw:

  • Mitcham Garden Village. Built in the 1930s to house older people of Mitcham (locally listed)
  • The Wilson Hospital. Built 1928 and with a fabulous facade – and still functioning as a health centre with a GP surgery on site (locally listed)
  • The Parish Church. Built in the early 19th Century and replacing an earlier 13th Century church. (Grade II* listed)
  • The Vestry Hall. An imposing Victorian building on the site of the Mitcham stocks and lock-up. Once the centre of government for Mitcham. When Mitcham  became part of Merton the headquarters moved to Wimbledon for a short time, then to its current location in Morden (locally listed)
  • The Wandle Industrial Museum. A fascinating local museum that’s just celebrated its 30th year of operation.
  • Milestone. Marking out the distances to local landmarks, and now sadly largely illegible, this is being restored by Mitcham Cricket Green Community and Heritage as one of our Heritage Lottery Funded projects (Grade II listed)
  • Cricket Green. We glimpsed a view of the Cricket Green – the place where cricket has been played longer than any other – more than 300 years!
  • Cold Blows. An ancient trackway whose name gives a clear indication of how it can feel on chilly, windy days.
  • Three Kings Pond and Three Kings Piece. This green is the site of the Mitcham Status Fair – a very historic fair indeed.

Lunch after the walk involved its own element of history as it took place in the Toby Carvery that looks over the News of the World sports ground. The Carvery occupies what was once one of the three Great Houses of Mitcham – the 18th Century Park Place.

In the photo below the happy walkers stand outside a World War II bomb shelter in Mitcham Garden Village.

Mitcham Cricket Green Ward boundary walk Civic Day June 2013 Mitcham Garden Village

What next for the Cricketers pub?

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The future of the Cricketers pub remains in doubt following a planning application to convert the building into seven flats.

This follows a long and successful campaign to prevent demolition and large scale redevelopment of the site for private housing.

The Cricketers has been used as a public house for over 200 years and building was only permitted on this ancient green because it was for community use.

We are asking Merton Council to continue this centuries old tradition.  The future of the island site at the heart of our conservation area needs to be considered as a whole – with the Cricketers, Vestry Hall and Fire Station all supporting community life.

This is a point re-enforced in the Cricket Green Charter which we drew up earlier this year with local councillors and Merton Council.

Read our views on the latest planning application here and let Merton Council know what you think of the latest development proposals – email planning.representations@merton.gov.uk. You can find out about the application at Merton Council’s web site here.