‘Horndean Remembered’ is an annual gathering of the children and their friends from Horndean from the 1940’s and 1950’s.
For more details contact Eddie Harmer on eerht@tiscali.co.uk and see the details below
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All posts for the month August, 2018
Sunday 26th, Monday 27th August
Come and see the Catherington Home Guard on parade outside the Farmer Inn. It will be part of the display of memorabilia from the village at Catherington Church Hall, Sunday and Monday from 10 – 4 together with a huge amount of photographs from Horndean, Clanfield, Lovedean and Blendworth some dating back a hundred years or more.
A selection of priceless church records from St Catherine’s, St James, Blendworth, Idsworth and Chalton will also be available for you to search for your ancestors along with the burial plot list from Catherington. Tea and coffee available.
£2 entry – proceeds to St Catherine’s Church.
About 9 months ago Aquind popped up and announced their intention to install a power cable connecting France to the UK so we can share surplus power during peak time (probably largely to us as we have little spare capacity).
The Lovedean sub station seems to be the only suitable connection point as everything to the east of here, or logical locations like the old Fawley Power Station, is full to capacity already.
Lovedean Sub Station
While we will want to truth test connection points elsewhere, Aquind wouldn’t be proposing to install about 20 miles of underground cables at an enormous cost if there were a cheaper connection point.
For the last 9 months we have been waiting for a planning application to appear. The process would then have been simple – the proposed land is allocated as countryside space in our local plan so this would have been contrary to the local plan and refusal a very justifiable next step by us. To be fair to be followed quickly by an appeal.
There is however an option available to Aquind which is to get the project accepted as a ‘Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project’ (NSIP) which then takes away the decision from the Local Planning Authority (us) and hands it to the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to decide. (Someone a lot less interested in local issues)
Aquind have recently announced that the project has achieved this status.
So, where does that leave us now then?
If we were deciding the application there would have been a two pronged approach.
Firstly to look to challenge the location and ask why the large infrastructure of The Interconnector (15 to 22 acres of land with a building up to 22m high) couldn’t be sited elsewhere, for example the former HMS Daedalus base at Gosport on brown field land there and then an AC connection to the grid locally.
Secondly to look for sound sustainable reasons to refuse (not in our local plan, harmful to the countryside etc) – which would have resulted in an appeal
Thirdly to assume approval and look at the mitigation strategy. Digging down to reduce ridge height, consider ground source heat pumps to dump excess heat into the ground instead of noisy mechanical handling, satisfactorily addressing the him transformers give out and most important the external building facade design which could be a green roof with planting to make sure it was largely invisible in local views.
So, with the change in classification to the project we can still challenge the location and also look at significant mitigation as well to hedge both bets. We also need to arrange to meet with the Secretary of State at the right time to put forward our views.
The next steps…
We still need to wait for any planning application so we know what we are dealing with. We don’t even know if Aquind will pick the site in Winchester (further away from our communities but we then have very little say other than through Winchester) or between the proposed battery storage facility and the adjacent buildings behind broadway lane
Keep following this blog for updates and the links below may be of use:
Catherington Now and Then
An Exhibition of Old Photographs of Catherington and Surrounding Villages
In Catherington Church Hall on 10:00 to 16:00 Sunday 26th and Bank Holiday Monday 27th August, Sara Schillemore will be holding her regular exhibition of old photographs from the villages of Catherington, Lovedean, Horndean, Clanfield and Blendworth.
They show the villages as they were together with the buildings, businesses and people that lived there and their way of life.
She has lots of new photographs this year.
There will also be Church records from the area dating back to the 1500s that you can search through to find births, baptisms, marriages and deaths of members of your family. Please bring
a pencil if you need to copy anything as no ink is allowed anywhere near these priceless books.
It is always a well supported and fun event that people travel from all over the place to visit and reminisce about the way things were and to try to find pictures of themselves or family members.
There is a small charge of £2 to enter and proceeds support the fabric of All Saints Church, Catherington. Tea and coffee will also be available.
Our local Neighbourhood Policing Team are holding their next surgery at the Library in Five Heads Road on Friday 31st August 5:00pm to 6:00pm. They would like to invite anyone with concerns to go along for a chat.
The Lovedean Sub-station took delivery today of a new transformer which was manufactured in Europe and brought by road from Portsmouth dockyard.
Collett, a specialist heavy haulage firm, delivered the transformer to The National Grid on a 70m long heavy lift frame and supporting platforms. This complicated arrangement of trailers is able to steer independently of the front truck towing and the second truck pushing it with the 1000 ton gross load spread along the road by about 200 tyres.
Travelling up Day Lane after a period of rain was a bit too much for the trucks which lost traction on the slippery road surface and the load only got moving again with an unplanned tow from a Baldwins mobile crane and a JCB telehandler.
In all it took about 3 hours to travel the 500m from the Bird in Hand pub to the sub station
Photographs Nolan Bird, Guy Shepherd.
This coming weekend National Grid are moving a “Supergrid Transformer” to the Lovedean substation. This will be with a 70m long low loader which will be travelling up Lovedean Lane, Day Lane and Broadway Lane around 11:00am.
The delivery vehicle will be about 70m long so expect some very slow moving traffic while the engineers remove road signs and other obstacles on the way!
The transformer is replacing existing equipment (it is not part of the proposed battery storage or Aquind projects)
Photo below of a similar vehicle movement
The appearance of a planning notice on a lamp column results in inevitable concern about what is coming next…
In Horndean by The Precinct an Orange planning notice has been posted highlighting all of the industrial estate including the BT exchange and businesses running down to Universal Cars and Horndean Tyres.
This however is a good news story…
Under ‘Permitted Development’ rules you are allowed to carry out certain activities without planning permission. This includes some types of extension, garage and so on. It also allows owners of commercial premises to convert them to residential without permission.
The employment sites we have locally provide local jobs and while we want to use brownfield land for housing we don’t want to do this by allowing successful businesses to be shut down to cash in on a land value.
To counter this we have put an ‘Article 4’ notice on the land that stops this happening without planning permission. There is nothing to stop the freeholder apply but while the land is designated as an employment site in the local plan it’ll be a big challenge. Hopefully these businesses will be protected and be with us for some time to come!
Sally and the team have been holding monthly litter picks in Horndean and Clanfield for over two years now and have collected well in excess of a thousand bags of rubbish including fast food wrappers, bottles and occasionally some really weird stuff…
The next litter Pick is the 9th September and the team meet at the far end of the car park at Morrison’s Horndean at 9:30am.
All are welcome to join in for 90 minutes to help make a difference.
Thank you Sally and the team for keeping at it!
