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Quorn by-pass stops business and housing plans inquiry told - 1960
Loughborough Monitor - December 9th 1960
Uncertainty about a proposed by-pass at Quorn is causing an old-established village business to suffer from slow strangulation a public inquiry was told at Rothley on Tuesday.
If the by-pass goes through it will cut in two a 90 acre estate in the possession of the Farnham family for 800 years, it was stated. Mr Malcolm Moss, representing the business, Harry Facer Ltd, Meeting Street, Quorn and Mr E. G. A. Farnham, Quorn House, Quorn, formally supported an appeal by Mr E. H. Baum against refusal of planning permission for building houses on land at Meeting Street, Quorn, because it is on the line of the proposed by-pass.
Mr Moss said the business was of the sort planners like to see in a village, employing 14 local craftsmen and it was a prosperous one. It belonged to Miss Facer, who was not suggesting any alternative route as being preferable. "If the site is needed, she is willing to look for another while she can, sell her existing site to the Ministry and remove. The trouble is although she has used every effort, no-one will tell her whether this road is going to be made or when it is going to be made. Yet the Ministry say that if she can find other industrial land, and that is not easy, they are not willing to say they will thereupon buy the existing site."
Nothing has been done since the proposal was decided in 1939 and "the land ought to be acquired now or the appeal allowed", he said. Mr Farnham, a member of Leicestershire County Council and Barrow-upon-Soar Rural Council, declared: "This thing has been going on so long, if I was alive at all I was just out of the nappy stage when it started."
The M1 would be taking some traffic from the village and it had much higher priority. The by-pass plan would only be reviewed after the M1 was built through Leicestershire and it could be seen how much traffic it was taking. It was proposed to widen the A6 through Quorn, "It is surely not necessary to cut the village up still further and sever the whole place in two by this by-pass."
Mr Farnham said it would mean a tremendous loss of amenity for him, and it would be a moot point whether to continue to live at Quorn House. "In the meantime I feel I do not know what to do with the property which needs repairs and improvements. I am going to back my fancy and spend that money because I don't think the by-pass will ever come."
Mr D. E Baum, for his father said the proposed line ran through the middle of a built up area and was not a by-pass. The scheme prevented development of the only sizable area of suitable building land in the village. The road should be away from all built-up areas.
On its present line it would take away Quorn's rural aspect. It was hoped to build about twelve houses within the range of working men, probably semi-detached.
Mr Harry Collins, Ministry of Transport engineer, said the bypass scheme was stopped by the war, but the land had continued to be safeguarded. The construction was not yet in the Ministry's programme which was planned five years ahead. It was planned that the road would be carried over Meeting Street by a bridge. The road construction was in the county development plan which included it for between 1965 and 1971 and he had no reason to doubt that this would be done.
"When the M1 is built the need for the by-pass will remain," said Mr Collins. The route was the only possible one, and there was no major scheme for widening the present road through Quorn.
Mr G. R Lang, senior assistant solicitor, Leicestershire County Council, said it would seem to ridicule the idea of a development plan if, after the plan was approved by the Minister, as it was in the case, they were going to give way when an individual proposal for development came along.
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Submitted on: |
2011-10-24 |
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Submitted by: |
Kathryn Paterson |
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Artefact ID: |
1426 |
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Artefact URL: |
www.quornmuseum.com/display.php?id=1426 |
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Print: |
View artefact in printer-friendly page |
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