Category: History

Swale Borough Council modifies the plan for Faversham Creek – on English Heritage advice

Faversham Creek 1905

Faversham Creek, 1905 – a postcard from Gary Vaughan’s fascinating collection

The Faversham Creek Trust’s weblog has published a cheering post, after a revision of the Faversham Creek neighbourhood plan by Swale Borough Council designed to take into account concerns raised by English Heritage.

Here’s what the FCT folks say:

‘The amendments do make a very considerable difference to the Plan, especially to Ordnance Wharf and Swan Quay, and to matters concerning the conservation area, the archaeology and historical aspects of the sites, the views and design standards. Specific sites which are affected directly (although all are covered by the ‘Background Text and Scene Setting’ and the ‘Creek-Wide Policies’) are Site 2 Ordnance Wharf, Site 3 BMM Weston, Sites 4 and 5 Swan Quay/Frank and Whittome, Site 8 Standard Quay and Site 9 Standard House.

‘The policies for Ordnance Wharf would make it considerably more difficult to build residential units on it, but still would not preclude them.

‘The policies for Swan Quay would make it more difficult for the proposed large blocks of flats to be built by the Quayside, but would allow some housing. They offer much more protection to the existing industrial buildings, the industrial nature of the site, and to the environment of the historic and listed buildings on and close to the site, but it may not be enough.

‘The policies for Standard Quay remove the use of Building No. 1 as a restaurant.

‘The policies for Standard House offer greater protection to its setting as a significant landmark on the Creek.

‘In summary, then, these changes do offer some, but not all, of what Faversham Creek Trust and others have been asking for all these years.’

We’ll have to see what the town’s council makes of the revisions when it meets, but I think it’s clear that both the FCT should be congratulated for its continuing campaigning for the Creek, and English Heritage should be thanked for its intervention.

Btw… a huge amount depends on  the non-working swing bridge near the top of the creek being updated, which would once again allow vessels to moor in the basin up-river.  The FCT is earnestly raising money to do just that. Read about its efforts here, and please throw a few bobs their way if you can.

 

Amsterdam harbour, 1919

I particularly like the bit at the end where the cameraman takes us along waterways into the town. My thanks to Hans-Christian Rieck for passing this one along!

Chronometer maker Harrison vindicated

Brilliant clockmaker and inventor of the navigational chronometer John Harrison must be laughing in his grave after a 100-day trial of his ‘clock B’ was officially declared by Guinness World Records, to be the world’s ‘most accurate mechanical clock with a pendulum swinging in free air’.

Remarkably, Harrison designed the clock more than 250 years ago – after developing the chronometer, he claimed that he could make a pendulum timepiece that would be accurate to within a second over a 100-day period.

The challenge would be impossible, his enemies insisted but the Guinness trial shows that Harrison: scientists at the Greenwich observatory this week revealed that the clock built to the Harrison’s clockmaker’s design and owned by artist and clockmaker Martin Burgess had successfully run for a period of 100 days during official tests, during which it had had lost only five-eighths of a second.

For more information see The Guardian, and the British Horological Society press release.