YOUR paper has recently featured articles on possible future redevelopment in the district, including the disused Lea Castle Hospital site.

Having been a resident at The Crescent there, for many years, I have learnt to live with the apprehension about its possible future use.

It has gone from being a thriving community, providing work for medical, domestic, laundry and gardening staff, to a ghost town, with metal missing from its roofs.

There are huge concrete sections, full of gravel and litter, placed over the access hatches to the underground tunnels, apparently to prevent the theft of metal cable.

The formerly attractive grassed areas are now an untidy mess of manure, weeds, and electric tape, having been let on a long-term lease at a very low rent to horse traders.

Some of the horses are tethered, without access to water or food, others are skin and bone, and several residents feel obliged to feed and water them.

One resident observed a young child, driving a four-wheel drive vehicle around the grounds, with a younger child in the passenger seat.

The police were not interested. One of the security guards told another resident that German shepherds are being bred in the old hospital buildings and that a caravan was kept on the site, for overnight sleeping, despite promises that dogs or caravans would not be allowed.

Over the years we have heard the area was to be developed as a prison, a high-tech business park, housing, and institutional housing, whatever that is.

At the moment, we get paint-ball games, police firearms training, and anti-terrorist exercises, with huge twin-rotor helicopters shaking the houses in the middle of the night. No wonder the horses escape onto the main A449; they must be terrified. What responsible landowner would use the same land for animals and war games?

The government body currently responsible for the site is ‘Homes and Communities,’ whose purpose is said to be the creation of communities in which people enjoy living.

For us, at The Crescent, this is ironic, as they have spoilt ours.

Personally, I should like to see the 50-acre site developed to create luxury homes, with their own grazing land.

A limited number of high quality dwellings would not necessitate the same level of infrastructure as high density housing, and they would go like hot cakes.

At least they would raise the tone of the neighbourhood.

Well I can dream, can’t I?

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