Outrage and Upset in the New Forest 1: The Lord of the Manor Is Upsetting the Neighbours!
Strains of Joni Mitchell’s ‘Take Paradise and Put Up a Parking Lot’ waft in our ears…
The New Forest National Park Authority (NFNPA) has just granted Lord Montagu’s Beaulieu Estate permission for a 46-space car park. This car park will be in addition to the 1,000-space car park, only metres away, which currently supports the Estate’s hugely successful National Motor Museum.
The car park, currently for approximately 10 cars and currently grassland in the bucolically named ‘Hides Field’, is to be extended and gravel-surfaced to enable visitors with mobility issues to access a treehouse study centre and event venue run by the Countryside Education Trust (CET) Treehouses Charity.
Residents of enchanting Beaulieu, where property prices average over £2 million, have been deeply concerned that the project is a ‘Trojan Horse’, in that, once gravel-surfaced and therefore ‘grey land’, it could more easily support applications for development by the Beaulieu Estate, fuelling the ‘commercial creep’ that is spoiling the Hampshire paradise.
The Estate has striven in the past to maximise commercial opportunities of its 9,000 acres by developing a 4×4 track, high ropes facilities and so on, which rather explains the residents’ anxieties. There is the potential for the charitable tree house area to be used for up to 12 weddings a year, with a maximum of 100 guests attending each, quite apart from the potential once it is ‘grey land’.
Some consolation for residents was provided by the NFNPA in that although the application was approved, it was on the proviso that if the CET leaves the site, the car park must revert to agricultural land.
The Beaulieu Estate in South West Hampshire is situated in the National Park of the New Forest. The stately home of the Montagu family, and allegedly one of the most haunted houses in Britain, Palace House, Beaulieu was originally the gatehouse of the 13th century Beaulieu Abbey. Following the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, the property was bought by Sir Thomas Wriothesley. He later became the first Earl of Southampton (whose grandson was a patron of Shakespeare), from whom the Montagu family descends via a Scottish connection to the 5th Duke of Buccleuch and his wife, the daughter of the Marquess of Bath.
Overlooking the Beaulieu river, the estate lives up to its name, ‘beautiful place’, and is a member of the consortium the ‘Treasure Houses of England’. It is not surprising its residents want to protect the area, which been important throughout history. The New Forest was once wholly a Royal Forest, William Rufus died there and the ancient woodland provided timber for the Royal Navy – there were Beaulieu Estate timbers in the ships that fought at Trafalgar.