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May 2024

Last Updated: 01/05/2024

Community

Ripon campaigners prepare for post D-Day battle with the bulldozers

by Tim Flanagan

| 01 May, 2024

bailey-bridge-a-heavily-camouflaged-sherman-tank-crosses-a-bailey-bridge-over-the-river-santerno-near-imola-12-april-1945

Will the crucial role of Ripon's Royal Engineers in the D-Day landings on the beaches of Normandy be lost in the sands of time?

As the 80th anniversary of this key event in world history fast approaches and features in media coverage across the globe, Ripon Military Heritage Trust is facing a battle with the bulldozers on the home front.

The Ripon barracks site, which is due to be vacated by 21 Engineer Regiment of the Royal Engineers in two years to make way for the 1,300-home Clotherholme development, is a time capsule that helps to tell the story of world war and cold war invention, ingenuity and innovation.

The area uniquely links priceless relics of the 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 conflicts that are of major historical importance.

Heritage assets currently located there include extremely rare accommodation huts built in 1939, along with bridges and structures, such as a concrete weir constructed on the River Laver to turn the turbines of a power station serving a huge World War One army camp.

In the wake of the Japanese aerial bombardment of the USA fleet at Pearl Harbour in December 1941, the Americans came to Ripon to learn from the Royal Engineers how to deal with unexploded ordnance.

It was a Trans-Atlantic training arrangement and helping-hand from across the sea, that emphasised the growing 'special relationship' between the two countries.

Ripon was also the base where allied military personnel from the USA, Canada and Europe, were trained in the methods of installing Bailey Bridges.

Ripon's role recognised by top military figures

The importance of this then revolutionary, new bridging system was highlighted in a letter to the Royal Engineers from Field-Marshal Montgomery who wrote:

“...As far as my own operations were concerned with the Eighth Army in Italy and 21 Army Group in N.W. Europe, I could never have maintained the speed and tempo of forward movement without large supplies of Bailey bridging…”.

Montgomery and the top brass of the USA military are on record for their recognition of Ripon's world-wide war era significance, but Ripon Military Heritage Trust, fears for the future of the heritage assets that they hope to preserve as a means of reminding existing and future generations of the exceptional part that the city played in two world wars and the subsequent cold war.

Planning update

Last week, the government agencies Homes England and the Defence Infrastructure Organisation provided an update on the Clotherholme proposals in a planning report published on North Yorkshire Council’s website.

The report pledged to “work with the Ripon Military Heritage Trust on a heritage strategy which will balance the urgent need for new homes for local people with a strategy for preserving and recording the unique history and heritage of the barracks”.

The trust's continuing concerns

But the trust, which has launched a website as part of a campaign to preserve key aspects of the site, believes the agencies have shown little desire to co-operate since Harrogate Borough Council granted planning permission in February last year and their pledges remain vague and opaque.

Trust chairman Guy Wilson said:

“We are hugely disappointed that after 15 months of engagement with Homes England, the current outline planning application lacks any provision for the preservation of even a single example of the rare and unique huts at Deverell Barracks.

“Neither has any land been allocated to allow for the relocation and re-use of these heritage assets. Both were specific requests that the Harrogate Borough Council planning committee called for in February 2023.

“It has sadly become apparent that none of the parties to this development has any real interest in preserving the heritage of the site and none has made any attempt to work constructively with us. All they are interested in is appearing to do enough to get their present plans passed without alteration, in which case the result will be that significant heritage assets will be lost and this we very much regret.”

The planning update said the housing scheme will preserve the main military roads and names as well as provide information signs

Trust display

The trust had a display at yesterday's launch of Ripon's D-Day programme of 80th anniversary commemoration and celebration events on the lawns of the Ripon Inn.

It has now been moved inside the Ripon Inn and gives a fascinating insight into Ripon's military history and the heritage assets that it is attempting to save from destruction.

Trustee Michael Furse told the Stray Ferret:

"The city has a rich and deep military history and has enjoyed a long and close relationship with the Royal Engineers.

"We and many Ripon residents strongly believe that the important heritage assets at the barracks site are worth fighting for."

Main image: Field-Marshal Montgomery recognised the important role that Ripon's Royal Engineers played in the installation of Bailey Bridges, such as this one in Italy. Picture Wikipedia

The countdown is on for Ripon's D-Day anniversary event

Rallying call from Ripon Military Heritage Trust