Is battle to save Ripon’s military heritage inching to victory?1,300-home Ripon barracks development under fire at city council meetingCouncillors to debate petition about saving Ripon’s military hutsRipon military heritage campaigners to speak at public meetingEditor’s Pick of the Week: Gareth Southgate goes septic in Harrogate, Ripon campaigns and Knaresborough gets trippyHow bridges designed in Ripon helped win the Second World WarRipon council leader calls for decision on 1,300 homes to be deferred

The leader of Ripon City Council is to call for a decision on whether to allow 1,300 homes to be built in the city to be deferred today.

Government agency Homes England has applied to redevelop Ministry of Defence land in the north-west of the city, between Clotherhome Road and Kirkby Road,

North Yorkshire Council’s strategic planning committee, which adjudicates on large applications, has been recommended to approve the scheme when it meets at 10am this morning.

Cllr Williams warned the plans would lead to “traffic chaos” and the “destruction” of key military heritage sites. He said it would be premature to make a decision until these issues are resolved.

Cllr Williams, who also represents Ripon Minster and Moorside on North Yorkshire Council, told the Stray Ferret:

“I am attending the meeting and will be calling in the strongest terms for members of the strategic planning committee to defer their decision on the Homes England application.

“The application is premature and I find it disingenuous of Homes England to agree to meet with the city council in July to discuss unresolved matters of major concern to the people of Ripon, while seeking approval for their proposals today.”

Cllr Williams added:

“These matters include the city council’s unanimous call for the protection of military heritage on the barracks site and concerns we have also raised about a proposed change to the Somerset Row and Low Skellgate junction.

“As the application stands, the military heritage, which is part of Ripon’s history, is threatened with destruction, which is totally unacceptable, while the planned junction change, which would prevent those heading towards the city from turning right, would lead to traffic chaos, as drivers will either have to go to the Bedern Bank roundabout and double back on themselves or face a long detour on unsuitable roads.”

The 98-page report by council case officer Kate Broadbank recognises the significance of Ripon’s military heritage. It says “Deverell Barracks has extensive heritage significance” and that the demolition of buildings, such as a 1939 military camp and training bridges “represents the most severe harm to significance as it and most of the components within it will be lost”.

One of the bridges.

The report talks about including measures such as a “public art strategy reflecting the history of the barracks” and installing interpretation boards with details about the site’s military history but adds “it is not possible to require assets to be retained”.

The lack of guarantees has heightened Ripon Military Heritage Trust‘s concerns that key military sites will be bulldozed.

The trust said in a statement it was only informed of the recommendation six days before the meeting, even though it had been talking to North Yorkshire Council and Homes England about the military concerns for 15 months.

The statement said:

“It is clear to us that not a single one of our concerns has been addressed. We are extremely disappointed that there seems so little regard for these heritage assets, their significance and their long-term preservation.”

The meeting is due to be broadcast on the council’s YouTube channel here at 10am.

The Stray Ferret is backing Ripon Military Heritage Trust’s campaign to save key military heritage sites at Clotherholme, as reported here. Please join the campaign and sign the petition here. If it gets 500 signatures it will be debated by North Yorkshire Council’s Skipton and Ripon planning committee.

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Green light set to be given tomorrow to 1,300 homes in Ripon

Councillors have been urged to approve plans for 1,300 homes in Ripon when they meet tomorrow (May 14).

The homes, off Clotherholme Road, would have a significant impact on the city, sweeping away key sites of military history and leading to significant changes to roads and junctions.

The plans include a new primary school, sports pitches, a country park and a neighbourhood centre.

Four city centre junctions will be improved and Clotherholme Road, Kirkby Road, College Road and Trinity Lane will be redesigned to prioritise pedestrian safety and encourage cycling.

It would increase Ripon’s population by about 3,000 people, which is greater than the combined size of Masham and Pateley Bridge.

Ripon Military Heritage Trust said in a statement it was “extremely disappointed” and fears rare 1939 military huts and training bridges that played a key role in 20th century warfare will be destroyed. We will publish more on this in a separate article shortly. The Stray Ferret is backing the trust’s campaign to save Ripon’s military history — you can sign the petition here.

A report by case officer Kate Broadbank at North Yorkshire Council recommends councillors on the strategic planning committee grant outline approval, subject to the final details being agreed. The 14 councillors on the committee will decide whether to accept the recommendation.

Ms Broadbank’s report concludes:

“The proposal would contribute towards ensuring the district’s housing needs are met, including the requisite provision of affordable homes, self-build homes, as well as employment land and significant green infrastructure not previously available to the public.

“Overall, for the reasons set out in the report, it is considered the proposal is compliant with the overarching policies of the development plan and national planning policy requirements and thus, represents sustainable development.”

Where the homes would be built. Pic: Homes England

Harrogate Borough Council backed the scheme in February last year, shortly before it was abolished.

The report said it had come back to North Yorkshire Council’s strategic planning committee, which determines major planning applications, because of new information and ongoing discussions around the section 106 payments that developers are required to pay to councils to compensate for the impact of their schemes on local infrastructure.

The section 106 payments include:

If councillors approve the scheme, the principle of development will be established; the details will be ironed out in a subsequent reserved matters planning application.

Government agency Homes England, which is proposing the scheme, will appoint a housebuilder once the scheme is ratified.

Ripon Barracks in north-west of Ripon remains an active Ministry of Defence site but is due to be decommissioned over the next few years.

The 85-hectare development site is accessed via Clotherholme Road to the south and Kirkby Road to the north.

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How Ripon played a key role in two world wars

Michael Furse, a trustee of the charity  Ripon Military Heritage Trust, explains why Ripon and Harrogate have such military significance — and why the trust is fighting to preserve it as part of the the 1,300-home Clotherholme development.

The Stray Ferret is backing the trust’s campaign to save key parts of the city’s military history, as reported here. Please sign the petition here. If it gets 500 signatures it will be debated by North Yorkshire Council’s Skipton and Ripon planning committee.

World War I: 350,000 soldiers pass through Ripon army camp

The British Expeditionary Force marched to war in 1914. The modest force of six divisions acquitted itself well but by the end of 1914 was exhausted having fought at Mons, Le Cateau, the Aisne and Ypres.

However, they helped the French hold off the German army and in what is known as the Race to The Sea prevented the Germans from turning the left flank of the allied armies.

Numbers were made up initially from the territorial force, but Field Marshal Lord Kitchener realised more troops would be needed and set about this with vigour, raising six more divisions by the end of August 1914, and a further 17 divisions by March 1915.

Dubbed Kitchener’s New Army or unkindly, Kitchener’s Mob, these further divisions were formed of volunteer soldiers and the need to process the huge number of them and to train them quickly led to the creation of large army camps, of which Ripon was one. An estimated 350,000 men passed through the camp during the 1914-18 war.

A recruitment poster

What was needed for one of Kitchener’s large camps? Clearly, good rail communications were essential – most soldiers coming to Ripon for training or leaving for the front marched to and from Ripon station, at that time on the main LNER route from King’s Cross to Edinburgh.

The camps needed to be relatively close to the conurbations that provided the volunteers for military service, but to have sufficient space to house up to 30,000 men at a time and to allow civilian soldiers to be trained properly for service on the Western Front, which included training in trenches built for the purpose.

Ripon’s north and south camps trained complete divisions of 16,000 men at a time. Little remains of this enormous undertaking – the camp was demolished and the land returned to the landowners who had offered it for the duration of the war.

Some hospital accommodation blocks remain in Lark Lane, converted into houses, but as they are on large plots, the number dwindles yearly. A set of cavalry lines remained until recently but were torn down to make way for a small housing development, reflecting the complete lack of interest shown by local government in heritage in general and military heritage in particular.

A 1945 aerial photo of Ripon Camp – note the Bailey suspension bridge in what is now the Doublegates housing estate.

World War II: Ripon pioneers bomb disposal and bridges 

The same reasons for selecting this part of England for training from 1914 to 1918 held true in 1940. Good communications, not just with mainline LNER service to London Kings Cross via Leeds, but the development of road freight meant that the A1 had become an important complement to the railways.

Harrogate

At the outbreak of war in September 1939, several government departments were moved from London to areas of greater safety. Harrogate was one of those safe areas and attracted a number of government bodies, primarily the Air Ministry’s Departments of Planning, Production, and Research.

With about 3,000 staff they were described In 1939 as being ‘a very vulnerable basket of precious eggs’. During 1940 there was a pressing need to increase the number of aircraft for the RAF. Working with the Ministry of Aircraft Production, the ‘Harrogate Programme’ arranged for and set a production quota of 3,000 fighters per year. The programme was so successful that over 4,200 fighters were produced in 1940.

In all, some 25 hotels and a number of schools were requisitioned and a group of ‘temporary office buildings’ designed by Sir James West, chief architect for the Ministry of Works, were erected to house the influx of civil servants and military personnel. These included staff of the General Post Office, who managed the post and were also responsible for civil telephony, the Office of Works, the RAF as well as servicewomen from the WRNS, WAAF and ATS.

Ripon

As war with Nazi Germany approached there was a need for accommodation for a much-expanded army. A large number of militia camps were built in the summer of 1939, including one at Ripon, with two barracks intended to each house a battalion-sized unit. One of these was intended to train Sappers.

Some of Ripon’s Second World War huts. Pic: Ripon Military Heritage Trust

The bombing of London and its surroundings in the blitz of 1940 led the Corps of Royal Engineers to move the School of Military Engineering from Chatham to Ripon, a process that started in late 1940 and was completed in early 1941.

The school occupied Deverell Barracks, which is now the only militia camp barracks left and which Homes England, the government’s property developer, is intending to demolish in its entirety, despite advice from both Historic England and the Twentieth Century Society that some of its rare or unique buildings should be preserved.

During the period the school was in Ripon (from late 1940 to early 1949), much critical work related to military engineering took place. Bomb disposal training was based in Ripon, and important development work on mine and obstacle clearance by armoured units was taking place as early as 1942.

Bailey bridge training and testing took place in and around Ripon, and many of the allied engineers who erected Bailey bridges in Italy or North West Europe were trained there. The River Ure was used to train Sherman tank drivers how to exit tank landing craft, an essential skill to master for D-Day. And the load and wind testing for the Bailey suspension bridges that were so essential in the India and Burma campaigns took place on what is now Doublegates housing estate.

Instead of destroying all these historic buildings we want to preserve a small group of them and re-purpose them for community uses and as a permanent interpretation centre where Ripon’s military history can be told. If we are to succeed, we need your support and help. Without this, a key and tangible part of Yorkshire’s military history will be lost forever.

Please support the campaign for a small part of the 1,300-home Clotherholme scheme to be set aside to preserve Ripon’s military history.  You can sign the petition here and find out more about the campaign here.

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Editor’s Pick of the Week: Starbucks arrives, James Bond returns and Knaresborough floods

Finally, after months of speculation, Harrogate got the answer to the question everyone is asking — when is the new Starbucks on Wetherby Road opening?

The answer is — very soon. The full details, caffeine addicts, are here.

Pierce Brosnan is leaving a trail of swooning admirers across the district. A month after he was spotted having a drink in the Fat Badger in Harrogate, he popped up in Knaresborough this week.

Not, sadly, at Bond End but on High Street where he surprised staff and customers at Yorkshire Eyewear by asking to borrow a screwdriver so he could fix his glasses.

The gobsmacked staff obliged, ensuring the 007 star’s specs were shaken but not blurred (thanks to my colleague John Grainger for that line).

I drove along dry roads on Knaresborough High Street on Bank Holiday Monday only to get home some 20 minutes later to reports of homes in the town being flooded. Surely some mistake? It soon became clear it was anything but, and we quickly fired up a live blog to track the breaking news and headed out the next day to speak to those affected.

We returned on Friday to find out more about the impressive emergency response being co-ordinated at Chain Lane Community Centre.

Finally, a plea for help. This week we launched a petition to support Ripon Military Heritage Trust‘s campaign to preserve key parts of the city’s military heritage from being bulldozed as part of the 1,300-home Clotherholme development. The trust only wants to maintain a tiny section of land so it can tell the

If you weren’t aware of what’s at stake, read this article about the key role Ripon played in two world wars. For instance, 350,000 soldiers passed through the military camp during the First World War. You can sign the petition here. If we get 500 signatures North Yorkshire Council’s Skipton and Ripon area constituency committee is obliged to discuss it. Don’t let treasured history be bulldozed

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