On 14 November a group of some thirty members paid a visit to Tangmere Military Aviation Museum.
Our host was David Coxon, former curator and now an Honorary Life Vice President of the Museum. Chi Soc members will have seen some of David’s articles about Tangmere in recent editions of our newsletter.
David started by giving us a talk about the Tangmere airbase and the origins of the museum, which opened to the public in 1982.
Lysander
David did stress that despite all the aircraft and machinery in the museum, it is really about the personal histories of the airmen, many of whom gave their lives for the country.
After David’s introductory talk, we split into three groups to tour the museum.
I was in the group that was led by David.
We started by looking at the aircraft outside the museum, which included a Sea Harrier, a Phantom, and a Wessex helicopter.
We then went indoors and started in the Battle of Britain Hall, which included a display relating to Flt Lt James Nicholson, Fighter Command’s only Victoria Cross holder of the war. Other displays related to air aces such as Douglas Bader and Johnnie Johnson.
In the Tangmere Hall we saw displays relating to the Special Operations Executive and how Tangmere played a crucial role flying Lysanders to get agents secretly in and out of France.
The Merston Hall has a full-scale replica of a Lysander. In the Middle Hall is and exhibition celebrating the role of the many Czech and Polish pilots who supported the RAF during the war.
We then moved to the Merston and Meryl
Spitfire Engine recovered from the sea
Hansed Memorial Halls which house most of the actual aircraft in the collection, including the Hawker Hunter in which Neville Duke broke the world airspeed record in 1953.
Hawker Hunter F5
However, what really stunned me was the enormous size of the Lightning, the museum’s largest aircraft, which seemed to be the size of a railway carriage, but with wings attached!
If you haven’t been, I can strongly recommend a visit to the museum.
Your Ideas for our City – panel – credit Jan Davis
Our public meeting on 17 June on the theme “Your Ideas for Our City” as part of the Festival of Chichester attracted over 150 participants.
We followed up with a questionnaire and then, on 8 August, sixteen of us met to discuss how to translate some of the ideas into action.
We decided to focus initially on small-scale achievable objectives such as litter, weeding and signage by forming one or more project groups to address specific issues, overseen by a Campaign Manager / Coordinator on the Society’s Executive Committee.
Team members would hope to recruit community volunteers to carry out the work by emailing Society members and local Residents Associations, as well as University and College student groups.
Direct community action might shame the local authorities into taking action themselves!
Come to a discussion on the evening of Monday 17 June at the Assembly Room
All are warmly invited to this free public event which is open to everyone as part of the Festival of Chichester. Entry is strictly by a free ticket obtained from the Festival website or the Novium box office in Tower Street, since seating is limited.
The theme for the evening is Your Ideas for Our City, discussed by a panel chaired by Phil Hewitt, well-known arts editor at the Chichester Observer.
Panellists are
– Richard Plowman, former councillor and mayor of Chichester
(replaces Adrian Moss, Leader of Chichester District Council, unable to attend in pre-election “purdah”)
– Simon Holland, Chichester Cathedral Interim Dean
– Mark Elliott Festival of Chichester coordinator
– Dr Mark Mason, Chichester University Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Student Experience).
Discussion will cover many topics, some of which are mentioned on pages 18 and 19 of the newsletter’s March edition.
Come and have your say. Ideas from the panel and audience comments will be recorded.
The discussion will be followed by a drinks reception with snacks.
Chichester Society members may wish to make themselves known on arrival at the Assembly Room, so we can give you a special welcome and ask you to write comments or complaints about the city or indeed about your society! All remarks will be treated confidentially.
It’s on Monday 17 June from 7 to 9pm in the Assembly Room at the Council House on North Street. Bring your friends!
Do also consider some of the other events during the Festival of Chichester 15 June to 21 July
John Halliday and John Templeton, members of the Executive Committee
We are celebrating the birth of the Chichester Society in the autumn of 1973. It was born as protest against changes that were viewed as wrecking this city’s character. We honour David Goodman whose inspirational address was greeted by acclamation and a wish to preserve rather than destroy, illustrated by Somerstown’s demolition during the previous decade – whose demise we record in our December newsletter*.
The Chichester Society wants the best for this city: housing that is affordable, good public transport, a vibrant city centre; somewhere that is clean, tidy and respectful of our heritage, admired by residents and visitors alike. We welcome initiative and growth, especially when allied to youthful endeavour, which is why we’re pleased to publish a good-news article* on the University of Chichester’s success.
Our problems are not unique because the clash between urban growth and conservation is experienced across the country. But Chichester, squeezed between the Downs and Harbour, is experiencing wholly inappropriate development. This country invented the planning system as protection fromurban sprawl but the setting of our city is being rapidly destroyed. In recent years we have lost farmland separating the town from nearby villages such as Westhampnett, leaving only a gap, the Daffodil Field, between Summersdale and Lavant remaining. We have built hundreds of new dwellings encircling our city. We endure traffic levels that are unacceptable. If our Local Plan can be approved we can at least reduce new housing numbers to some extent.
We are fortunate to live in a town of charm and character. But the development threats whilst no new Local Plan is in place are being repeated on a damaging scale today as a result of Planning Appeals.
The case is clear – let’s argue for the best that good planning and architecture can provide.
*the December newsletter has been delivered to members, and will be available on this site in the spring. In the meantime do look at the 25th anniversary newsletter that describes the momentous events that provoked the start of the Chichester Society.
On Friday 24 November members met at 11am in Jubilee Park South near the New Park Centre to plant a tree to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Chichester Society, close to the tree planted in 2013 to mark the society’s 40th anniversary.
If you get off a bus outside Chichester Cathedral, what do you see?
Dilapidated flower beds with a sign proudly displaying the fact that they belong to Chichester City Council. There’s also another weed-strewn flower bed nearby beside Phillip Jackson’s statue of St Richard. Why isn’t this flower bed maintained by the Cathedral’s works team?
Uncared-for trees on West Street leave littel room for buggies and pushchairs. Photo Brian Henhan
Let us return to our hapless bus passengers, residents or visitors to Chichester leaving their bus, who will have to squeeze (this is late July), beneath and between untrimmed over-hanging lime trees, negotiate rubbish on the ground. Across the road is another eye-sore, the once proud Army and Navy store (and later House of Fraser) now seemingly abandoned for the past four years waiting for its Guernsey-based owners to decide its future. If our bus passengers get as far as the Cross, they are just as likely to fall over one of the trip hazards on our pavements. When is our highway authority, West Sussex County Council (WSCC), going to do something about the parlous state of the paving?
We live in hope! Chichester District Council (CDC) has commissioned a Regeneration Strategy for Chichester, agreed at Full Council in mid-July – but this city is in dire need of action now! Could our City Council better maintain not only their flower beds but also pay for sweepers to keep pavements in front of the Cathedral clean? Cannot the interminable
discussions about paving in the city centre – and who pays for what – be concluded at long last by WSCC? And we must ask CDC to publish their Regeneration Strategy and deliver it as soon as possible. In the meantime, our ‘Councils’ should do their bit to improve the dilapidated state of our city centre now and not later. If they can’t do it perhaps we the
residents should form a work party to tidy the place up!
Bill Sharp says some places have well designed rail/bus hubs which show what’s possible here.
Readers will know that the Society is concerned about plans to do away with Chichester Bus Station and replace it with stops scattered to some forlorn location or other. (See Newsletter 212, June 2022, pp 2-3). The Society is keen to see this idea unceremoniously dumped in favour of one of two possibilities.
As one option, we suggest the existing bus station could simply be refreshed. In most people’s eyes this building is, to say the least, down at heel. But it does have its admirers. The insightful blog Beauty of Transport states ‘Chichester bus station. The brickwork! The windows! The serifed lettering! The cantilevered balcony! I love it all.’
However, the Society is even keener on the idea of creating a new, fully-integrated bus/rail hub as part of the Southern Gateway re-development plans.
What might a combined bus & rail hub look like?
Here is one interpretation for a new transport hub at Chichester – see the June 2023 Newsletter for the full article showing other examples.
The Reverand Bruce Ruddock, Chairman of Priory Park Society, reflects on the care and use of a treasured community asset in the June 2023 Newsletter.
He points out a glaring need to restore or rebuild some of the park’s dilapidated buildings:
Restoration
• Red brick pavilion – Chichester District Council (CDC) has spent tens of thousands of pounds reviewing its future, but rats remain its only visitors.
• Cricket pavilion – as long ago as 1977 plans were submitted for a new
pavilion: the existing ‘White Pavilion’ is now unsafe and not fit for purpose.
• Bowls pavilion – a refurbished or extended bowls pavilion would enable club members to entertain their opposition guests in ways that are at present impossible.
• The Motte – money spent in recent years has been wasted by failing to provide adequate protection and not allowing the ground repairs time to bed in, so that the ‘open wounds’ in the form of cycle and sliding tracks down its sides are worse than ever.
• Play area – there is a clear recognition that the play area needs enhancement, not just by replacing equipment.
New management?
It has often been suggested that the management of Priory Park should be transferred from CDC to the City Council. I have not sensed any great appetite for this idea, but
maybe our new district councillors will drive it forward. Should PrioryPark be managed by a CharitableTrust along the lines of the originalPriory Park Society in 1850? (Without
of course the exclusivity of thefamous subscribers’ keys). Whateverthe future, the urgent need is forproper security, joined-up thinking and a cohesive and bigger visionin the corridors of power. Those of us who use the park value its beauty and tranquillity and love
seeing people enjoying themselves.
The Duke of Richmond gave the park as a memorial to t he fallenin the First World War and as a place of recreation for the people of Chichester. As such, it deserves our respect and the Priory ParkSociety will continue to support this wonderful space in any way we can.
I encourage readers to come and join us.
WHY IS THE COUNTY COUNCIL IGNORING THIS COMMUNITY ASSET IN CHICHESTER? A prize-winning mural designed to stop graffiti is decaying, which encourages more graffiti. Richard Childs explains
The history of this mural is interesting. It decorates the Via Ravenna pedestrian subway located close to Waitrose. In 1987 County Council highways staff wanted to reduce the potential for graffiti in a newly-built underpass, part of the walking route between Chichester Station and the College used by hundreds of people every day which is also part of the South Coast National Cycleway from Cornwall to Kent.
Via Ravenna Underpass plaque
The County’s highways team organised a design competition which was won by a College student with a montage of Chichester scenes imagined from a passing train. Volunteers
from highways and the building contractor painted the mural. But after some 25 years it was showing its age, so the Chichester Society decided in 2012 that refurbishing this mural would be a suitable way to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the Society’s forthcoming 40th anniversary. County support
As a first step we applied for a grant from the County Council to finance a professional conservator to survey the mural and report on its condition. In July 2012, the County Council awarded £400 from its Community Initiative Fund as a contribution towards the conservator’s £600 fee to carry out this work. This report identified the cost of the mural’s
conservation and refurbishment could be substantial, possibly as much as £70,000.
A practical solution was identified which cost much less than anticipated. In November 2013, a further grant application was submitted, this time to the County Council’s Big Society Fund for refurbishing the mural, and in February 2014 £9,500 was awarded. We found a mural specialist in Portsmouth and commissioned Art and Soul Traders. The refurbished mural was unveiled on 30 July 2014 by the then Chairman of the County
Council, Councillor Mrs Amanda Jupp; a plaque marks the occasion.
We reproduce here one of the newly painted murals.
Repainted Mural summer 2014 – Passing the Cathedral
How life changes!
For most of 2022 the Chichester Society has been pursuing the removal of increasing graffiti on the Via Ravenna mural. Here is a timeline of frustration: On 7 February 2022, we emailed Chichester District Council regarding the graffiti. As people probably won’t know, the public are directed to contact the District Council even though some graffiti removal is the County Council’s responsibility. In this case the District Council said they would forward my email to WSCC. After 7 weeks the graffiti hadn’t been removed so we again emailed the District Council on 18 March. They promised to remind WSCC of the issue. A further 7 weeks elapsed with no removal of the graffiti so yet again we emailed the District Council on 6 May. This time the District Council suggested that as they were having no luck with WSCC that we should contact them directly!! We decided to write to the relevant WSCC Cabinet Member about the problem. On 22 June the Cabinet Member replied as follows: I have made enquiries and ascertained that we have a responsibility to remove offensive or racist graffiti from Council managed assets. In this case, as the graffiti appears to be neither offensive nor racist it won’t be
addressed by WSCC. A few years ago the Council agreed to reduce the budget for this activity to reflect the limit of the operations we undertake.
Some of the graffiti is almost artistic!
Time to act?
We, the Chichester Society, did all the ‘heavy lifting’ during the project to achieve the mural’s refurbishment, while local governments’ contribution has been minimal
and passive. How ironic, given the County Council’s involvement with the mural for over 35 years, that it is now happy to let it be grossly despoiled by graffiti. Clearly the current incumbents at County Hall are unaware of this fact. WSCC’s anticipated net expenditure for 2022/3 is £648 million. Surely a couple of hundred pounds to clean up the graffiti isn’t asking too much. Is it?
Postscript: as at January 2023 the graffiti illustrated on this page remains in place. WSCC’s policy is not to remove graffiti unless it is offensive or racist. What do readers think? Has this graffiti become ‘offensive’?
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Richard Childs is a member of the Society’s Executive Committee and this magazine’s editorial group. All images by members of the Chichester Society
It’s well over 40 years since Chichester was pedestrianised and the case for upgrading and renewing paving is overwhelming, especially as the York stone wasn’t intended for vehicles
Readers may think Council inertia is surprising. The condition of this city’s paving has been reviewed over the years but nothing occurs ‘on the ground’ except the appearance of occasional repair teams. Residents want action. We appreciate our elected representatives hesitating to commit £15.5 to £18 million for a high-quality solution – sums stated by consultants WSP on page 120 of their report published March 2021. But we reproduce here photographs of improved paving in three other town centres. If these communities can do it, why not Chichester?
Chichester city centre pavements
Two reports on the condition of Chichester’s paving are relevant:
Building Design Partnership recommended in 2009 ‘The existing paving has been in place since the 1970s and … is now showing signs of wear and tear’.
WSP published their report in 2021. They begin by commenting on ‘an increasing number of complaints about the condition of the city centre pavements and an increase in trips and slips’. They conclude that ‘the quality of repairs needs to improve’ and ‘there are significant issues with unmanaged vehicle movements over areas of pavement likely to have only been designed and constructed to take pedestrian loadings …’ As mentioned above WSP think the budget for a comprehensive scheme for the Market Cross, North and East Streets could be £15.5 to £18 million. We must assume renovating South Street and West Street would be an additional cost.
The Chichester Society is not qualified to comment on technical aspects, but on the basis of our links with the community, we know Chichester’s residents expect our councils to agree a solution soon. This awareness prompted the Society to write to the County Council as highway authority.
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