By Charles Randall
2 December 2012
Perhaps one of the more bizarre campaigns to save a club cricket ground without cricketers has ended with the announcement that the Keep Wimborne Town Green campaigners had withdrawn their application for a public inquiry in January.
Wimborne & Colehill CC enjoyed a mid-table position in the premier division of the Dorset Funeral Plan League in 2011, their second season at The Leaze, a bright new ground built for them by Waitrose on the town's outskirts. Even though their old venue at Hanham's had been turned into a supermarket and public green space in 2009, protests continued.
Until their move, the cricket club had staggered on with short lease agreements from the land owners on a ground used for cricket since 1860 until the news broke about Waitrose's interest in 2004. These days the club proudly display their impressively neat pavilion and new ground facilities on their website as clear winners of the open space controversy that hit the town.
Keep Wimborne Town Green called an end to their campaign to have the old cricket ground identified as a "town green", which would have embarrassed Waitrose and the local council and might have allowed drastic retrospective action. The public inquiry was scheduled for January 23-25.
The campaigners, led by Philip Atlay, admitted defeat when a survey conducted by Electoral Reform Services showed that 87 per cent of people responding to a poll agreed with the wording "the store is an asset to the town and that, although the development should not have been permitted on the site, the town has now to live with it".
Mr Atlay said that during the four years between the announcement by the land owners Deans Courts Estate of their wish to sell Hanham's Ground to Waitrose subject to planning permission and the granting of that permission in 2008, local opposition remained solid. "Keep Wimborne Town Green was an expression of that opposition," he said.
"There was no objection to a second supermarket in the town nor to Waitrose, the company, but the cricket ground, which was within the conservation area and designated as an open space, was roundly rejected as an appropriate site for a large supermarket. District councillors, with some honourable exceptions, wholly ignored this majority view."
Mr Atlay added that the 'town green' application made in 2009 was intended to halt the supermarket's construction and give time for further consideration of the issues after East Dorset District Council had approved the plans, but Dorset County Council waited for more than two years before addressing the application. "We recognise that people have come to accept the store, despite its obscene impact upon the appearance of a delightful Minster town," he said.
The controversy hotted up in 2009 when councillors on a planning committee voted for the Waitrose development even though district planning officers had recommended that the application be refused. The campaigners were advised by DEFRA that if the old cricket ground were to be registered as a town green, a Court could rule that development was unlawful, with the possibility of demolition and greenfield reinstatement.
Such an eventuality might seem unlikely, and Councillor Robin Cook, the Wimborne Town Mayor serving on both the district and county councils, commented: "The truth will out. The cricket ground was never a town green and the application was without foundation. As I go around the town I find there is tremendous support for Waitrose." The town's cricket club would certainly agree.
Originally known as Hanham's CC, Wimborne CC became established in 1793 and they probably used the green from 1860 onwards. The familiar white pavilion was built in 1913, but time has marched on while shopppers and cricketers go about their business.