Parish Council say ‘no’ to three proposed housing sites

Development round about Abbotsham, and the preparation of a sewerage scheme for the village, have renewed the fears of a number of residents that its unspoiled character is in jeopardy. They feel that in the eyes of the speculator there can be few places more ripe for development and that provision of a drainage scheme is bound to bring in its wake a spate of planning applications.

The Parish Council are wholly alive to the dangers of the situation and Bideford Rural Council are treading warily. For some months the two authorities have been trying to get together and now, at a special meeting, the Parish Council rejected three of six sites proposed for development. “This matter has been going backwards and forwards for months” Major Jack Lomas told the Gazette. “We must not have the village spoiled; we realise there may be limited building, but it must be in the right place and there must not be too much of it.”

The Rural Council are to be told that the Parish Council do not object to two sites, each for four houses, on the road from the Post Office to Greencliffe and just past the Baptist Chapel; neither do they object to a site, again for four houses, to the north of Pump Lane. They are opposing a proposed site for 20 houses in a field known as Holloway and situated at the rear of the Vicarage. Their reasons are that it is on an exposed slope and would spoil the appearance of the village; Pump Lane is narrow with a very dangerous exit on to the main road; the land on the south side of Pump Lane is some eight feet higher than that on the north side therefore houses on the south would completely over look those on the north.

Gazette article dated February 5, 1965