The Website

This website is about the Walks, the public park in Kings Lynn, Norfolk. This is why I created it:

The local council were planning £4.6m worth of work on the park, to be funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The process started a couple of years ago when the council put up signs in the Park announcing 'Phase 1 of a bid for Lottery Funding' and its scope in general terms. The plans sounded pretty good. There was going to be a new building with a cafe and a park manager, new toilets, a dedicated area for teenagers and a revamp for the play area. It all sounded pretty promising.

After that, nothing much visible happened for a couple of years. On 6th July 2004, I spotted a Lynn News and Advertiser story "Lynn Walks to lose 130 trees". That was the wake-up call! The original plan mentioned the possibility of felling trees that needed felling and planting new ones, and that sounded pretty reasonable. But 130? It sounded like a massacre. Clear-felling two of the three avenues, plus in 15 years time they fell the third avenue. The Lynn News story mentioned a meeting at the council offices that evening. At the meeting, which was chaired by Councillor Mrs Elizabeth Nockold, it was explained that the trees to be felled were in poor condition, that they had failed to thrive due to excess soil alkalinity and soil compaction. That clearing the avenues from end to end would allow contractors to dig long trenches to improve soil conditions for replacements. That planting new avenues, including some parts now lost would restore the park to its original appearance.

Responses to questions from the public filled in a few details. The replacement trees would be mixed horse chestnuts and limes. The trenches for the new avenues were to be 75cms deep, for the replacement trees 45cms deep. The bottoms of the trenches would be rotavated. The Indian Bean Trees by the Red Mount were to be felled. The ditch east of the Seven Sisters walk was to stay. The 'Rivulet' (watercourse that runs east of the river to the old swimming pool) is going to be dug out and 'oxygenators' planted. The old swimming pool stays as it is, but with added waterlilies: the paved area next to it goes, gets some shrubs instead. The replacement lighting was to be sham-victoriana. Stuff like 'how are you going to tackle the litter/ antisocial behaviour/security problems?' didn't really seem to get a proper answer. The lottery bid was to go in on 30th July.

I recalled a newspaper articleabout a similar 'restoration scheme' in Roundhay Park, Leeds. It made alarming reading. I contacted Tricia Ross via their website www.roundhaytrees.org.uk She was very concerned about the outlook for the Walks and had a meeting with Scott Wilson (who are based in Leeds) after which she was able to fill in some more detail: In fact 174 trees were to be felled in the avenues and another 70 elsewhere in the park for a grand total of 244! (Does the park have that many trees?) This was really alarming news. It sounded like the Council were going to spend a ton of money to ruin the park. And why had the numbers increased so much in a few days? Why had news of the scheme's details broken so late? I felt I had to do something. This web site is one of the results.

-- Dave Cooper