A precious area of green space and the last remaining urban farm in Poole have been saved from the developers once again. Talbot Village Trust has been trying to develop the area for years. The most recent effort was a joint effort with Nuffield Hospital Trust. They submitted a controversial planning application in late 2022, proposing to develop a new private hospital along with 13,394 square metres of employment and university-related facilities over the farmland. This would mean the eviction of the tenant farmer.
“Highland cows graze lazily in the grassy fields that stretch across Highmoor Farms, a hidden oasis of calm amongst the urban bustle of Poole. Residents living nearby have long held onto the farm and the adjoining Talbot Heath as a remnant of a long-forgotten English pastoral history.”
The farm and the Heath mean so much to local residents. As 10-year old Anya says:
““I would be absolutely devastated if it got built over. I probably wouldn’t want to go to school and I’d just be crying all the time. We can see the cows when they’re in the field from our kitchen and bedroom windows. That view would be absolutely destroyed”.
https://www.thebreaker.co.uk/highmoor-farm-a-story-of-resilience-and-the-power-of-community/
The Talbot Village Trust may sound like something owned by a local community but this is not the case. The chair of the Trust, Nick Ashley-Cooper, is actually the 12th Earl Shaftsbury and a large local landowner. The Trust operates as a charity, following on from two Victorian sisters who used an inheritance to rent land from the Earl of Shaftsbury.
https://talbotvillagetrust.org/about-us/our-history/
In addition to his landholdings in Dorset, the Earl also owns the largest lake in the UK. He owns the bed and the banks, but the water is publically owned.
“The ownership of parts of the lake has been in the Earl of Shaftesbury’s estate since the 1800s. The lake supplies half of Belfast’s drinking water and 40% of Northern Ireland’s overall, and Ashley-Cooper was thrust into being at the centre of the debate over the state of its water. Ashley-Cooper was not heir to the estate. Recently a vigil was held by over 100 campaigners who described it as a wake for the lake. Many dressed in black carried a coffin to the shoreline to represent their concerns that the lake is “dying” due to pollution. As public outrage over the polluted and toxic waters in the lake escalates, the earl has said he is still willing to sell it to the public – but won’t give it away for free”.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/owns-lough-neagh-earl-shaftesbury-133733447.html
It is great that people have won this important victory. However, there will always be these threats to the interests of the local community and the public in general as long as land is in the hands of private landowners whose main interest is their own profits, status and power.
To read about similar examples of people fighting for places they care about see: https://julian-hoffman.com/irreplaceable/
People's Land Policy 