A BIG thank you to “Observer”, the member of the public who wrote a letter to The Nantwich Chronicle (March 24, 2010) for his or her response to proposals for a bandstand on Mill Island. The Nantwich First group on the council has proposed spending £600,000 on town improvements, including the bandstand.

   "Observer" felt that money spent on a bandstand and a food stall and would be better spent on Nantwich’s Walled Garden project, and wrote: “If ‘tourism benefit’ is a principal aim, then (the Town Council) should buy the Walled Garden as soon as possible and turn it into its original form (plans and planting details still exist).”

    I think the comments from "Observer" are an excellent and well considered response and I believe that the Walled Garden Society would fully support them. But I do not know whether the writer ("name and address supplied") has any connection with our society.

    I read the suggestions by the Nantwich First group (Nantwich Chronicle, March 17, 2010), on spending the money. Among the proposals would be a special video of the history and highlights of Nantwich to be used as an introduction to the town “but would have tourism benefits”. This would cost £150,000.

    The Nantwich First councillors would not even give their moral support to the proposed restoration of the walled garden that is of national historic importance and which would clearly have increased the number of visitors to this town.

   The society quite easily collected over 1,100 letters of objection to the Dowhill planning application (which would destroy the garden by building houses across the full length of the garden site), together with petition signatures from both residents and leading local business owners for the restoration of the walled garden.

   But both Nantwich Town Council and Cheshire East Council chose to dismiss them all out of hand because, presumably, they did not correspond with the councillors’ and the planning officer's views. When we were collecting the signatures, a very significant proportion of the local residents and business people were generally in despair at the Council's actions and typical response to the wishes of the residents.