The sole driver of this application is the grubby, small-minded greed of opportunistic developers and the current freeholders of the unlikely site – formerly the gardens of the Reader’s House, one of Ludlow’s most distinguished dwellings – seeking to maximize their profits on a lucky purchase of the garden at a knock down price. They manifestly have no interest in the town’s quite exceptional architectural and historical qualities; they are insensible to the overwhelming feelings of disgust of the inhabitants of the town, and have no regard for the massive disruption to the life of the town that their development would cause. 

The site has deliberately been allowed to become derelict, and a sliver of land adjoining it, backing on to two shop premises on King Street, has been included in the application. The developers, an individual called Andrew Sheldon and Shrewsbury architect, Graham Moss, hold an option to buy the site for £150,000 (the bulk of the ground – the abandoned garden – is currently owned, and was bought for just £3,000, by Alexandra Countryside  Developments (Robert Hughes and Charles Grant, who also own 9/10 King Street). The background to this extraordinary deal is obfuscated, and I would be grateful for more information regarding it; on this blog or privately via peterhenryburden@gmail.com)

The brief look at the history of this attempt to implant a large ugly wart in the very centre of Ludlow shows that the first application for a slightly higher density of dwellings was turned down by the then planning authority, South Shropshire District Council, only to be appealed to the DoE, whose inspector under deliberate misguidance, and to the astonishment and consternation of a huge majority of voters in the town, saw fit to allow it.

This plan turned out to be unbuildable, and the developers, emboldened by their first permission, have submitted a second, fresh plan. Some councillors – whether because they are friends or have connections with the developers, or are pusillanimous, or just plain dim is uncertain – were persuaded that as there was an extant, albeit entirely separate permission in situ, there was a financial risk to the Council in refusing this new one. With the help of the Chairman’s casting vote, these councillors passed this entirely irrational and unnecessary proposal to wreck the centre of an important historic town.

To put it into context, there is no pressing need for this additional housing in a town that has been extensively provided with new housing over the last decade – some still unsold –and where, anyway, several prominent, eminently suitable brown field sites exist as and when the need occurs.

Nor is it an exaggeration to describe this site as inaccessible. It would be hard to find a place less suited to any kind of development, let alone the building of five complete houses. A manner of transporting all the material and equipment required has yet to be identified. On the face of it, everything will have to be manhandled across St Laurence’s church yard, approached by narrow streets, in one case completely impassable by heavy goods vehicles.

The allowing of this gross, impractical plan shows local democracy in a very poor light, and points up the abysmal lack of taste, judgement and historical perspective among a majority councillors on Shropshire Council’s Strategic Planning Committee. It was committees like this that compounded the Luftwaffe’s efforts in the wholesale destruction of the once beautiful, now largely hideous cities of Gloucester and Worcester. Look at these cities and, closer at hand, the butchery that took place in the medieval heart of Shrewsbury in the 1960s; look at the two more recent major developments allowed by the local planning committee in Ludlow – Tesco and the Library, an ugly, out of scale and dysfunctional building – and ask yourself if you should lightly let them get away with it again.

I invite any assistance and provable information in building the case against this development in the hope that a chance to quash it becomes available. In the meantime everything possible that can be done, without breaking the law, to dissuade Messrs Sheldon and Moss from carrying through their plan is to be encouraged, and a careful eye must be kept for any signs of pre-emptive actions by them to breach the wall that marks the curtilage of St Laurence’s Church. The developers cannot commence without gaining access at several points along the wall, and the ownership of the wall is uncertain, however, that is in the process of being established and it most probably belongs to the Church, and the Diocese of Hereford have expressed their clear opposition to the scheme. There is a good chance that they can stop this development; I hope they do all they can to achieve this.

Disgracefully, there is no voting, no obligation on the part of planning hearings to take any notice of the views and wishes of the people who live in a town – who own their landscape. So I find myself now working in a library which is a cavernous, noisy space, which seems to function as a meet and chat venue, where large quantities of higher space are unused, and commercial activity occupies a proportion of the charmless lump of a bulding. The planners also bequeathed the town an ugly, useless little open space in front of the hulk, “perceived” by the County Council, “to attract people, thus benefitting nearby traders.” It is nearly always empty, occupied by discarded chewing gum and lager bottles.
    There are countless towns and cities throughout Britain that have been ruined in this way, and there have been many occasions when the public have yearned for someone of sufficient influence to raise a voice in support of their objections.
      The almost compete vandalization of the once lovely city of Gloucester, of which only the sublime cathedral and its immediate close remain, wouldn’t have happened if there had been a Prince Charles to suggest to the culprits that they should consider not just the wishes of their rate payers, but also the longer lasting qualities of traditional, vernacular and less aggressively modernistic building design.

Evidently news of the prices fetched by Mullocks Auctions for the last batch of Hitler’s youthful daubs auctioned in Ludlow has reached the US. The star offering this time – a  painting of a town by a lake – was bought directly from young Adolf as a memento in Vienna in 1908 by American tourist, Anna Sheersmith whose great, great niece from New Jersy family are now moved to sell it, at a guide price of £10,000 – about £9,970 more than it would be worth if it hadn’t been painted by a famous mass-murderer-to-be, according to experts.

If you are a collector of this kind of thing, an auction takes place on October 1^st, 2009.

Even when the castle is opened up, as it often is, for diverse festivals and events, and the town’s streets are choked with charabancs, it’s good to know that the town’s delights are being more widely shared. For the bright, blue-sky weekend just past, Ludlow hosted its 15^th Ludlow Food Festival – a Foodies’ nirvana, reflecting the wonderful revival of interest in traditional English food and drink – ales, goats’ cheeses, muttons, ciders, smoked ducks’ breasts – the diversity on offer was astonishing .

Of course, there had to be an element of competition, too, with local brewers, bakers, butchers and chefs vying for accolades. One frankly unscientific competition was hosted by Mr Graham (Floyd) Wilson-Lloyd, Ludlow’s ubiquitous landlord, former town mayor and operator of the Church Inn and the Charlton Arms. Seventeen beers and ales had been submitted by local pubs (not, on the whole, the crummy ones owned by Pub-Cos), and judging them fell to exhibitor and brewing maestro Alex Barlow, who was exhibiting in his ALL Beer stand to promote his excellent new ALLBeer Guide to ales & beers. As often happens in Ludlow events, there had been some confusion, and the poor chap hadn’t been told there were to be winners and losers. He arrived to be handed what he (perhaps unfortunately) described as a poisoned chalice, though, having drunk from it, he did survive – only just. For with so many variables (the disparate skills of the cellarmen at the various submitting pubs) to cloud his judgment, it wasn’t surprising that in his preliminary blind tasting he rejected some of the Ludlow ale-drinking community’s firm favourites (including mine – Hobson’s Best) and provoked some rowdy booing. A memorable commentary and condensed history of Britain’s relationship with ale was provided by Sarge, the cellarman from the Church Inn. Sarge is a published poet, chronicler of the town’s lore, and a man of surprisingly diverse erudition who can talk with equal fervour about Bach, Glenn Gould or Django Rheinhart, and who summarised the reaction of the audience as pisspotical. He had by then plied them with pints of Ludlow Gold (the most local of ales) as he explained how the relationship between the Saxon Hengist and Horsa (cunning because they were ‘foreign’) and the British King Vortigern hinged on the ale-swilling characteristics of his people. I didn’t know that. But in the end, the beer judged the best was the best, with temporal and geographic relevance, Darwin’s Origin, by the Salopian Brewery – a real joy of a bitter, and on offer at the Unicorn.

Another arena – the whole town, in fact – was occupied by the Ludlow Sausage Trail. No doubt the hard-wired moaners objected to the whole town reeking of Sausage, which the five or six competing sausage makers offered from pitches dotted about the town. The local and visiting punters formed long queues at each, democratically selecting the tastiest sausage and providing a sound endorsement for the winner to shout about for the year to come. I don’t participate as a voter, for I am a firm and faithful fan of the Francis sausage, and don’t want to be confused by too much choice.

As an inhabitant of the town, I was only too happy to see it overun with sausage-munchers from evry corner of the land, and I look forward to seeing them all again next year, and to hell with moaners.

To start with it turned out to be a truly enjoyable nostalgia trawl through ‘60s television satire, of which David Frost was the principle pioneer. Showing some evocative clips from That Was The Week That Was, and the Frost Report, he was obviously relishing his role in bringing so much great and subsequently famous talent to the screen for the first time – like Roy Kinnear, Willie Rushton, John Cleese, Ronnies Corbett and Barker.

Frost is also a natural stand up comedian, and he was clearly enjoying himself; he must love it – why else would he trail out to Ludlow the night before he was due on an early plane next day to the US to host a conference for the Al Jazeera TV network? He was an unstoppable, bubbling geyser of witty, close-up observations of some of the extraordinary people he’s interviewed, all delivered with a knowing smile that draws his audience right in.

In the second half of the show, he took questions and gave great value, sometimes a good five minutes’ worth of answer. He was asked, intriguingly, who he most liked being interviewed by.

One of the best, he said, was Peter Florence, director of the Hay Festival, who talked to him there this year, and asked him questions he hadn’t been asked before. Peter Florence has developed significantly as an interviewer over the years he’s been running Hay Festival. He has developed both in gravitas and in introducing insightful new perspectives on his subjects. I was especially impressed this year with his Stephen Fry interview, which was well-balanced, witty and gently probing, in a way that Fry could not but relax and answer with engaging candour.  I predict that, if he wants to, Peter Florence will go on to become a major television interviewer, and Frost’s commendation won’t get in the way of that.

So far, then, Ludlow Festival has thrown up some gems, despite the disparate nature of its programme. And tomorrow night I am putting on a small fringe event of my own, when, with guitarist Simon King and pianist Liam Dunachie, I will be performing music from the Great American Songbook at the Globe Bar in Ludlow, in aid of Miracles, Bosnia Herzegovina, a charity concerned with child victims of the Bosnian Conflict.

Anyone in South Shropshire who isn’t going to see Jo Brand (with whom I inconveniently clash) assures me they will be there. Better get there early if you want a good table.

In the cold rain, it is a species of purgatory.

Alongside the play, other shows, concerts and talks have been put on in an attempt to develop the fortnight into a full-blown arts festival, although somehow this has never really evolved into the recognisably cohesive, focused occasion it could be. Nevertheless, some of the individual events are imaginatively conceived, as was a concert performed by English Ayres on Sunday night in the magnificent, west-facing dining-room of Oakly Park House, three miles north of Ludlow. The Georgian mansion, home of Lord and Lady Windsor, was reordered extensively in the 1820s for Lord Windsor’s ancestor, the Hon Robert Clive by C R Cockerell and is one of his and Shropshire’s finest. Before the concert we stood on the lawn in front of the house, looking  across paddocks and parkland liberally strewn with the venerable oaks that gave the park its name, while we drank a few glasses of champagne.

English Ayres is a trio consisting of Jeni Melia (soprano & violin) Lindsay Braga (violin) and Chris Goodwin (baritone, lute and theorbo). To enhance my appreciation of the event, I went to see and hear them with old friend and lutenist, Damian Russell. We were not disappointed.

Leader Chris Goodwin had made an effort to create a concert that reflected our presence in Marcher country and spanned a wide range of music for such an ensemble. It opened with some hauntingly beautiful settings of medieval songs for violin and soprano by Gustav Holst. The first excitement was hearing Jeni Melia’s unusual and truly breathtaking singing. Untainted by the operatic schools that still encourage a heavy dressing of vibrato, her voice is one of great purity and tonal accuracy, which in some senses put one in mind of a traditional Cathedral boy’s voice.

The Holst was followed by a series of Vaughan Williams’ arrangements of folk songs and Along the Fields, a cycle of poems with a local flavour by A E Houseman.

After a short champagne break, the concert regressed to a musical tour of the 17^th Century Welsh Marches with music by Frances Pilkington, Lord Herbert of Chirbury and other local composers of the early c17th, delivered by Chris Goodwin on lute and theorbo (a kind of double-bass lute), some in his mellifluous baritone voice. This led on to an abridged version of Milton’s early masque, Comus, which had its first performance in Ludlow Castle in 1634. The music for it and the commission for Milton to write the (frankly, pretty lightweight) fantasy came from Henry Lawes, music teacher to the Earl of Bridgewater’s family. The Masque was put on to mark the earl’s inauguration at the castle as Lord Lieutenant to the Marcher counties. It was based on the real story of his daughter, Lady Alice Egerton (Bridgewater’s daughter) and her two brothers getting lost in Haywood Forest while coming back from Herefordshire one summer’s night.

The acoustics in Cockerell’s dining-room were excellent and it was easy to drift back in time to the gentle strains of the lute and the beefier throb of the theorbo while Jeni Melia’s sweet voice with its rare, haunting quality did not flag in a most unusual and beautifully conceived entertainment.

Walcot is now owned by Robin Parish, whose family bought it fifty years ago.  Six years ago Robin took the risk of inviting a touring company, Opera à la Carte to stage a production of a classic Opera in the ballroom. The audience were encouraged to dress up and bring elegant picnics, in the manner made popular by the Glyndebourne operati, to lay out in the handsome grounds between the hall and the lake. As productions of opera of any kind are thin on the ground in Shropshire, the initiative was enthusiastically endorsed by local lovers of the genre, and the event has become an annual must-do. There is also an option to dine inside the house, and this year I was kindly invited by Ivor and Caroline Windsor to join them in the front row and for dinner.

The production on offer was Cosi Fan Tutte, a work baffling in the disparity between its piffling plot and sublime music.  What was it, I wonder, that prompted Mozart to devote such creative genius to a story that wouldn’t make it past first base in the Mills and Boon editorial office?

Set by Opera à la Carte in the days of the Raj during the early 1920’s, Mozart’s mischievous lampoon of gender stereotyping tells of two sisters,  Fiordiligi and Dorabella whose partners test their fidelity. Encouraged by incorrigible bachelor, Don Alfonso (sung by a slightly unconvincing Thomas Barnard), the sisters’ suitors Ferrando and Guglielmo lay his wager that the girls would fall in love with any man who turned up. The men tell their girlfriends that they’ve been called to military service, but come back disguised as young, heavily moustachioed Indian nabobs to test this theory on each other’s partner.

Fortunately, the frustrations of this fatuous plot become irrelevant.  In fact, one is almost glad not to know quite what the performers are saying, for the quality of the singing did ample justice to Mozart’s wonderful score.  That producer/director Nicholas Heath was able to sign up six such superb singers is testament to the extraordinary standard of operatic talent in this country. Peter Wilman (tenor) as Ferrando, and Canadian soprano, Lynn Boudreau as Despina I especially enjoyed.

The work was simply and imaginatively staged and performed in a way that held the attention and evoked the appreciation of a full but intimate house. Certainly I enjoyed the evening, dinner, and drinks afterwards with the chance to meet the cast and producer, as much as any at the Royal Opera House.

And with him was his fiancée, Rupert Murdoch’s favourite larrikin, editor of our biggest selling national newspaper and my Wapping pin-up, Rebekah Wade. I can tell you truthfully that Ludlow is seldom visited by journalistas of such distinction. Resisting the urge to pester Ms Wade, and, frankly, not expecting a positive reaction to her appearance in my last book and on this blog, I nevertheless felt I should do what I could to welcome the newly fledged race-track novelist to the fold of race-track novelists to which I belong, and bought a copy of Charlie’s book, Citizen, from the affable author.

Launched last week with a stellar guest list including Messrs Cameron and ChoirBoy Osborne as well as editors of the rest of Rupert’s stable, it was well-reviewed in the Sunday Times yesterday. The Guardian – you may think a little churlishly – implied that, as the TestaRossa has been rumoured to be going on to a more general command of Murdoch UK, that a review – and a favourable one – in another News Corp sheet was inevitable.

I haven’t read it yet but will pass on the benefit of my own review in the near future.

There will be an election on June 4th of a new council of 74 councillors, drawn from 63 divisions. One of the most significant, and potentially contentious powers that will pass from the old District Councils to the new Shropshire Council will the granting of planning permissions.

It is an inescapable truth that in rural England the difference in value between a plot of land with permission to develop and one with no permission is enormous – not uncommonly a multiplier of 50.

[Put simply, and in very general terms, a 1 acre field on the edge of a village is worth as agricultural land in the current market between £3,000 and £6,000. (As amenity land for a particular adjoining domestic property, subject to some planning constraints, it could fetch up to £20,000.) With permission to erect, say, 10 detached houses it would be worth between £200,000 – 300,000].

For an asset to be re-valued fifty-fold at the stroke of a planning committee chairman’s pen would represent a spectacular windfall to most land owners. The temptation, therefore, for an owner to make use of any influences that may bear on the planning authority’s decision to grant permission, is very powerful.

Many elected members of local authorities are members of their local Masonic Lodge.

Some of these Freemasons become members of the planning committee that controls this considerable power to enrich planning applicants.

Sometimes the applicants are members of the same or other nearby Masonic Lodges.

Sometimes applicants have relations or friends who are members of the same or nearby lodges.

As a result, it is inevitably a perception widely held that there is considerable scope for members of the fraternity of Freemasons to use their position to favour their fellow lodge members and their connections.

Although there is a great deal of anecdotal evidence of this kind of corrupt decision-making, as far as I am aware (and please correct me if I’m wrong) specific examples of it have not come to light in Shropshire, nor has any evidence that individuals have profited from such corrupt processes.

HOWEVER, as long as the possibility – and thus the suspicion – that this kind of corruption exists (and many believe it to be endemic in local authority planning committees throughout England, and especially the shire counties), it is extremely important to the democratic processes and open government that members of Masonic Lodges declare their membership with their applications for candidacy and their electioneering literature.

It would be a fine gesture if the new Shropshire Council were to show a lead in opening up this unwholesome topic, which, so far, has been avoided by every other electoral body in this country. Candidates should not be allowed to hide their membership of a secret society which wields such widespread influence in local government.

If this were successful, they may be some hope that the same could be done with the judiciary and the police.

But we do see films there, too, a rich eclectic mix – Classic, World, dense soporific Francais, and, like last week, ‘local interest’.

I knew not much about Faintheart before I saw it, beyond that a lot of it was filmed in and around Ludlow; I knew it was a rom-com made on a modest budget, partially cast and (aagh!) collaboratively written on My Space – enough, you might think, to keep the discerning moviegoer at home. But I’ve always lacked judgement in these things, and this time, I was glad. I handed over my 4 quid to see a warm, funny film that could end up being a big hit, at least in Britain.

Richard (Eddie Marsan) is a man who seeks significance in his life by intense role-playing in his leisure time. His best nerdy friend Julian (in a great performance by Ewen Bremner) is an avid Trekkie and a weekend Klingon, while Richard, when he’s not working in a DIY store, is a warring Viking obsessed with recreating battles from the Dark Ages.

The script, even if an online collaboration (which I suspect it wasn’t much) is ring-mastered so well by writer David Lemon, it’s as tight as any Richard Curtis, and tighter than some. Before this picture, director Vito Rocco has so far made only two short movies (both to some acclaim) but he handles this script, its fair share of truly funny one-liners and visual gags, with a sure touch.

Against the so far underused backdrop of battle re-enactment (which is a few notches above Morris dancing on the nerdy scale) it dwells sympathetically on the use of role-play as an exit from a mundane day job; even, in an unexpected way, on how the values of the alter-ego can enhance aspirations in real life.

When Richard gets a call on his mobile (to the disgust of his fellow Vikings advancing on the Norman enemy in the Mortimer Forest above Ludlow), he rushes off, late for his father-in-law’s funeral, and arrives still in his chain mail and horned helmet.  His wife, Cath (Jessica Hynes lovely in this straightish role) chucks him out, and after a period of rejection of his warrior life, he returns to it, determined, in the manner of the parfit knight to win back his ‘fair maiden’, and the esteem of his embarrassed and bullied son (in another of several outstanding performance).

Such an unsophisticated idea could easily have slithered into a kind of dismal mish-mash of ‘Carry On’ farce and TV sitcom cliché.  But it doesn’t; the long haul back into Cath’s affections takes unexpected, heart-warming turns, and produces a movie that could become a minor classic.

On release: 27th January 2009.