AN ELVASTON MYSTERY
By Badger

In all the trouble and strife created by the situation regarding Elvaston Castle and Country Park, there is one paradox that is never far away from one's thoughts on the situation. Here we have a beautiful country estate, a haven of peace and tranquility, an oasis in an ever encroaching desert. Just across the road and slightly south west of the park is what at first sight looks to the untrained eye like another area of farmland, once mixed pasture and arable, just missing it's grazing cattle, or it's growing crops.

This is, of course, merely an optical illusion, a mere moment, frozen in time. It is, in fact, about to become an extension of Alvaston and Chellaston. Alvastchell perhaps? You see, you must retrain your eyes to look at things in the same way that developers and sellers of real estate do, or dithering councillors, who can't quite make up their minds which way to jump, or when, in case they get their timing wrong and lose their jobs!

Here, for instance, in what appears to be open countryside, is, in reality, the space for an estate of over 2000 houses, which someone wants to build. This is what my spies have told me, and, believe me, they are everywhere! Naturally, all the boxes that are crammed into every available space will have names that evoke memories of what once stood in their place. Hawthorn Crescent, Goldfinch Mews and the like.

On another border to the estate, (Raynesway), the council is planning to build 'Pride Park Two', or similar. Naturally, we can hardly wait for even more traffic jams, fumes, and pollution. Still, think of the job creation. Perhaps we can have another stadium with insufficient parking, so that everywhere else, perhaps even the nice new houses in Goldfinch Mews can be littered with other peoples cars for hours at a time at weekends!

What a comforting thought for those people like John Prescott and his developer friends! Not quite what one might expect from a supposedly Socialist Deputy Prime Minister, but there you are! That's the great thing about Socialism - one minute you can be a steward on a ferry, the next, bingo, you can be the Deputy Prime Minister. The Deputy Prime Minister of a people's party that ensures that the only places that they have to live are suburban boxes, surrounded by, well, even more suburban boxes.

However, I digress! Forget about the things on the nasty side of Elvaston, slip around to the fields on the opposite side of the lane to the main entrance - surely you'll escape things there, won't you? Yes, unless the gravel extraction plans are given the go ahead. You know what these cash-strapped councils are like, need some money? Oh! Thank goodness! Here's a developer, here's some more public property, phew, a close thing that time! Nearly ran out of cash!

Which brings us round to the real paradox of the Elvaston fiasco. Why would Mr. Brian Ashby, an apparently likeable and intelligent businessman, with a successful multi-million pound international company, Norseman Holdings, who lives in a very large house at Turnditch, want to buy the lease on the one last jewel of a park left in this area. A park which people enjoy when they visit from anywhere in the world, come home from anywhere in the world, or where families visit on holidays and high days, some of whom can't afford to go elsewhere, but who love to spend some time at Elvaston.

The place still holds the magic for everyone. People still wonder how the aristocracy lived, how the estate workers lived and went about their daily lives, what the gardens created by William Barron were like, who has come and gone in it's great history? More than this, it gives them a chance to laugh and play and to move and breathe away from the confines of their houses, flats and living areas, some of them possibly very cramped. Further more, their money has already bought and paid for it.

Mr. Ashby is a family man, his children are all grown up now but he must remember what it was like to enjoy their wonderment, to run and laugh and play with them, to watch them grow and develop, in places that were harmonious to their development ? Why then, does he want to buy one of the only places left in this area where families can still do this? Why does he want to take away the opportunity for peaceful recreation, in what is still at present a semi-rural location, from so many people? From the disabled children, who used to enjoy the horse riding?

From the parties of schoolchildren, who used to come on educational visits to the working farm? From the people who used to visit the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust's offices there, wondering what they had seen, heard, or found? From all the people who enjoy it still, even though it has been neglected to such a terrible degree, by County Council Officers who just couldn't care less about us 'po folks in the south?' Surely, he isn't that much of a mean spirited man? What price yet another golf course? What price yet another hotel? Or is just a case of 'I own this country, I own that country over there?' to quote from Politician, by Cream. Or is it that being so successful means that you don't care about anybody other than yourself?