IGNORANCE AND CONTEMPT SHOWN BY DERBYSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL
By Rifleman

We aren’t trying to swamp the viewers to our galleries with images this bad to gain the Turner Prize. This is to emphasise the extent of the pointless, hopeless state of dereliction that the Derbyshire County Council has rendered Elvaston Castle and Country Park into. Not only them but Derby City Council too.

We are running out of adjectives capable of describing the gravity of what has been done here. Nothing short of cultural vandalism on an industrial scale. What you witness in this gallery (and the other galleries!) is nothing short of a graveyard in an immeasurable sea of contempt and ignorance which has been brought upon us by politicians who care nothing about the people or their heritage, only that which can be stolen from them.

Make no mistake, this is the theft of our heritage. All of this equipment was in good, clean, working order when it was bought or donated. The items that were bought were done so with taxpayer’s money. The County Council’s shallow and fatuous excuses, that they are short of the money required to restore Elvaston Castle and Country Park, and that it costs them (us!) £500,000 a year to run, beggars belief. These civil servants have the hide of rhino’s and a high degree of brass-faced cheek if they think that they can get away with such untruths.

Look at the state of disrepair that Elvaston Castle has been allowed to get into. Trees that grow out of the roof turrets and are only removed once every five years, leaking roof, flaking outbuildings. Complete and expensive restoration of a water wheel that ran for a short while and then packed up, only to be allowed to rust away! Look at the state of the equipment in these photographs.

Take the kitchen gardens. The walls are falling down. In the rear kitchen garden, the majority of one wall collapsed in heavy winds four or five years ago. It has been draped with polythene and tape ever since. Grade 2 Listed walls!

Take the Moorish Temple. Rusting, unpainted ironwork on the balcony, carved facia boards falling from the eaves, a crack in the keystone above the (Grade 2 Listed) door.

Take the (Grade 2 Listed) Working Farm Museum buildings. The roof has collapsed in one place. The rest probably isn’t far off.

Take the (Grade 2 Listed) stables. Ivy has smothered the building and is lifting the roof tiles off. It will not be long before the damp starts to show it’s progress through the walls.

How then, and here we are talking about the tip of the ice-berg, can the Derbyshire County Council claim that it costs them (us!) a half a million pounds a year to run the place? And how can an organisation which allows everything that has been bought with our money and allowed to fall into total and utter ruin, use that as the excuse for a stick to beat us with?

Now, the Derbyshire County Council wishes to wash it’s hands of the estate once and for all. Although they claim that they are only attempting to sell the lease (99 years), Norseman Holdings are set to MANAGE THE ESTATE through their front company Highgate Sanctuary. The Estate Manager is said to speak of ‘the new owners,’ when referring to Highgate Sanctuary and it’s representatives.

Do not be tempted, as some poor and gullible people have already done, to lie down and think that YOU, the people, have lost the battle. Do not think that the Castle and Park which is yours, mine, ours, bought and paid for out of the taxes is already gone! This is what the developers, the County Council and City Council quislings would like us to believe. If you let them steal 325 acres (as well as everything else that has been stolen!), of prime Country Park, then you deserve to lose it.

Before, however, you give it up, take one last look at the artefacts in these galleries. They once helped to provide food, work and a sense of belonging to the people who owned or worked with them. They should have been cherished and looked after, and used to show generations of children how people lived and worked in the past. Once it is sold to developers it can only continue to decline.

The gardens will only be restored for the use of the hotel and access to the park will be so limited as to be like a walk to the green on the corner. Don’t let the politicians and the soulless developers who creep around when you aren’t looking and have gone home or are at work, STEAL it from you!

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