Last Saturday saw the Campaign To Protect Rural England’s Annual General Meeting.
It was well attended and we are very pleased to receive this report from Dennis Russell, Chairman of the Isle of Wight arm of the organisation. Thanks Dennis.
Report on CPRE-IW AGM at Ventnor Botanic Garden 19th May 2007
The IW Branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) held its Annual General Meeting in the Echium Room of the Ventnor Botanic Garden on Saturday morning 19 May 2007. There were some 50 members and guests, including Island MP Andrew Turner, Cllr Susan Scoccia, CPRE South East Regional Group Chairman Christine Drury (from Kent), and guest speaker Surgeon Peter Grimaldi and his wife Davinia. The main routine business comprised elections and our own reports (Chairman, Finance, Planning, Transport, Lighting) before yielding the floor to our guests and presentations.
Christine Drury explained the intricacies of the South East Plan, the contributions of CPRE-SE to the Examinations in Public which have just concluded, and how this might affect the Island Plan and the IW status as a Special Policy Area.
CPRE-IW has initiated this year the first of its Good Lighting Awards, with valuable help from the Vectis Astronomical Society. The award is named in honour of one of our late Trustees, Julia Plant, untimely taken from us. The award also follows on the Dark Skies campaign initiated about 3 years ago by national CPRE and the British Astronomical Association, and is an attempt on the part of the local branch to draw attention to one of the environmental attributes of the Island which is often overlooked, namely the beauty of its night skies. Certificates were presented by Peter Grimaldi to:
* Newchurch Parish & Community Sports Association for its low-level full cut-off lighting in the car park next to the IW Observatory.
* Thompson’s Garden Centre, also for its environmentally-friendly car park lighting.
* Rew Valley Sports Centre, attached to Ventnor Middle School, a successful example of one of the IW Council’s installations on the playing area, which, despite a nearby road and residences, gives excellent localised illumination without spillage.
* Ventnor Tennis Club, at a prominent town junction of St Boniface Road, Mitchell Avenue and Spring Hill, for the very fine, even, full cut-off floodlighting of its playing courts area, which is a model of the kind of lighting which complies fully with planning policies on lighting by illuminating exactly the area required without upwards or sideways spillage.
The Ventnor Tennis Club was also judged to be the overall winner and was also awarded a piece of engraved glassware (for permanent retention) made by Isle of Wight Glass at St Lawrence. The Tennis Club Secretary Jonathan Greenway accepted the award.
Following the presentation, our guest Peter Grimaldi, who was 2006-2007 High Sheriff of the Isle of Wight, gave an entertaining and informative illustrated talk entitled From Ventnor to Bembridge in three Generations: Gardening and Medicine on the Isle of Wight. He was wearing a button hole of the rose “Grimaldi” and passed round a jersey made of the wool from one of his own sheep, which he said had never been washed (the jersey, not the sheep). He pointed out that his grandfather had had his consulting room at the Royal National Hospital for Diseases of the Chest on just about the spot where we were meeting.
He described (with ‘archive footage’) the gardens of the family home at Cedar Lodge and also at Appley Towers (one of his schoolboy haunts), and exhibited some of the specimens of foreign objects that he and his father Philip had removed from patients, as well as producing a fearsome-looking tool which he said could be used for emergency tracheotomies.
The Botanic Garden catering staff provided an excellent buffet lunch, and demand for the Botanic Garden conference facilities is such that we have already had to pencil in a reservation for our 2008 AGM.
Dennis Russell, Chairman, CPRE Isle of Wight.
