Local resident Bill Giles has responded to our article on access to the private garden in Drummond Place (Issue 215, ‘Grass to stay greener’). We reproduce his words in full below.
‘My piece in the Drummond Civic Association’s newsletter was intended simply to inform local residents of the new policy adopted by the proprietors of the garden (not the DCA). The proprietors are people whose houses or flats are listed in a Charter of 1823 which conveyed ownership of the garden. In effect, if you own any of those houses or flats you are also a joint owner of the garden and are obliged to pay a share of the cost of its upkeep. As the Charter requires that non-payers be prosecuted, the word "inescapable" seems to me to be accurate, so why the scepticism?
‘The proprietors are happy to share the garden with their immediate neighbours whose homes were not specified in the Charter, but there has to be a limit on numbers if the garden is to retain its character and remain manageable by unpaid voluntary effort. That point ought to be obvious to anyone who gives the matter even cursory thought.
‘The reference to Groucho Marx’s quip was not clever. It seems a reasonable assumption that people who would be glad to pay £125 each year for access to the garden as it now is would prefer to save their money if it became a dogs’ lavatory for the whole neighbourhood, not to mention the inevitable increase in litter, vandalism and all the other downsides of too many people using a relatively small space for too many conflicting purposes.’
Spurtle – which had indeed given the matter more than cursory thought but did not arrive at all the same conclusions – replied that we always try to be sceptical about everything. We remain so in this case.
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@theSpurtle I can understand it not being open to the public, wouldn’t want it to become another Hopetoun Crescent.
@theSpurtle of course, vandalism is inevitable in such bandit country as Broughton #MeanStreets