Kingsford Development Ltd’s application to redevelop the former newsagent at 76 Dublin Street was partially refused recently due to the plan’s large expanse of glass in the entrance platt (Breaking news, 28.1.14).
Planning said it would ‘cause visual harm to this [Category A] listed building and ... impact on the character and appearance of the conservation area’.
A new application using a smaller area of glass and traditional shopfront basement door has now been submitted (Ref. 14/00933/LBC).
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Like someone who can’t resist adding just one more tattoo, everyone’s favourite retailer now wants to erect a further 10 non-iluminated pole, post or wall-mounted advisories directing drivers to its new ‘click and collect’ service in the car park (Ref. 14/00853/ADV).
We suspect that with these latest additions, customers will enjoy not only even more convenience but every possibility of a migraine.
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BP Oil (UK) Ltd seeks permission to redevelop its petrol filling station at 23 Canonmills by adding a 45 sq.m extension to the back-end of the shop and realigning kerbs to discourage cars from bumping into it (Ref. 14/00969/FUL).
A surprisingly in-depth and interesting environmental site assessment accompanies the application. It notes that superficial geology within the area of the site was indicated to be ‘Raised Beach Deposits of late glacial age. The geological mapping indicated that bedrock beneath the site comprises a vertical quartz dolerite dyke intrusion surrounded by Carboniferous Lower Oil Shale Group (Calciferous Sandstones)’. Just as we had always suspected.
The inscription below marks the Baxter's Land which once stood nearby. It is a 17th-century survivor of the area’s long grain-milling tradition.
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Planning raised no objection, but had rather wonderfully rephrased the application as ‘Permissions required for qorks to a cherry tree’.
We like odd words here at the Spurtle, and qorks struck us an absolute corker. We therefore spent much of this Friday morning fruitlessly trawling through specialist online and onshelf dictionaries in search of definition and derivation.
Early this afternoon, a young person with a smug grin and no etymological finer feelings whatsoever pointed out that someone at the Council had mistyped the q for a w.