Monday, May 02, 2005

See the Mill Pond ducklings!

The Mill Pond is well worth a visit at the moment with 11 ducklings and a Moor Hen sitting on a cluth of 5 eggs.

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Posted by nick storer to swanage view at 5/2/2005 09:33:17 AM
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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The ducklings and the moorhen are wonderful but the millpond is not what it used to be. The stone wall round it is very overgrown and almost hidden by vegetation. When you look at old photos of it a large part of what made it attractive was the clean simplicity of line of the stonework. The cottages were inhabited by ordinary local people, the ducks were the common white variety, their eggs and themselves destined for the table. You were looking at a slice of village life. Now you are looking at a slice of the holiday cottage industry. Its very sad.

I am having to publish as anon because the server seems to have forgotten me!

Keith Roker

5/5/05 10:11 am
nick storer said...

I've noticed the lacal farmer has stopped watering his heard there too...

6/5/05 6:17 pm
nick storer said...

sorry herd

7/5/05 4:29 pm
Keith Roker said...

Nick is missing the point. I was not not waxing lyrical for the good old days but trying to look at why the millpond is a lot less attractive now than it was a few decades ago. I looked at old photos and paintings of it and compared them with how it is now. You have to ask yourself how it connected to peoples feelings then and how does it connects now, if it does.

Regrettably we now have what amounts to a tradition of visual illiteracy in Swanage. More or less anything goes when it comes to new buildings as long as there is some purbeck stone in it. If its a decent old building the owners seem to feel obliged to improve it with plastic window frames, fake shutters, aaosted shrubs and any other bits and bobs thay find in the DIY sheds.

Keith Roker

7/5/05 4:51 pm
nick storer said...

So where was the Concervation Officer when all these plastic windows etc were being installed? I agree this should have been kept as a very special place, but even the new parish church hall has a mock stone roof, so why should anyone else bother?

8/5/05 1:01 pm

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