Crookbarrow Farm “Regeneration” and Battenhall to Norton “Green Corridor” Proposals

This paper summarises 2 possible “rural-urban fringe” projects, to the south east of the city of Worcester, and adjoining areas of Wychavon district. These projects are :

• “Regeneration” of Crookbarrow Farm, Whittington
  
• Creation of a Battenhall to Norton “Green Corridor”*
  * The “Corridor” is focussed on the area between the A44 (to the north) and the railway line (to the south). The M5 roughly bisects this.
  

1. “Regeneration” of Crookbarrow Farm
Crookbarrow Farm is home to the “Whittington Tump” or “Crookbarrow”. According to Jabez Allies “Antiquities and Folklore of Worcestershire” (2nd edition 1852): “Cruckbarrow Hill is rather larger than Silbury Hill in Wiltshire. Silbury Hill is said to be perfectly artificial, but Cruckbarrow only partially so”. Noakes Guide to Worcestershire (1868) also notes that Crookbarrow Hill is “one of the largest tumuli (supposed) in England". Before World War II, and prior to the construction of the M5 motorway (Junction 7 is a few hundred metres from the Crookbarrow), the Tump (or mound) was an important focus for the local community. A history of Whittington by Michael Craze, published in 1977 to celebrate the Queen’s Silver Jubilee (which involved a night time gathering with torches at Crookbarrow Farm) mentions that “the older recalled similar crowds on Good Friday…when the Worcester custom was to walk out and picnic on the top” as well as “…the Whit Monday Fair on Whittington Tump”. However, in recent years both Tump and Farm have suffered the “degeneration” typical of rural-fringe areas, with the added problem of noise/pollution and severance caused by road construction/traffic.

2. Battenhall to Norton “Green Corridor”
Current proposals to build a bus park and ride facility in Battenhall, and a rail park-way in Norton (ie at either end of the “Green Corridor”), and associated plans to increase the capacity of the local road network, would compound existing pressures on Crookbarrow Hill and Farm, and adjoining areas which also have important archaeological and historic environment value. Indeed, the “sub-text” of transport proposals would seem to suggest plans to expand the City of Worcester into these areas, as happened with Warndon Villages (also a place of high landscape value, although much of this is now subsumed under residential and – rather poorly designed - commercial developments). It is proposed here that the relevant authorities re-consider their transport proposals (the objectives and status eg funding of these is anyway unclear), and consider instead sustainable “regeneration” (as broadly defined, for instance, by English Heritage) of the Battenhall to Norton Green Corridor. This would involve investment in measures to improve conservation of the historic landscape, including its ongoing management, and to enhance public access, in ways compatible with such conservation aims.

version 1 1.9.2006