Life along Mill Lane is a life of two halves, offering possibly the best as well as the worst of life in Taplow. To envy, we have the River Thames as our back garden, but not so pleasant are the 40-ton lorries careering by our doors day and night. I expect that neither is much understood by other Taplow residents, who probably have no idea of how different our experience of living in Taplow is from theirs.
We believe that there is an opportunity to change all that, if a consensus can be found to do so.
The recent sale of Taplow Paper Mill’s 45 acres has given us a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity to revive Taplow’s riparian heart and to restore her loveliest amenity, her river frontage. There is still hope – together we can arrest the spread of dereliction and inappropriate development. I believe that we have a small but magnificent window of opportunity to throw open the amenities of Mill Lane and its river to everyone in Taplow, besting the forces that have created squalor and dereliction, and restoring the riverside to a vital, dynamic, thriving, delightful, lively area.
This is not mere fantasy. In living memory, Taplow (along with Maidenhead) has seen its riverbanks overtaken by Henley and Marlow as the 'playground of the leisured classes' (and everyone else out for a good day on the river). The lawns on the river at Skindles, where gloved waiters served tea from silver pots, are derelict, and the punts hired out at Bond's boatyard are no longer. And yet, even as late as the 1960s, Sunday drivers clogged Castle Hill, not Remenham Hill.
Henley and Marlow might well have lost their river amenities too, but for the foresight of the few. Surely both towns are living proof that focusing on the river brings benefits in quality of life, jobs, sport and leisure, which are immeasurable and beyond dispute.
We could ask how Taplow came to lose what it had, and it would be easy to point a finger this way or that, such as at the gas works which blighted the riverbank during much of the 19th and early 20th centuries. However, it’s important to realise that Taplow has always
been a vital, hard-working stop on the Queen’s Highway – and that for millennia the River Thames was the only real highway for transporting goods and people. Add to that the importance of the Thames as a source of food and energy, and your mind’s eye will begin to see what a bustling place, chock full of men and animals and fisheries and mills Taplow was, with Boulters the most important – and expensive – (and maybe the first) lock on the Thames. There isn’t room in a short article to do more than mention a few of the key elements that shape our present, and my point here isn’t so much historical as to sharpen our vision of what we want to see once again – and might be able to achieve if we can come to some sort of working agreement and move together to make our wishes known in time to influence the future.
To tell you a little more about the lifestyle and the Lane, Mill Lane as it is now has a not-so-nice side, which all too often is said to have the benediction of history - although no one ever bothers to explain how a few donkey carts sauntering to and from the Mill 50 years ago can in any way excuse away today’s unrestricted numbers of HGVs allowed to thunder by at unchecked speeds. The donkey carts made the Lane a pleasant place. The endless dust and noise and broken gas mains caused by the HGVs cannot be said to do the same. (This piece is penned at 2:55 on a Saturday dawn, thanks to the growling of a passing lorry.) The residents of Mill Lane have a great story to tell about our years of involvement in the planning process in this connection, but the point I am trying to make here is that no Lane is an island, and resolving this problem will enhance the quality of life for all of Taplow.
Shortly after taking it over, the new owners of the Mill site let it be known that they intended to set up a website in order to allow the community to express its views on what should happen to the site. As that was last August, and as nothing has been heard since, it seems appropriate for us to seize the initiative and begin putting our ideas forward. So here goes.
I would like to suggest that that Riverside section of the old Paper Mill site could become a wonderful, exciting, vibrant location for cafes, river walks, small shops, possibly a small hotel or two, a restaurant, a club headquarters, a park, a wildlife appreciation area, and a revamped water mill where the old one was until the 1970s and which might electrify at least part of the site. Of course, market realities would have to be taken into account, but perhaps a small area could be designated for punt hire and other river activities. A near-natural swimming area might be achievable in connection with a spa facility which might look financially attractive to City managers. Mill Lane could be widened to the East, allowing for a people-friendly promenade connecting the Jubilee
Path safely to Maidenhead Bridge. This could be connected to the north by a romantic foot bridge between Taplow and Boulter’s lock.
Those are admittedly sketchy ideas – but perhaps better minds than mine could be put together to come up with a convincing plan. And surely some of the best minds around have retired to (or live in) Taplow. Let’s start talking among ourselves – and then raising our voices in concert to make sure that we are heard by the men in grey suits at the Council.
Which leads me back to the subject of the miserabilis that is living along Mill Lane. We have to put up with continuing heavy industry on a site described as merely 'ancillary' to the now-defunct Mill, which has been REFUSED the requested retrospective planning consent
– and yet which continues to operate without let or hindrance. Yes, it is currently operating without any planning approval, and therefore, without any restriction at all.
There is no justifiable reason for allowing this 'waste transfer station' to operate from what is a manifestly unsuitable site. This is, after all, an area of special interest (the River Thames setting) accessed along a substandard road, which is just 18’ wide in front
of many of our properties. The surface and subsurface of the roadway cannot cope, as proved by the near-constant reparation by British Gas engineers of crushed gas mains.
There is no particular reason the site recommends itself as a 'waste transfer facility' – other than the ease with which it has been possible to push the planners into allowing it to continue. (The original Mill was located on the river because a mill intrinsically needs water to function). Other, more appropriate, sites up and down the motorway have been brought to the attention of the owners.
There is, however, a dazzling prospect, which it can be speculated explains the 'peppercorn rent' the new owners offered the previous operators on the site for the next year. This is because by that time they will have succeeded in bagging something called a 'certificate
of lawful use', which will come into effect if they can continue to operate until August 2008. A certificate of lawful use can be described as a developer’s ultimate weapon for cutting through the quaint restrictions of the planning process.
In press releases issued by the new owners of the Mill site, they describe themselves as being 'able to cut through the complexities of the planning process'. If the usual niceties of the planning process are no longer in force, then what? Some blind-eyed, computer-generated housing scheme privatising these reaches of the Thames fprever, or even, possibly, something worse – who knows what could be extracted from the planners, given
the cudgel of a certificate of lawful use: a supermarket? a 20-storey apartment block? Who can say?
It can be speculated that the interest on £30-plus million pounds, the purchase price of the site, comes in at something like £3000 to £4000 a day, and this must surely colour the view of the purchasers, no matter how wealthy they may be. I merely point this out in order to suggest that it might be worth thinking fast, if we want to make ourselves heard.
An informal 'mutual interest group' has already been formed ad hoc and is a first step toward an exchange of ideas in view to seeing if we cannot not make our voice heard by the local planners and the developers. This group is made up of river users and concerned groups from both sides of the river. We would welcome your input. Please write us
care of the HTPS newsletter.
Heather Fenn
