Inching along at the Morland site
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For £1 the county council has acquired the St Bride’s mound, near the Brue, from the Southwest Regional Development Agency, for public access to it. Nothing remains above ground of either the chapel or priest’s house, which were excavated by John Morland in 1889 and again by Philip Rahtz in the 1960s.
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The RDA planted more trees alongside Street Road at the site of old cycle sheds.
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Urban Splash is conducting a feasibility study — six months? — into reusing the redbrick buildings, whose demolition was blocked by protesters in January.
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Mendip Housing signed a deal with the RDA on February 19 to refurbish the 12 empty cottages in Beckery Road, built in the 1930s to house Morland workers.
The proposed Tesco-on-stilts at Wirral Park, as it would appear from Street Road. The architect (Saunders Partnership, Bristol) shows aluminium glaze and larch timber for the outside walls and windcatchers and skylights on the roof. The site already has planning permission for 2,000 sq metres of food sales. This plan totals 5,000m², which includes non-food sales, a cafe and warehousing. Compare the present Morrison store, about 1,700m².
Avalon Plastics would be the first new building on the Morland site. The sketch shows a 5,000-square-metre factory — a big plant — at the site’s main entrance. (The brightest traffic signals in Somerset, on their 15 bendy poles, are not shown.) Behind it, left, is the proposed Tesco where the present plastics factory stands. Cyril Driver moved Imco (= injection moulding co) to Somerset from London during the war; it became Avalon Plastics in 2003.