Council’s fragile grasp on stonework ethics shaken to its foundations
In a move threatening to tear the very fabric of Bamford’s delicate social order, the owners of a “stunning” Edwardian home have scandalously applied to adjust their parking and, brace yourselves, make their wall slightly taller.
The property, known as Mayroyd, once stood as a single, proud symbol of turn-of-the-century leisure, complete with a swimming pool complex presumably used for genteel Victorian skinny-dipping. But in 2021, that tranquillity was shattered when it was sliced into two dwellings, Mayroyd and the Pool House, thus birthing an architectural sibling rivalry the likes of which Norden Road has never seen.
Now, local resident Ginette Brogan has submitted plans to Rochdale Council so radical they might require counselling for the planning department’s fax machine. The application seeks to “vary conditions” by altering the car parking layout and, trigger warning, raising a stone boundary wall in a heinous act of stone-based gentrification.
Peter Hitchen, the architect responsible for this masonry manifesto, calmly explained the plans in a 400-paragraph thesis to the council. “The house has now been subdivided and occupied,” he droned, as councillors gripped the edge of their desks. “The extensions remain unbuilt,” he added, presumably because no one had yet invented a roof tile chic enough for Bamford.
The proposal also suggests the final landscaping will be submitted separately, which experts agree is likely to include an ominously bourgeois shrubbery and, at some point, gravel.
Not since someone painted their front door Farrow & Ball’s “Passive-Aggressive Magnolia” has the village seen such controversy. One local, who asked not to be named for fear of being bricked in themselves, whispered, “If we let people go around raising walls, next thing you know they’ll be installing garden gnomes with… opinions.”
All stone, it’s worth noting, was “sourced locally”, a statement designed to mollify conservationists and angry druids alike.
The Council is expected to respond once it has stopped laughing or crying. Possibly both.
