Schuled Monument? What can you do?

[PeteB]

As the title says, on the site of a scheduled monument,  what are you allowed to do in terms of gardening, landscaping, bushbashing, tree work, blah blah blah? 

 

Just curious as I seen some large Rhododendron bashing going on, and some other stuff was mentioned.....

[Mick Dempsey]

More context, and better spelling please.

[Ty Korrigan]

 Not U.K but I've just waited months for my client, a local council, to obtain permission from Batiment de France (which is like English Heritage) to remove a Douglas growing with a few metres of a church. I was in on one of the discussions and am glad I do not deal with these people on a regular basis.

Maintenance of plantations is allowed but removal of plantations likely to impact on the heritage or character of the building or it's surroundings requires permission. In fact, here, technically, any tree removal within 500m of a church requires permission but I've only ever had a handfull of clients who bothered and all were accepted.

 Stuart

[PeteB]

To set the context, and Mick, please excuse my awful grammar,  The Bluecoat School was a boarding school and it should've been boarded up!

 

Ex NT property, listed and scheduled, back in private ownership. Right nice spot but some well overgrown Rhododendrons and other shrubs and a really damp, moss covered lawn area close to the Mott. He wants to rid himself of these overgrown  areas, put new drains in the lawn, kill the moss and rotovate for new seed.

[Mick Dempsey]

If it’s Ponticum it’s fair game, invasive and a right bastard.

[Billhook]

I am confused by the scheduling system.   Back in the 1970s, possibly in the hot summer of 1976, photos from the air showed a possible but debatable Long Barrow.  We were told as farmers all the things we were not allowed to do to it, and the fines for not complying.  I asked them to come and mark it out on the ground as there is nothing to see.  It is a 60 acre arable field and the barrow is meant to be quite a long way out into the field which has been cultivated certainly since before the war and has grown deeper crops like seed potatoes for many years.  It is on chalk so we would never need to subsoil cultivate.

Nobody has been near the place.

We also have two very important sites which have both been professionally excavated, an eleventh century Chapel and a sixth century Anglo Saxon cemetery.  The latter had some very significant finds and has shed a lot of light on the so called Dark Ages but neither the Chapel or the Cemetery have been scheduled.

We have voluntarily protected both the Chapel and the Cemetery with layers of "Terram" and grassed them over but until we hear otherwise or someone bothers to come out and mark it, we will continue farming the supposed barrow it in the same way we have been doing for over half a century.

 

As for what you can do ,it is similar to listed building, if you have a reasonable officer from the council, you may reach a reasonable conclusion, but if you have an unreasonable one you are in trouble!.

 

[PeteB]

I must confess that my folks retired to South Devon close to 20 years back and got a sweet spot in proper rural land close to Chard. The house was listed, thanks to an internal wall and a historical link to an author but nowt earth shaking in any way. Front windows were wood and rotten, back were those horrible steel frames that do not seal. Dad approached the LA about changing the lot, listed status meant fancy bespoke frames with naff secondary glazing. Building regs folk stipulated certain bespoke frames (expensive, but suited) and double glazing. Neither department could agree and months later, he got fed up and got it delisted! 

 

They only got three tv channels via the roof mounted aerial but getting Sky dish was agin the rules, so agai, he ignored the listed status and got a dish, like his neighbours, so he could watch TV!

 

But scheduled monument and so on is different! 

[nepia]

Good on your dad; fear of officialdom is nearly as powerful as its actual powers.  He was obviously not a man to be pushed about!