The Oakhaven Gazette

Radworth has more shops open this morning than it has ever had. Fifteen shop units took keys this month, on frontages that have been grass and hoarding since the houses went up.

Radworth Pharmacy is up on the Bestholme Boulevard corner and dispenses from nine. Sharp Exit Barbers is not next door but over on Marlpit Boulevard, a couple of minutes away — the parade was never built as a parade, and the units went where they would fit.

Radworth Health Centre has opened on the corner plot on Kimberton Road with two doctors and a nurse. There is also a post office, a bank, a launderette, a pawnbroker, an arcade and four hot-food units.

And there is, at last, somewhere to buy petrol.

Radworth Services opened on the ringway on Saturday with eight pumps and a shop. It is the only filling station inside the ring.

St Cuthbert’s has been re-roofed in slate and its stonework cleaned, and opened for the first Sunday in living memory. The tower is still empty; the bells are a separate appeal.

Radworth Primary is up but not open: finished outside, empty in, no fence round it and nothing marked on the yard.

The council calls it the largest letting programme the ward has seen. Residents who wrote in about the lack of a surgery called it “about time”.

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ALSO THIS WEEK

Fly-tipping: a clearance round

The council has confirmed a round on the eighteen marked tipping sites, out of the new depot off Harewood Avenue, ten until six, with crews taken on at the job centre: £2.25 an item, £8 a site. Wheelie bins remain nobody’s job.

Traffic lights on the ringway

Harewood, Strelby and Cropwell were signalised on Monday, with a fourth set at the plant access. Allow for it.

Bestholme lane is gone

The green lane off Bestholme has been ploughed out and its hedge grubbed; it ran through the new filling station site. See page 2.

NEW THIS MONTH · ACROSS THE ESTATE

Everything that has opened

Radworth Pharmacy, Bestholme Boulevard — nine until six, closed for lunch, Mohammed behind the counter. Sharp Exit Barbers is not next door but over on Marlpit Boulevard: Terry, cash, no appointments, shut Mondays.

Radworth Post Office, Kimberton Road — Errol and Shirley, and a queue belt that suggests they are expecting one. Meadowbank, also on Kimberton Road, for banking. Goldhand Pawnbrokers sits part-way along Netherfold Avenue next to the hospice shop.

Radworth Health Centre, Kimberton Road — two doctors and a nurse. The community centre is nowhere near it, over on Thornyholt Boulevard; Tamzin keeps the diary. The small units went where there was frontage, not into a parade: Suds Launderette on Ravensholt, Cracked It Phone Repair and Lacquer & Co Nails on access roads behind Thornyholt and Kimberton.

Penny Drop Amusements is open from ten and is already the loudest thing on Thornyholt Boulevard. The hot-food row is four doors on the ringway — kebab, curry, Chinese, pizza — all open late, and none of them delivers. The chips do not survive the walk back.

Not yet open: the leisure centre, the snooker, the working men’s club, the boxing gym and the Islamic centre.

All five are up and weather-tight and empty inside: bare floors, no counters, no name over the door. The fit-out contract goes out next.

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PUBLIC HOUSE · FOUNDRY END

The Slag & Slurry

Four house casks on the hand pumps — Oakhaven Best Bitter, Slurry Stout, Pit Pony Porter and Midland Mild — against four bought-in kegs on the font. Twenty drinks on the list, £2.15 to £5.25.

Charlotte keeps the bar and will not serve you out of turn. Samantha sings from seven. Quiz night is at eight and Charlotte says bingo with it — five cards for a pound round the tables when the cards arrive, and a cut off Bagshaws for the winner. Edward is in his usual chair.

The toilets are still two flights up and fifty-odd yards from the bar, through a corridor with two signs in it. People still give up.

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BETTING OFFICE · OAKHAVEN FORK, THE RINGWAY

Last Tenner Bets

Roulette on a proper English table, and Toby on the wheel with a mouth on him. There is talk of a card table going in. There is not one yet. MIGHTY OAKS scratchcards are £2, top prize a thousand. Nobody has seen ACORN FALLS pay out.

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CONVENIENCE · MARLPIT BOULEVARD

Bossman’s Corner Shop

Half six until eleven, once there is anything in it. The unit is painted, glazed and lit and the shutters go up on time, but the shelving has not come and it trades on a counter and a cold cabinet.

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NIGHTCLUB · BESTHOLME & POPPLEWICK

The Sweatbox

Old mill, blacked out, gallery round three sides. Seven till four. The gallery is the quiet end. Nothing else is open afterwards on this estate.

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OUT OF DOORS

The lanes, and what is left of them

Two green lanes now. Kimberton will take a car if you are careful; Lacemakers will not, there being a house stood in it fifteen yards up. Kimberton is hedged both sides, Lacemakers walled all the way down.

The river runs west under four bridges — two old masonry arches, two modern white ones — and is deeper than it looks.

There is talk, as ever, of old sand workings under this part of the county. Nobody has produced a way in, and this paper is not going looking.

REFUSE · AT LAST

A clearance round, and crews wanted

After what the council calls sustained correspondence, a fly-tipping clearance round now works out of the new depot off Harewood Avenue, ten in the morning until six at night. Household bins are not on it, and no date is offered for a lorry.

The job centre on Bestholme wants clearance assistants to ride with it — £2.25 an item, £8 a site, no experience — and signs you on the day. Ask for Denise, desk four.

Fly-tipping is the reason for the hurry.

Eighteen sites are on the rota, three a day. Five are verges off the ringway, five are out beyond the houses, and the other eight are in the estate, among them the ginnels off Lacemakers Court and Bleachfield Close. Only the quiet ones have anything on them yet.

The council wants a registration from anybody who sees a white flatbed loaded where it should not be.

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PLANNING · 26/0841

The waste plant is built

The energy-from-waste plant north of the ringway is finished: eighty-two metres of stack, and a new road on to Harewood Avenue at the signals.

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HIGHWAYS

Signals, potholes and one bridge that works

Three ringway junctions were signalised on Monday — Harewood, Strelby and Cropwell. The all-red is short, so do not chance the amber.

Resurfacing has not kept pace: potholes worth the name on Netherfold and the ringway’s western arc. Report them, and expect nothing.

And the Netherfold bridge carries its road at last.

The deck that stood six metres above its own carriageway is gone. The council took it down and rebuilt the crossing, with a hundred and sixty-nine metres of approach ramp. The road sits on it now to the centimetre. There is still no way down to the bank on foot at the nearest Chatsworth crossing.

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POLICE · THORNYHOLT BOULEVARD

The station, the car and the other one

Radworth Road Police Station sits eight metres back off Thornyholt Boulevard, on the Bestholme corner, and the name will stand, whatever the letters say.

The marked car takes about a quarter of the estate on each turn out, and a dozen turns to have been down every street. Luck, not timetable.

There is also an officer on the estate who is not in uniform.

This paper has no intention of helping anybody avoid him. Half of Radworth claims to have spotted him, and the descriptions agree on the boots.

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BUS · SERVICE 4

Twelve stops, twelve bare poles

The Estate Circular runs out of Thornyholt, round the boulevards, out to the ringway and home. Fares are £2 for five stops, £5 all day, good until two in the morning.

The board still says ten minutes. There is one bus, and since the drivers were put on ten under the limit the lap is nearer a quarter of an hour. Nobody has been out to change the board.

Not one shelter on this route. The two that exist stand out at Radworth Interchange, glazed and postered, and no service calls at either. Their footway is a foot and a half wider than ours. Ours are under five feet and a shelter is four and a half deep, so the canopy would sit over the carriageway. Shelters come when the pavements are widened.

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SPORT

Town, and the state of them

Radworth Town start on Friday, having finished where they finished and reached a European semi-final in the same season, which is Town all over. Four managers in a year and a fifth just in. Bewsall away in October. Behave.

THE EDITOR WRITES

You asked, and for once you got

Four complaints in our last issue have been answered: the chemist, the barber, the surgery and the filling station. There is a clearance round on the fly-tipping, though nobody has come for a wheelie bin. St Cuthbert's is re-roofed, its tower still empty. We claim no credit. The rest we print below, unanswered.

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Thank you, and now do the rest

I wrote in June about there being nowhere on this estate to be ill. There is now a health centre four minutes from my door and a chemist that dispenses. I am grateful and will not pretend otherwise.

Now do the hospital. It stands half finished, its ambulance canopy over a road, and nobody will say when.

VERA, Radworth Road

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Five buildings, locked and dark

The working men's club, the snooker, the boxing gym, the baths and the Islamic centre are all up and roofed. I have walked past every one. Dark inside, doors bolted, no notice, no date. Who is holding them?

MITCHELL, Bleachfield Close

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There are still no children

You have built us a primary school with a path up to the door and six steps, and not one child on this estate to put in it. No school run. Nobody kicking a ball at a garage door. Five hundred houses and every soul in them a grown adult. It is the eeriest thing about the place and nobody mentions it.

TRACEY, Limekiln Close

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Careful what you wish for

I asked for a bit of mess, because a place with none reads as new rather than nice. Within a month there are tags up both ginnels and on gables the far side of the estate, somebody's front room out on the Ravensholt verge, and potholes you could lose a wheel in. I withdraw my letter.

HOLLY, Marlpit Boulevard

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Where did the birds go?

I have walked the hedgerows every evening for a fortnight, which is what hedgerows are for, and I have seen one frog. Not a thrush, not a wren, not a single wood pigeon, and this is August. Something is wrong out there and somebody ought to look.

GORDON, Kimberton Road

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The station has no trains

There is a platform at Radworth Central, a canopy, a valance, and no track and no timetable. Same at the four outer ones, only in glass and grey brick. You cannot get to this town and you cannot leave it, and now five buildings to be unable to leave from.

KEITH, Sawmill Yard

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This is the Midlands. Where is the canal?

You have given us a river, which is lovely, and no canal, which is unforgivable. Put a towpath in and you have a way across town that no road overlooks, which would interest a good many.

ROWAN, Lacemakers Court

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A pawnbroker before a greengrocer

Fifteen shop units and a bookmaker, and the order they came in tells you everything. A pawnbroker, an amusement arcade and four takeaways before anybody thought of a greengrocer, a hardware shop or a bakery. Somebody has looked at this estate and decided what sort of place it is.

MARTIN, Tollerton Rise

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Mark them, then empty them

A month of this round and not one of the crews has been near our bins. They lift the fly-tipping off the verges, which is a fine thing, while ours stop on the pavement week in, week out. Mark them, number them, and send somebody to empty them.

SHIRLEY, Radworth Road