Bob Delderfield’s History File
May 1996
Earlier Threats to Pound Wood
Discussions and arguments over “development”, “Green Belt”, “change of use of land” and “open spaces” have been commonplace since the Trust was founded in 1959 but the battle to prevent urban and industrial takeover of sites such as Pound Wood goes back further than many might imagine.
During the 1920s the Rochford Rural District Council, which then included Thundersley and Hadleigh, was active in proposing many development schemes. By 1929 it had been decided that Pound Wood, Tile Wood and West Wood were all ripe for residential development, subject, of course, to purchase from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners who owned all three woods. The west end of Pound Wood was to become an estate with 8 dwellings per acre and the cast end would be slightly more crowded at 10 per acre. The south end of Tile Wood and the bulk of Tylerset Farm would also be given over to 10 houses per acre. The 80 acres of West Wood were to he subjected to a housing estate of 640 dwellings. Somebody certainly had it in for the woods!
It is true that the country peace of Daws Heath has been disturbed by small housing development and a huge increase in road traffic in the last 30 years but if all the plans of the late twenties had come to fruition there would now probably he no sign of Daws Heath’s rural heritage.
One feature of the proposed road system at Daws Heath was to have been the loss of the double bend in St Michael’s Road, the new line would have followed the footpath in St Michael’s Field along Pound Wood’s western boundary. Rows of shops on either side of Bramble Road between St Michael’s Road and River’s Corner were also among the proposals.
Like so many local town planning schemes of the 1920s and 30s, these developments were never realised, but this was not the end of the threats to Pound and other woods. During the 1930s the new Benfleet Urban District Council attempted to purchase Pound Wood from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for £2000 in order to build an estate at initially 12, later 2 houses per acre. However the vendors wanted £100 per acre and, much to our retrospective delight, the dispute over land value was never resolved and nothing came of these plans. The Church Commissioners, as they are now known, have received much criticism in recent times but it would seem that we owe much to these faceless landlords.
One far-sighted supporter of local open spaces was Mr Harold Tutt, Headmaster of Hadleigh School 1917–52, Councillor, JP, and highly respected ornithologist. At a Council meeting in May 1938 he made an important and prophetic speech moving that a resolution offering £45 an acre for Pound Wood and parts of West Wood be rescinded and that these woods should remain on the planning map as proposed open spaces. The Southend Standard reported. “Mr Tutt said that people came to live in the area because of the amenities of the countryside and the healthiness of the air … We could see the time fifty years hence when Benfleet, Rayleigh, Pitsea and Southend would sweep over the whole area just as they had seen development sweep over the Metropolitan area in the last 20 or 30 years …” Sadly Mr Tutt’s motion was defeated but how pleased he would have been to know that Pound Wood has now been preserved by the Wildlife Trust.