As we approach the Centenary of one of the schemes proposed by Elfric, I thought it apt to add to the blog this item which the reader may find of interest.
From an original leaflet distributed in 1920 to the Brighton area by Elfric.
From The Kearney Files
Leaflet quotes extracts from the "Brighton Herald" dated 19th June 1920.
NOTES OF THE WEEK
Privacy or Progress?
By an odd coincidence, it seems likely that the Brighton Town Council, at its meeting next week, is likely to be attacked by another flood of predudice. It sounds like an echo of medieval times, or at least of the earliest Victorian days, to hear of powerful interests that are working, and of the amount of antiquated predudice that is being stirred up, in opposition to the proposal for an experimental line for what is known as the Kearney High Speed Railway.
We have no interest whatever in the railway, and no pressure of any kind has been brought to bear on us, but a dispassionate consideration of the proposals for this railway convinces us that the corporation ought not to give way to the interests and predudices that are at work.
We understand that powerful influence is being brought to bear on them to rescind their permission to allow an experimental portion of this railway on the East Brighton Estate.
What the Corporation would do well to remember is that a national purpose of genuine importance will be served by the making of this experiment.
Should it be successful, it will solve serious problems in transport. Moreover, it will effect a most valuable junction between Brighton and Newhaven --- a matter of the greatest importance to trade and public convenience.
--------------------------
The arguments against the experiment being made take one back to the days when railways were first projected, when landowners fought against their approach to their estates, and reduced promising schemes to ineffectiveness. The heirs of those landowners today would sacrifice a considerable portion of their land if they could only undo what their forefathers did, and have the railway brought near to them.
--------------------------------
A petition has been prepared in the district against the scheme, and presumably will come before the Town Council at its next meeting. Already, so we are credibility informed, several signatories to that petition ( names have been given to us) state that they signed under a complete apprehension of the facts. The true objection, apart from those which exist in the imagination of objectors, is that Roedean and Rotting Dean wish to keep undisturbed their present "semi - isolation" from the world. One says "semi - isolation", for an isolation that means hourly visits from motor uses, and countless chars - a - bands, is a very limited isolation.
The Kearney railway seems to us as free from objection as any work of man could be.
It will be a mere line on the landscape, far less offensive than the barbed wire fences of which correspondents complain.
As to the privacy of Roedean College, how is that to be disturbed by railway taking passengers past it at sixty miles an hour?
To be continued in Part 2.
Comments
Post a Comment