Land opposite Ashton Windmill

A couple of us went to see this piece of land near Wedmore.  It’s directly opposite a beautiful historic building, Ashton Windmill.

It is 12 acres and it ticks a lot of the boxes;  eg it is accessed directly from a dual track road.   It is not in a Groundwater Source Protection Zone 1 or 1a.  It is not in a Surface Water Protection Zone.  It is not in a Flood Zone.  It does not have immediate neighbours who overlook it or would be overlooked and therefore might object to planning permission.  It is flat and therefore all the land is useable.  It is not near archaeological sites.  It does not have nearby watercourses (no burials within 250m of a watercourse or spring that feeds into the water supply.  No burials within 30m of any watercourse).

It is on at auction which can be tricky, in that you can do a  huge amount of research and then be outbid.  But the main thing is:  it lacks character, soul.  It has a few mature trees at one end, in the hedgerow, but otherwise it’s just a field.  No views.  Hedgerows quite low in places. There’s quite a bit of noise from the road, and the road is quite present until you get half way across the site.  I asked myself:  would I want to be buried here?  I wouldn’t rule it out, but… I don’t think so.

A featureless field has the advantage of being straightforward, a blank canvas.  We can make it beautiful.  But that takes time, and there needs to be enough appeal so that people will want to be buried there even before the new trees have grown up and it’s full of beautiful wildflower meadow.   It’s hard, because there are so few pieces of land on the market that do tick the boxes required to get planning permission for change of use.  But there is also the very important box of natural beauty; views, trees, or ideally both.