Tag: neglect

August 8th – I still can’t get my head around the state of the trees currently blocking the new development’s view of Catshill Junction. This is a Walsall Housing Group project consisting of apartments, sold as ‘canalside’ dwellings – but as far as I can ascertain, most of the properties have no view of the canal itself due to the overgrown thicket in-between.

Such dense vegetation must also make those flats terribly dark. Unusually for Walsall Housing Group, they don’t seem to have any plan to deal with this and integrate their development into the immediate environment. I find this surprising and sad.

And still languishing unloved on the bank, the Catshill Junction Sculpture. 

What a mess.

February 16th – Corporation Street Cemetery in Walsall – wedged into the hinterland separating Pleck, Caldmore and the town centre could be a little green hillside oasis – it could be, but it’s not; it’s green alright, but a neglected, shabby green in a state somewhere between being maintained and being forgotten. In the daytimes it’s eerily lonely, and the only people you see here are the displaced and spaced. 

Sister Dora, that wonderful adopted mother of Walsall is interred here in a humble grave, which despite it’s minor nature still manages to be embarrassingly neglected. 

There are fine views to be had here, but the vandalism, decay and shameful decay make this a rather unpleasant place. We really owe those who rest here better.

January 15th – Walsall Wood’s winter lido is again filling up courtesy of the inclement weather.

Once a bowling green, and passed to Walsall Council after being created for the local miners to enjoy, the old Oak Park – beside the leisure centre – continues to decay, unloved.

This is little short of a crime. Every time I see it it makes me angry – very angry indeed.

November 21st – After rain in the night, I rode past the old bowling green at Oak Park on my way to work, sadly noting that it was starting to flood once more for winter. If we have much more rain, in a week or two, this will again be a pond.

There had been groundworks here in the Summer, and I hoped it was to fix the blocked land drain causing the problem; but no such luck. 

It seems this forgotten, forlorn park – created by, and for the miners of Walsall Wood to enjoy in perpetuity as a break from the darkness – is to be forever neglected by a council that don’t understand or value it’s significance.

It makes me angry. Very angry indeed.

March 21st – Off to the new Screwfix at Walsall Wood in the morning for some odds and ends, I made a point of checking out the flooded bowling green in the old, neglected and dilapidated Oak Park. Still flooded, but with waters receding, it’s still a tragic sight. This used to be the pride of the community, left to become a waterlogged marsh with no sign of resolution. Walsall Council have allowed this to happen with poor maintenance, and stood by as it continued from one year to the next.

This land is supposed to be held in trust for the community to benefit.

The only community benefiting from this sorry mess is the wildfowl one – these two mallards were having a ball.

August 7th – There is a destructive force in our midst, reducing brickwork to rubble and invading any scrap of greenspace. Alien? Hardly. It’s buddleia  – an invasive shrub that infests the hinterlands, margins and rooftops of urban areas. Able to grow in the most precarious of situations, an accumulation of soot and grime in a brickwork fissure is all it takes to grow. Once taken hold, it’s very hard to eradicate, and the power of the roots to split apart man-made masonry cannot be overestimated.

This time of year, it’s in full, glorious purple flower. A joy to behold, unlike the damage it causes. 

January 17th – Some of Walsall’s municipal cemeteries are in a woeful state. Ryecroft can be a bit grim in the less visited corners, Queen Street is disgustingly neglected, doubly so since it’s the resting place of local nursing heroine Sister Dora. James Bridge is no exception – a large burial ground wedged inbetween former factories, waste ground and the canal, it was never a picturesque location. It’s sad to see recently that an adjacent building waste processing plant has expanded operations, leaving relatives of the interred to complain of masonry dust coating the graves. Today, it wasn’t hard to see why it was happening. Why on earth was that noisy, pollutant yard given permission to operate in such a sensitive location?
On a side note, the older sections of James Bridge are amongst the most densely packed I’ve ever seen. There are a huge number of graves here.