Land Involved – Hollands Farm
We are told that the proposed development at Hollands farm covers and area of 31 Hectares. Quick: what’s a Hectare ? 10,000 m2 – does that help you picture the size ?
Hollands Farm Areas (© Ordinance Survey 2004)
To help and clarify the areas involved, I have the proposed “illustrative layout” provided by the WDC onto an Ordinance Survey map – to scale. From this using a Compensating Polar Planimeter (the eight wonder of the world), I measured the areas.
The area bound by the red line – matching that of the red line on the “illustrative layout” was found to be in the order of 32.1 Hectares, against the quoted 31 Hectares. The quoted 31 hectares, is likely the closer value rounded one way or the other. All my calculated areas were taken from an average of three readings, over my hand drawn lines, and a shaky hand.
1 Hectare is 2.471 Acres
Hollands Farm Development is 31 times that; which is 76.6 Acres that gives you an idea of the size in “Football Pitches” – not that they are all the same size.
Area Bound by Red line ~ 31 Hectares (~76.6 Acres)
This 76 acres, is the land bound by the plans all encompassing red line – lets call that the area immediately effected.
Inside this area I’ve shaded in green the zone that excludes the current residential property. This area measured 25.1 Hectares – this would scale to 24.2, using the 31 hactares.
Area Bound by green line ~ 24.2 Hectares (~59.8 Acres)
Finally the area of proposed residential – the sum of the two areas shaded in orange. Measured this was 13.6 Hectares – scaled to 13.1 Hectares
Area of Proposed Residential ~ 13.1 Hectares (~32.4 Acres)
That may help some picture the size, and help those who are concerned with the proposed population density etc.
Lets look at 1″ of rain in one hour
13.1 Hectares = 131,000 m2
1″ = 0.0254 m
Volume = 3327 m3 (133% of an Olympic pool)
volume of Olympic pool = 2,500 m3
basically 75% of the land that shows as dwellings – a reasonable % – would fill an Olympic pool. – 1″ in 1 hr, you think about it.
Where will this water go? They wont be pumping it up hill. What the hell stick it in the Thames. Cookham has a flood defence, Marlow’s £7m flood defence project is under-way. – these local defences increase the water levels outside of them scenes as Bourne End witnessed in 2014 will become more frequent.
A4094 looking from Cookham bridge toward Bourne End – 2014
Lets have a closer look at the wording of section 5.4 of the Proposed development in Bourne End – and in Particular the proposed Hollands Farm development.