Old Pennar School - The Swifts Return!

A short video of the swifts screaming over Pennar School. I think they arrived on Friday!!

The road sounds pretty busy too!

Old Pennar School - Open Meeting on 11 June 2015

The meeting is at Pennar Hall, Treowen Road, Pennar, Pembroke Dock, SA72 6SN.

See the poster below. See you there!

Old Pennar School - Open Public Meeting 11 June 2015

Good News! There is to be Public Open Public Meeting about the future of Old Pennar School on 11 June 2015.

There will be a Public Meeting held on the 11th of June at St Patrick's Hall at 7 o'clock to discuss the Planning Application by Pembrokeshire Housing , Attending will be Pembrokeshire Housing Association (PHA), Pembrokeshire County Council (PCC), Alison Lee Cabinet member for Housing.

Come along and have your say.

St Patrick's Church Hall can be found by clicking the link.

St Patrick's Church Hall Map

Other useful links:

Pembrokeshire Housing Association

Pembrokeshire County Council

Pembroke Dock Town Council

Old Pennar School - Getting to Local Amenities

The planning application for the Old Pennar School Site quotes the following distances to local amenities:

Distance quoted by developer’s agents.
Convenience Shop – 150 metres
Local Shopping Centre  - 500 metres
Doctors – 1300 metres
School – 600 metres
Public Open Space – 500 metres
Train Station  - 1400 metres

I thought I would look into these, using a bit of local knowledge and a lot of Google Earth.

This is what I found. You can argue with the routes taken, but the grid design of PD makes for quite a bit of variety in routing, but not so much distances.

Distance quoted by developer’s agents. Probably straight line distances.	Walking or driving distances are:
	Drive	Walk
Convenience Shop – 150 metres	480 metres	190 metres
Local Shopping Centre  - 500 metres	2000 metres	1370 metres
Doctors – 1300 metres	2120 metres	1480 metres
School – 600 metres	420 metres	420 metres
Public Open Space – 500 metres	960 metres	400 metres
Train Station  - 1400 metres	1850 metres	1520 metres

The Google Earth bit - I'm afraid the Pictures will spill over the page. If you cannot see them all, then I'll put up different size ones. Just let me know.

I think the developer or his architect went by helicopter. Have you seen any about lately?

Old Pennar School - Late Arrival of the Block Plan

This is a rushed post as I am heading for The National Archives in a few minutes!!

True to his word, the planning officer covering the application to demolish the Old Pennar School has checked through the files available on line and added (this morning) the block plan of the proposal. This had been previously  unavailable to view on the internet.

This plan can be found here:

Old Pennar School - New Development Block Plan

The file available directly from the PCC Planning Portal above (in the best available resolution) is shown below, (at much lower resolution), to deliver a quick indication of the new information it gives us about the proposal. I would strongly advise downloading the original and studying that.

It is particularly noticeable that the new buildings come very close to the road (as indicated in the crude SketchUp models produced in an earlier post. The buildings also overlook surrounding properties, particularly those to the north in School Gardens.

It is unfortunate that this plan was not available sooner. I initially asked about it on 8 May 2015, having noticed it was missing when matching the available drawings to the Planning Papers and Access Statement.

Something you can do:

I believe that the late availability of this drawing warrants the period for consultation being extended by 7 days so that the new information it brings can be used to better inform any comments and observations about the proposal. If you agree that this is a fair and reasonable request, please post below or let PCC Planning (Mr Martin Allen) know directly. 

Old Pennar School - Emergency Access

Application Reference: 14/1098/PA 

This post is about the Swept Path Analysis Dennis Sabre Fire Engine (LWB) for Old Pennar School.

The actual document can be downloaded from here:

The diagram is described as a block plan on the portal, but as such it is unsuitable as it does not cover the whole site and leaves out Plots 6 to 15 - the most important and visually objectionable.

A low res copy of the plan is below.

To me, the layman, it would appear that access is severely restricted. What do you think?

Old Pennar School and the Great Oil Tanks Fire

19 August 1940 was a day that will feature prominently in any history of Pembroke Dock. It was when the clear blue sky of a summer's day was turned black and the Second World War made the first of many impressions on PD.

The story of the oil tanks fire has been told many times and can be read about in more detail on these links:

Phil Carradice tells the story of the bombing of the Oil Tank in Pennar. .....

......and here.

Photographs and more from the Western Telegraph.

The Old School Pennar played a significant role in the drama, as related by Vernon Scott in his book "In Harms Way":

The Photograph below shows the view looking east down Military Road from the site of the Oil Tanks after the cataclysmic Oil Tank Fire in August 1940. 

Does Old Pennar School, a refuge for the selfless firemen that fought the inferno, now face its own cataclysm?

See the caption below

The western end of the Barrack Hill was crowded with locals watching the spectacle of
the oil fuelled blaze. Did the young girl go to Old Pennar School? What would she think now?

The two photographs above are courtesy of Margaret Longueville, who served as an ambulance driver in PD in the Summer of 1940.

Old Pennar School - some thoughts about the plan submitted.

In what follows, square brackets [ ] denote my comments. The reference for the material quoted below is:

"Application for Planning Permission.- Town and Country Planning Act 1990", submitted by the applicant.

This application  can be found at:

http://planning.pembrokeshire.gov.uk/AnitePublicDocs/00213858.pdf

Application reference: 14/1098/PA


The applicant is the Pembrokeshire Housing Association (from now on referred to as PHA), with offices at St Thomas's Green in Haverfordwest. The application names Mr Sam Stalbow, who declares that he is an agent acting on behalf of the applicant.

[No telephone or email address on form.]

Architect is:

Trevor Hopkins Associates Ltd, Cardigan, SA43 1EW

email: design@trevorhopkins.com, Tel: 01239621010

The current case officer at PCC planning is Mr Martin Allen. [I have made 5 attempts to contact him to no avail.]

The applicants propose to:

Demolish existing school and former Depot. Construct 5 two bedroom houses and 10 one bedroom flats together with associated infrastructure works. Works involve a change in use from Commercial to Residential.

The pre-application advice that PHA received, via email from Mr Mike Harris (unelected planning officer at Pembrokeshire County Council (PCC)) on 23 February, 2015 was:

"We will now be in the position to recommend approval of the proposal when presented as an application."

PHA cite these references for the documents to support their application:

• D-BP-1279E, P-1&2-1279A, P-3&4-1279A, P-5-1279A, P-6to15-1279B, DAS

[Are all these documents available on-line at PCC planning portal?]

17 Parking places to be provided, none present at the moment.

[Mere application of paint??]




In their application, PHA specifically say, in response to the following question:

"Having referred to the guidance notes, is there a reasonable likelihood of the following being affected adversely or conserved and enhanced within the application site, or
on land adjacent to or near the application site?"

a) Protected and priority species             NO



[No reference made to the confirmed use of the building as a bat roost.]

One example of evidence of the presence of bats on north side of Old Pennar School.
Photograph taken within last 10 days.

In response to the  statement quoted below in the application papers:

"Supporting Information Requirements
Where a development proposal is likely to affect features of biodiversity or geological conservation interest, you will need to submit, with the application, sufficient information and assessments to allow the local planning authority to determine the proposal.

Failure to submit all information required will result in your application being deemed invalid. It will not be considered valid until all information required by the Local Planning Authority has been submitted. [my italics for emphasis]

Your Local Planning Authority will be able to advise on the content of any assessments that may be required."

[No documentation re: known bat roost has been submitted(?) or made available on-line by PHA/PCC for this application.]


The application was submitted by PHA on 27 February 2015.

Comment on other application papers to follow soon. If any of the above affects your thoughts about this application, please do comment to PCC, You can comment again, as a supplement to any original comment you may have made.

Thank you

PS: It is worth commenting that the naming of planning documentation on PCC planning portal seems very obscure. File names bear no resemblance to the actual id used within the document. It makes understanding the plans difficult, particularly when having to quote them to others. This should be improved.

Old Pennar School - to be replaced by modern blandness?

The photographic montages below show Old Pennar School form various positions on Treowen Road.

The old and well known landmark and the new unimaginative blandness.

If you consider the new to be a poor replacement for the old, or if you think that the bats and swifts deserve better treatment, then please write in you comments to Pembrokeshire County Council by 13 May 2015. Application: 14/1098/PA

If you have a constructive alternative plan that will keep the old school building, it would be interesting to hear it.

Demolition is unacceptable and not necessary.

See here for details of how to do this.

A few details about how the images were obtained can be read at the end of the post.

More images and comment to follow over the next couple of days.

The View from the NNE

Old Pennar School from Treowen Road, from NNE.

3D Model 15 Dwellings on site of Old Pennar School from
Treowen Road, from NNE. 

The view from SSE

The Street View from Treowen Road looking towards
Old Pennar School from the SSE

The same viewpoint,  from Treowen Road looking towards 
the Old Pennar School development from the SSE

The two images above superimposed to show the relationship between the old and the new(?).

The View from the East

A note about the images.

Using the information on the Pembrokeshire County Council planning portal, 3 dimensional models of each of the buildings were constructed using SketchUp, a freely available piece of 3D modelling software.

The interrelationship of each of the buildings was quite difficult to realise as there was no block plan of the entire proposed development site available for scrutiny on line. The relationship of the new buildings to Treowen Road was not easy to appreciate for a similar reason. Such plans may well have been submitted, but were not available to a wider public on line. Likewise, details for Plot 5 were not available, other than the footprint of the proposed building. It may be that I have missed something!!

Once the model had been completed, it was inserted into Google Earth Pro, with care being taken to "clamp" the model to the Google Earth Ground surface. It is likely that the terrain model on Google Earth under - represents the true height of the ground that the school is built on, as the ground level seems to have been "made up" at some time. Consequently the new buildings may not be shown as high as they might be in reality.

Google Earth Pro offers the facility to compare views from Google Street View with those of models inserted into Google Earth. An invaluable aid to comparison.

Old Pennar School - What they intend to do!

Another quick post today, but these two pictures show Old Pennar School as it is now, a photograph taken form Treowen Road (via Google Street View) and a virtual construction using Sketchup of what it will be replaced by, taken from Google Earth.

Draw your own conclusions.

More views tomorrow.

Old Pennar School-building on the playground.

I have been busy trying to work out the layout of the 15 Dwellings on the site of Old Pennar School, particularly in relation to Treowen Road.

Looking at the documents available on the Pembrokeshire County Council planning portal, there does not seem to be a complete block plan of the site, particularly the eastern end.

If anyone knows better, please point me in the right direction!

Using the available documents it looks like the buildings will be three storeys, right up to the wall and on top of the grass covers former playground.

Old Pennar School as a Protest Profile Picture

If anyone would like to adopt a picture of Old Pennar School as a temporary profile picture, then please feel free to download and use any of the pictures on this blog!

Here are some to choose from. Any problems copying them, let me know.

Old Pennar School in the National Archives

There are a number of records at The National Archives (TNA) that refer to Old Pennar School (Pennar Board School)

The one that looks particularly interesting is the one quoted below.

Reference:ED 21/23321

Description:PEMBROKE: Dock, Pennar Council School
Date:1872-1916

Held by:The National Archives, Kew

Former reference in its original departmentSchool No: 373/5

Legal status:Public Record

I have a readers ticket for TNA, but is anyone going to TNA in the few couple of days who might be able to order this file up and look at it quickly. Perhaps take some pictures too? If that is possible, then I would be tremendously grateful! 

If you are going and could help, please get in touch!

Other files that might be of interest are:

Reference:	ED 21/67383
Description:	PEMBROKE: Pembroke Dock Pennar Council School
Date:	1938
Held by:	The National Archives, Kew
Former reference in its original department	School No: 373/5
Legal status:	Public Record

Reference:	ED 21/47125
Description:	PEMBROKE: Pembroke Dock Pennar Council School
Date:	1921
Held by:	The National Archives, Kew
Former reference in its original department	School No: 373/5
Legal status:	Public Record

A land mark that will vanish - Old Pennar School

The old Victorian Pennar School is a tall building. It seems likely that the roof apex  of the eastern wing of the building is about 30ft above ground level.

The point where the school stands is 45 metres above mean sea level at:
Ordnance Survey Grid Reference SM 96208 02690;
51°41'9.48"N     4°56'58.28"W

The diagram below shows the local viewshed of the school, that is, the places from where the school is theoretically visible, ignoring any buildings or vegetation that might be in the line of sight.

The next picture shows the viewshed over a wide area. The digram at the top of the illustration gives a panoramic view of the ground surface form the school, from a point 20 ft above ground level.

Through the kindness of another who is concerned about the future of the building, I have obtained some photographs of the school in its present state. The roof and all openings seem to be secure and weather tight.

This is a view of the school from the east, just off Treowen Road. The road is behind the wall in the foreground. When used as a County Junior School, the grassed area was a tarmac yard with a high net fencing all around it. The eaves on this side of the building provided ample space for nesting swifts, as mentioned in a previous post.

The next photograph, this time taken from roughly the North East, shows the dominant position that the building holds on the sole road into Pennar (Treowen Road). The school was sited to impress.

The green house stands on the site of the field that was known as School Gardens. It was just that - School Gardens!

It seems to me that it would be a sad loss if this place, where so many of the children in Pennar started or continued their education, were to be demolished.

Madness!

Swift demise at Old Pennar School?

The Common Swift  - "Apus apus 01" by Paweł Kuźniar.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - 

One of the many abiding memories I have of my time as a pupil at Old Pennar Junior School is the constant swooping and screaming of the large numbers of swifts that came back to rear their young every summer. Their nests would be under the eaves of the school, seemingly all around the roof, but mainly at the top of the south and east facing walls.

At the end of "play time", when our classes all lined up in regimented order, (hands on shoulders of the person in front of you to ensure good spacing!), the swifts would swoop down between the lines and up under the eaves between the east and west wings of the school. Occasionally they would misjudge the manoeuvre and end up belly down on the tarmac yard. The swift is a supreme aviator and is not designed to be on the ground, but after some wild flapping of rigid wings,  the birds would somehow manage to get back into the air and rise to their nests above.

The swift population in the UK is on the decline. The demolition of the old Victorian Pennar School will not help their cause and destroy some of the few nesting places they still have accessible to them in Pennar. The school building are particularly suitable because of the great height of the eaves above the ground, allowing swifts to drop from their nest and gain sufficient airspeed to fly away. Swifts never nest in the eaves of single storey buildings and only in two storey buildings of adequate height. The new dwellings proposed for the site of the school do not make allowances for the accomm
odation of this rapidly dwindling summer visitor.

This is largely due to the demolition of their traditional nesting sites in the eaves of old buildings or the blocking up of ventilation holes, crevices and gaps when the roofs of houses are repaired. There is much advice about helping swifts on the websites of Swift Conservation and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). See the links below.

Swift Conservation

RSPB Swift Survey

RSPB Help Us Help Swifts

Here are some videos that will help you identify the swift and tell it apart from Swallows, House Martins and Sand Martin.

The second video below uses the word "Jizz". and explanation of this can be read here:

Swifts calling in flight.

Identifying Swallows, Martins and Swifts - from the BTO

Let me know when the first swifts appear over Pennar! 

This might be the last time you will see or hear them. 

If the school is saved, then so will the swifts.

Phil Carradice Speaks about Old Pennar School

Phil Carradice, another talented child of Pennar Junior School and well known author, radio broadcaster and historian, thinks this about the plans for Old Pennar School

"I am appalled to learn that there are plans to demolish the old Pennar School - where I was a pupil for all of my Primary School years. The building has stood there for well over a hundred years and is a symbol of the "education for all" attitude that imbued late Victorian thinking.

Before Forster's Education Act of 1870 any education for ordinary people had to be paid for by the families. Education wasn't compulsory. Pennar School was one of many institutions that brought education to everyone and, as such, it is an historic building that needs to be preserved, not demolished to build yet more houses.

My own memories of the place are vivid. Cold winter mornings with ice on the insides of the windows; bottles of milk, frozen to begin with but bubbling after being stuck, to de-frost, around the one heater in the room; assemblies in the hall over the road; the teachers - Mrs Rees in particular. I could go on but won't."

Read more about Phil's thoughts on the heritage of Wales here:

Phil Carradice's Blog on BBC Radio Wales