Q & A

Since the Undershaw Preservation Trust began it has been attempting to raise awareness of Undershaw’s fate. Unfortunately it has attracted some criticism as well and a lot of this criticism is unfounded.

 So here we intend to explode a few myths.

 1) You go on a lot about Undershaw but why should public money be spent on this at a time of national hardship?

 Although it would be great for a body like English Heritage or the National Trust to take the house on we are realistic about the chances in the current climate.

 At the moment the main focus of the UPT is to get a judicial review into the decision to award planning consent to the present owners of Undershaw. We also feel that until the matter is settled (one way or the other) they (the owners) should be compelled to preserve the building in accordance with its grade II listed status. It is reasonably safe to say that this is not being done properly at present and the council is not doing what it should to ensure that compliance.

The only public money being spent will be that spent by the local council in court. The work of the UPT is currently underwritten by its director John Gibson.

 2) You moan a lot on the internet and in the press but what are you actually doing?

The trust is financing its own legal battle to overturn the planning consent on the building. As stated, this is not coming from public money. The trust is also marketing merchandise to help fund its efforts and organises awareness events.

 3) If you like it so much why don’t you buy it?

Well we may be wrong here but we believe the price tag for the house and land as it stands is £1.5 million. We don’t have that kind of money. However if the planning consent is successfully overturned the value of the property should plummet which could conceivably bring it down to a very modest sum. This figure would probably not exceed £500,000 – £600,000. There is a buyer standing by who has pledged to restore the property but the buyer can only do this if the price becomes more affordable to reflect an expenditure of over £1M to renovate and restore the building to its previous condition and no redevelopment potential. So you can see it is clearly apparent that the planners by granting this permission last year well over doubled its value.

 4) What’s wrong with the redevelopment plans?

The plans would involve carving up the property into a series of separate dwellings. This work would be essentially irreversible. The grade II listing would require that the house remained externally as is but inside its original structure and layout would be lost.

 5) Does it matter if the house is lost?

Yes. It matters because this is the last home of Conan Doyle left. All of his former homes have either been lost or converted to other uses. A lot of his best work was written at Undershaw and it is important to the trust that this house remains intact. Other writers have their homes maintained (such as Dickens and Jane Austen) and Conan Doyle is no less worthy.

6) So why is the redevelopment a bad thing?

The answer is that the majority of the resulting homes would almost certainly only be asscessible to the wealthy. They are hardly going to be within the reach of the average first time buyer or anyone on a modest (or even average) income. A percentage may be labelled and marketed as affordable but it will almost certainly be less than half of the homes that are built.

7) Who is going to buy the not so affordable remaining homes?

If economically hard times are being used to justify the present lack of action to save Undershaw those same economic difficulties must surely mean that people will not exactly be queuing down the street to buy these new homes. We are constantly hearing in the news of the struggling housing market. Do Undershaw’s owners and the local council have solid evidence that Hindhead is going to buck the national trend?

If the development goes ahead and the houses do not sell then all we are left with are a number of unoccupied buildings with little or no historical merit as opposed to one with considerable historical significance.

A fabulous example, take Holmes Place, Undershaw’s neighbours, on the market for over a year, initially for £1.25M. Since then they have changed estate agents and reduced the price several times. Not one has sold. Do we want this to happen to Undershaw? More profit would be found should Undershaw become part of the regeneration of Hindhead.