5 Inner Thames Estuary Airport Options Are Still on the Table!

The UK Airports Commission are currently calling for evidence and studying 5 inner estuary airport options on the Hoo Peninsula. These options were studied in the run up to the Airports Commission Interim Report announcement in December 2013 when they were published alongside many other documents which can be found here
The five options are

Foster Partners Thames Hub Airport 46 Foster Sift 2 FINAL

Mayor of London Inner Estuary Airport 51 Mayor of London – Isle of Grain Sift 2 FINAL

IAAG Cliffe Airport 47 IAAG Sift 2 FINAL

Thames Reach airport 48 Metrotidal – Thames Reach Airport Sift 2 FINAL

Airports Commission own airport option based on a combination of the above which has sought to minimise cost, environmental impact and avoid relocation of the existing LNG facility 67 Isle of Grain Sift 3 FINAL

We believe that the idea of a Thames estuary airport is deeply flawed on every level

Here are some useful links to help you respond

RSPB are vehemently opposed to the construction of an airport in the Thames Estuary

Kent Wildlife Trust is vigorously opposed to any proposals to build an airport in or near the Thames Estuary.

Medway Council case against a Thames Estuary airport

CPRE Protect Kent is utterly opposed to any new airport anywhere in the Thames Estuary

FoNKM – Great Expectations and Profound Concerns

Say No Estuary Airport facebook

Please respond to this important consultation – the call for evidence closes on the 23rd May

 

The Marsh Country

It was a great pleasure for us to spend time with author Julian Hoffman when he came to visit us here on the Hoo Peninsula ~ Ours IS the marsh country down by the river and we will fight with the utmost vigour to protect it ~ No Thames estuary airport ever!

Julian Hoffman

“Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea.”

~ Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, 1861

“Large terminals, operational buildings, offices, roads and car parks will interrupt the broad open scale of the marsh landscape… The network of ditches and creeks running through the marshes will be severely affected or destroyed…Existing open views out over the Estuary will be lost and replaced by terminal buildings, aircraft hangers and extensive areas of paving…The low hills of the Hoo Peninsula rising out of the surrounding marshland will be lost entirely.”

                                                                        ~ Foster + Partners, Thames Hub AirportProposal to the Airports Commission, 2013

The Hoo…

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Strawberry Tea – with Pimm’s! – Saturday 22 June 2013 2:30-4:30pm

Strawberry Tea – with Pimm’s! – Saturday 22 June 2013 2:30-4:30pm

The churchyard of St James Church, Cooling was the setting for the opening scene in Charles Dickens world famous novel ‘Great Expectations’ where Pip met the escaped convict Magwitch

My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.

I give Pirrip as my father’s family name, on the authority of his tombstone and my sister — Mrs Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father’s, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, `Also Georgiana Wife of the Above,’ I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine — who gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in that universal struggle — I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers- pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence.

Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things, seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond, was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.

Please help to protect our cultural heritage here on the North Kent Marshes