THE PRIORY WALL
	The following letter sent to the Parish Council is re-printed by kind permission of Mr T. Sargeant of the Priory. Dear Mrs Bond, Re: St Osyth Priory -The Priory Wall Further to your request for an update on the repairs to the Priory wall, I feel that it would be beneficial to explain the series of events that led up to the closing of the footpath and the reasons for the delay in carrying out the works to date.  After our purchase of the Priory and the appointment of our Architect we had a detailed inspection by an experienced Structural Engineer, who is well known to English Heritage, on some areas of the property that our Architect had raised concerns about.  One of these areas was the Priory wall along Colchester  Road.  On his inspection, the Engineer advised that in his opinion parts of the wall were dangerously unstable and the footpath should be closed in the interests of public safety.  Our Architect immediately arranged a meeting with Tendring District Council, The Parish Council, Essex County Council and English Heritage on site to get agreement to the way forward.  At this meeting it was agreed that the footpath should be fenced off.  It was also agreed that a Listed Building consent and a Scheduled Ancient Monument consent would be needed to be granted before any works of the repair were carried out.  The Listed Building consent was required to demolish part of the wall before it could be re-built, the Scheduled Ancient Monument consent was required to carry out any repairs or alterations to the wall which is subject to Scheduled Ancient Monument designation.  It was also indicated that a grant was likely to be available from English Heritage.  Our Architect immediately set about preparing the applications.  The Schedule Ancient Monument application requires an enormous amount of information and detail because it is such an historic structure, which you can not repair without a consent i.e. single brick falls off, you can not replace it without a Scheduled Ancient Monument consent. The Listed Building Application was submitted on 31st August 2000, the Scheduled Ancient Monument application was submitted on 29th August 2000.  The former was approved on 28th February 2001 and the latter approved on 15th February 2001. We had made an application also for a grant from English Heritage for this work.  A generous grant offer came through on 15th February 2001, which offered to pay for 50% of the works, up to a maximum of £40,000 which was just over 50% of their estimate of the works including VAT.  However, there were 27 conditions attached to this offer.  One of these conditions was to obtain at least 3 unconnected and genuine tenders.  We also had to commence the work within 6 months of the offer and had to complete the works within 2 years. Our Architect immediately prepared a tender and sent it out to six people.  We were keen at this stage to have somebody else carry out this part of the restoration works due to the potential problems of inconvenience to the village and our desire to try and distance ourselves from this.  Most tenderers declined to tender for one reason or another so at this stage we were unable to satisfy the English Heritage conditions in the offer.  The Architect sent it out to a further 3 people.  We only have today three tenders and the average of the couple of bona fide tenders received were in the region of £100,000, more than the English Heritage estimate.  A very disappointing result after all our efforts. We had now hit the Autumn period, our grant offer had technically expired although English Heritage had been very good in indicating that they would try and extend the time limit. We also have another 2 problems with regards carrying out this work.  The first is that we must use lime mortar instead of cement mortar.  The lime mortar is not recommended to be used in the cold or wet months.  The second problem is that the Essex County Council Highways department only wanted the work, understandably so, carried out in the off-peak season as they had stipulated that we were required to shut off half the road and install traffic lights at the busy junction at the centre of the village. All these conditions and stipulations have not made this an easy job as effectively we have only a few months to carry out works which need to be of the highest standard and are costing nearly 5 times the value of the grant offer. Therefore we have now had further talks with Highways, who have been very sympathetic to our cause to try to rethink the traffic management issue.  We are trying to get English Heritage to allow us to carry out the works ourselves so that we can get all the repairs carried out this year. If all goes well with these discussions we may be able to confirm in the next few weeks the likely start and finish dates with details of how the traffic management issues are to be handled.   I would like to take this opportunity to apologise, on behalf of my family and I, to all members of the Parish that we have inconvenienced with our fencing, it has not been through the want of trying that this has carried on longer than we would have wished. However, I think that it is only proper to end on a more positive note and think to next year then this beautiful historic wall, which has been neglected for far too many years, will be fully restored and will once again have a positive affect on the character of our village. I will, as stated earlier, keep you informed as to the exact developments. Yours sincerely, Mr T.R. Sargeant