Thankfully there’s a rather good cafe in Eccleshall. Over the past few months I’ve been visiting a potential site not far from Eccleshall in Staffordshire. In fact probably around twenty Order members, including Bhante, have wandered around the 304 acres considering the pros and cons both on site and in the cafe. After sipping his tea Bhante described the site as ‘idyllic’ and I thought it the best site we were likely to find.

It’s not a site I would have imagined championing but the lovely countryside and the ideal location just a few miles from a motorway junction in the middle of the country with the potential for new buildings made it almost ideal. So over the last few months we have been exploring the possibilities.

To cut a rather long story short we found ourselves trying to encourage the planners at Stafford Borough Council and English Heritage to embrace what we thought of as a well-considered creative response to a derelict and long neglected site. We submitted a 29 page pre-application enquiry and had many conversations before concluding this week that we were going to give up and move on. It became increasingly clear that we would be facing endless battles which would cause delays and waste our precious resources. It’s rather sad to let go of this one as it could have worked so well for us but perhaps a better site is just waiting to be discovered. It won’t be in Staffordshire though!