£15m plan for derelict silo site and 100 years of fashion shop: Memories from 1995 and 2006

In our regular On This Week column, we look back through the pages of the Lynn News from May 5 – 11, 2006 as well as a picture from May 1995…The new owners of the derelict silo site on Lynn riverside are planning to spend £15 million transforming it into a waterfront showpiece and tourist attraction. Their plans include a luxury hotel, homes, small retail units and an 11-storey tower which will create a new landmark on the South Quay. The developers see the scheme as Lynn’s answer to Canary Wharf and the London Eye and the perfect blueprint for the marina proposals along the same stretch of river frontage. Viva Investment Corporation hopes to be able to start dismantling the silos and the buildings on the one-acre site in early autumn. Providing West Norfolk planners agree, and after the silos have been dismantled, it would be possible to have the houses and apartments finished towards the end of next year and to have the hotel operating early in 2008.Hunstanton’s community centre could soon be bought by West Norfolk Council, but town councillors are suspicious of the motives behind the move. Town councillors say they were told by the county council that they could take over the centre for free, but they feel they have been pipped at the post by the borough council, which has offered the county council £5,000 for the hall. There are also concerns about the future of the building being in the hands of the borough, rather than the town.

Plans to build scores of new homes near Downham Railway Station look set to take a step forward. West Norfolk’s development control board is being recommended to approve in principle a scheme for a builder’s yard, on land between Railway Road and Richmond Road, where 100 homes could eventually be built. Already in place is the Bennett Homes plan for the 7.9-acre building yard site in Railway Road, to the east of land where outline planning permission is already in place for 134 homes, including community facilities and shops.Gaywood St Faith’s Church is set to mark the centenary of one of its greatest benefactors and launch a £250,000 restoration appeal. It was under the leadership – and thanks to the generosity – of Archdeacon Harry Radcliffe, when he started his 39-year ministry as Rector of Gaywood in 1906, that the last major renovation and extension of the church was carried out in 1926. But now the church is leaking so badly in places during heavy rain, water runs down the inside walls. The tower parapet is crumbling and church leaders are appealing to local people to “help plug the £250,000 leak”. Angry bowls players claim they have been forced to leave the North Wootton pub green they have used for more than 60 years. The House on the Green team walked out saying that the pub landlord had reneged on a deal to allow a fence to be put up to stop children playing on the green, despite already having a children’s play area. The club had spent £1,500 bringing the green up to top condition in the run-up to the new season. The landlord said he felt the club failed to support his pub despite having free use of the green.New equipment for treating patients with eye problems has been bought by Lynn’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital with a grant of more than £74,000 from the hospital’s charity funds. The new equipment will be used to examine and check eye conditions, including cataracts and glaucoma, and includes two lasers to measure and record precise details of retinas and optic nerves.When an elderly cancer patient was being collected by ambulance from his home in Littleport Terrace, Lynn, callous and insensitive drivers unable to get by and who had flouted the rules by using the no-access road as a short cut, revved their engines and beeped their horns. It left the patient’s traumatised wife crying in the street. A neighbour said: “It’s very sad in this day and age that people can be so heartless.” Although some new no-access signs were installed in January, residents claim that many motorists still use the street as a “rat run” to cut through to Morrison’s supermarket.Staff from Swaffham’s Sacred Heart Convent School were kept busy looking after eight of the girls who went down with a flu-like virus on a ski trip to Italy. Problems began on the outward journey when one girl showed signs of a virus, which soon spread to others in the confined environment of the coach. A sick bay for the girls was set up in the family-run hotel where the party was staying.