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Lisa Youngin St Ives
Lovers of Virginia Woolf’s novels have expressed anger about a development which will block a sea view from her former holiday home.
Permission was granted for a five-storey building in St Ives, Cornwall, of 12 apartments in front of Talland House in 2009 and work began last week ahead of a planning decision on amendments to the plan.
The view from the Grade-II listed house across St Ives Bay to Godrevy lighthouse inspired Woolf to write To the Lighthouse, among other works. Local author Patrick Gale called it a “preposterous piece of cultural vandalism”.
Windingbrook Developments said the scale of the plans remained “broadly the same” as the original scheme, even with proposed amendments.
Woolf spent annual summer holidays at Talland House with her family when she was a child between 1882 and 1894.
Gale said: “The view is indelibly associated with her throughout her life.
“The view will remain, but what is important is the association between that view and Talland House.
“St Ives should always be associated with Virginia Woolf.
“This view is really important and it needs preserving.”
Emeritus Professor Maggie Humm, vice chair of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain, said: “The view is in all her modernist novels. It’s in Jacob’s Room, The Waves and, of course, [one of her most famous works] To the Lighthouse.
“She even called her first Sussex home, Little Talland House, so it’s absolutely crucial to her.
“It’s absolutely crucial to Woolfians, who come from all over the world to visit this house.”
Windingbrook Developments has applied to Cornwall Council for permission for an updated planning proposal for what the firm has called Elvan House after the type of granite discovered on the site.
Managing director Richard Gartside said the revised scheme would deliver the same number of homes as the original permission granted in 2009 and “the overall scale and massing of the building would remain broadly the same”.
He said the site’s existing planning permission had been awarded a lawful commencement notice over a decade ago, so it remained valid.
He said, since then, there had been changes in building standards, environmental requirements and renewable technologies, as well as further development on neighbouring sites.
The updated proposals were in response to those changes, he added.
Talland House owner Pete Eddy said: “These developers, they’ve invested their money and rightly so, they need to get return from their investment.
“Yes, we certainly need more properties, but we need them out of town, we need them for affordable homes for people to live in, local people.
“The value to this view is the history behind it: it’s Virginia Woolf, it’s St Ives, it’s Cornwall, it’s literature; it’s everything to do with that book.”
The proposal is set to be discussed at a planning meeting at St Ives Town Council on Thursday.
Cornwall Council said it was unable to comment on a planning application before it had been determined.
However, the local authority is set to deliver a decision by Friday 6 February.
