Hey, You Can’t Drink that Tea Here
Visitors to the historical Delapre Abbey in Northampton, England have been banned from drinking their tea in the walled garden. The local council feels that they’re slurping their tea and clanking their china too loudly. According to Andrew Holden, planning officer of the Northampton Borough Council, they want the walled garden to remain tranquil. Apparently, the simple act of drinking tea disrupts the tranquility of the garden.
The council, who are the landlords of Delapre Abbey, have banished the tea drinkers to parking area in front of the building. This is not a pleasing thing to the Friends of Delapre Abbey, who operate the abbey tearoom. They use revenue from the tearoom to keep the abbey and its grounds in good repair. FoDA chairman Graham Walker feels that the action of the council is petty and will cause the tearoom to lose income.
This is particularly bad news since the Delapre Abbey tearoom just recently reopened after shutting down a while. The FoDA pays the council rent for their space, which includes the tearoom. Around Christmas last year the council and the FoDA decided to move from an “at will” to a lease arrangement. The council feared that the insurance company for the tearoom would consider the insurance invalid until they approved new plans.
Therefore, the council temporarily shut down the tearoom until they managed to get it straight. Now the insurance company has said it’s no problem. The tearoom is indeed insured and the FoAD can carry on as usual. Only now, the council thinks that it’s too noisy for the tea drinkers to take their tea and cake into the garden. Never mind the fact that the price paid for that tea helps maintain that garden.
Since their founding in 2001, the FoAD has a history of struggling with the Northampton Borough Council. At that time, the council had planned to sell parts of this beautiful piece of history to a developer. The local citizens established the FoAD to save the abbey and soon acquired a membership of more than 1600. They now collaborate with several agencies to preserve the abbey, but their tearoom remains an importance source of their income.
brewed on Feb 17th, 2010
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