The future of a Niton pottery has been saved – after plans to turn the shop were withdrawn following a public backlash.
Plans were submitted to turn the Tregear Pottery studio on Niton High Street into a three-bed bungalow, by Mrs J. Phillips who is care of the property, as the lease of the shop was supposedly ending in the summer.
Despite being occupied by the popular pottery, planning documents said there was no demand for retail floor space and Niton generates a housing need.
More than 30 objections were submitted to the application on the Isle of Wight Council’s planning register before the plans were withdrawn from consideration.
An employee of the pottery studio said in their objection:
“To turn this building into a residential property would be a grave waste and would negatively affect the village itself, local people and tourists alike, who all visit the pottery.”
Another said to brand the pottery as a former butchers shop was ‘misleading’ as it stopped trading ten years ago and has since been occupied by Tregear Pottery who have grown from ‘strength to strength’.
They argue the business, like others on the Island, “should be protected, nurtured, encouraged and valued not debased by seemingly deliberate inaccuracy and skewed words.”
One objector, whose father built the shop in 1939, said it has been a retail outlet ever since and now, trading as the pottery, is an integral part of the shops in Niton and should remain so.
With the pottery said to be keen to continue to operate in the village, another objector said it would be a devastating loss if the plans were to go ahead. They said:
“It is a real asset drawing in visitors and islanders to buy its internationally recognised individually crafted items.”
A withdrawal letter was uploaded today (June 3) to the register, addressed to planning agent Phil Salmon, confirming the request to pull the application.
About right too. This was a shameless, selfish and shabby attempt to cash in on the lucrative housing market. It was very interesting to read the planning application and the assertion that it was a ‘former butchers’. It was in fact, after the butcher left, a Delicatessen for a couple of years. The applicant should have known this for she was the Delicatessen. Why no mention of that? Is it because that business folded? A little bit of an embarrassing chapter in the buildings history?
It was an attempt to downplay the premises as failing or borderline derelict. A ruse that fooled nobody!
Tregear Pottery has been very successful over the past 10 years and shows no sign of slowing down. Apart from the potter having just returned from massively life changing surgery and the potential devastation that Covid could have wreaked on the business, in essence the business is seemingly in a very good position. It’s wares are nationally and internationally renowned. Well done Niton for warding off this disingenuous attempt to tear a hole in the community.
Boo! to the buildings owners who were somehow mistakenly reported as the carers of the property.