Tuesday, 18 November 2008

Colchester's Heritage Assets

I can't say that I will shed any tears over the fact that Taylor Wimpey have financial difficulties, as I read in last night's Gazette. It is that company who own the land on which our unique Roman circus lies and who have refused to allow us to have full and free access to it. Their concern was profit, pure and simple, to enable future owners of the land to have a nice garden rather to enable visitors to Colchester to see the circus starting gates remains. Our council clearly don't appreciate the archaeological importance of this piece of land, otherwise they would have made a bigger fuss about it. The missed opportunity for tourism is immense. But then, Colchester has long failed to capitalise on its heritage assets. We can only hope now that whoever acquires Taylor Wimpey will have a better regard for the only Roman circus known in Britain and will allow us full unrestricted access to its remains.

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