I am overjoyed to announce that our campaign – under the patronage of Dame Judi Dench – has succeeded in obtaining a Judicial Review at the High Court for Tower Hamlets Council’s decision to permit Crest Nicholson’s redevelopment of the former London Chest Hospital, which includes digging up the more-than-four-hundred-year-old Bethnal Green Mulberry Tree.

This means we can proceed to a full hearing if we can raise £10,000. We are offering rooted cuttings of Shakespeare’s Mulberry Tree (as rescued by David Garrick in 1770) to everyone who contributes £100 or more to our legal fund. This is a once in a lifetime chance to acquire a cutting of Shakespeare’s Mulberry and enjoy a living connection to the world’s greatest writer.

Last year, thanks to the support of you – the readers of Spitalfields Life – we employed top environmental lawyers Harrison Grant to draw up the grounds for Judicial Review. We submitted these to the council to give them the opportunity to withdraw their decision but they refused. Consequently, we have no choice but to go to the High Court if we are to save the historic Bethnal Green Mulberry and stop this bad development.

Under planning law, ‘wholly exceptional reasons’ are required to sacrifice a veteran tree of the protected status of the Bethnal Green Mulberry. Yet Tower Hamlets Council gave permission for the tree to be dug up – which will almost certainly kill it – for the sake of a bog-standard block of luxury flats.

This is part of an overblown development with an unacceptably low level of ‘affordable’ flats in which the social housing will be accessed by a separate ‘poor gate.’ As well as the Bethnal Green Mulberry, the developers want to dig up a large number of mature trees on the site, blighting the Victoria Park Conservation Area for generations to come.

The pandemic has taught us we must show respect for Nature and in future we should avoid building densely-crowded housing.

CLICK HERE TO SAVE THE BETHNAL GREEN MULBERRY

The appalling development proposed by Crest Nicholson in the Victoria Park Conservation Area

Dame Judi Dench is patron of our scheme to Save the Bethnal Green Mulberry

Nurses dance around the Bethnal Green Mulberry in celebration of its new growth in 1944 after it was hit by a bomb (Courtesy of the Royal London Hospital Archives)

This Mulberry is from a cutting of William Shakespeare’s Mulberry rescued by David Garrick when the tree planted by Shakespeare in 1610 was cut down in 1770.

Click here to read my feature in The Evening Standard about the scandal of the Bethnal Green Mulberry

Click here to read my feature in The Daily Telegraph about the scandal of the Bethnal Green Mulberry

Read more here about the Bethnal Green Mulberry

The Fate of the Bethnal Green Mulberry

The Bethnal Green Mulberry

A Letter to Crest Nicholson

A Reply From Crest Nicholson

The Reckoning With Crest Nicholson

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