Sainsbury’s development at Clifton’s – Good or Bad for Knaphill village centre?

On Tuesday 18 October 2011, the Woking Borough Council Planning Department granted Sainsbury’s extended opening hours for 18 months (reviewable) with regard to their application to develop the Clifton’s site in High Street, Knaphill. Effectively this means that the development of the site will go ahead from the Spring of 2012 despite hundreds of objections by local residents.

However, many other people think that this will be a good thing for the centre of the village.

Others feel that it would have been more advantageous if a separate retailer such as Lidl or Iceland for instance took over the premises. Some residents claim that this would have then given local consumers a much wider choice of products and price rather than more of the same from Sainsbury’s who have also had their application to extend their main supermarket in Redding Way, Knaphill approved by WBC.

What do YOU think?

Welcome back….

Over the festive period we have been reviewing www.theknaphillian.com and the feasibility of continuing with our WordPress page. It was felt that there was too much repetition between our main site and what is posted here and this also compromised consistency, particularly with opinion. However,

Support your favourite Knaphill local

The Crown, Knaphill

Our village pubs are a very important part of Knaphill’s fabric, but why is The Crown so special when it comes to talking about our local pubs? – Surely there are good and bad issues at Knaphill’s other watering holes that perhaps deserve a mention

Living with urban foxes in Knaphill

Many of us have encountered a local fox at close quarters and have probably been quite thrilled by the experience. But given the bad press urban foxes have received in the news, should we be more wary? Evidence that a brazen fox wandered into Knaphill Food & Wine in the High Street at around 10pm on Thursday 15 September highlights just how their behaviour is changing as they adapt to modern society. Much of their own habitat has been churned up by developers. The fox then calmly walked away after it was disturbed by the shop’s proprietor Jas Sehbat.

The Complainers – Locals hit back

Knaphill has had its fair share of anti-social behaviour in the past and quite rightly each case has been dealt with appropriately by the local authorities or the police. But unfortunately, there are those who complain, simply for the sake of complaining. The Knaphill Working Men’s Club,

Fancy a walk – why not explore local wildlife?

We at The Knaphillian are proud members of the Surrey Wildlife Trust. To a keen eye, wildlife is all around us with rare and indigenous and non-indigenous species always evident – that is, if you know where to look!

Knaphill’s border with Bisley & West End Commons and Sheets Heath are covered in scrub and secondary woodland.

The silent anger down on the farm

Those who run Ponies bred for the disabled at Brookwood Farm in Corresbrooke Way, Knaphill are very sad that they will have to sell off their ponies due to Woking Borough Council’s controversial move to allow CALA Homes to build new houses on the green belt land.

Hilary Mantel & ‘goodbye’ to all that…

In February the 2009 Man Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel announced  that she was leaving her £595,000 flat at the old Brookwood Hospital in Knaphill - the Victorian asylum where she wrote her best selling novel Wolf Hall.
 

‘Giving up the gargoyles’ as she put it to Helen Davies in the Sunday Times, the odd-ball Mantel has now swapped her Florence Court home for sea views