King Harry plans

SIR - I read last week's comments in the Herts Advertiser on the King Harry development with interest.

I have a conflict of local interests here - I have two sons looking for somewhere to live locally, but my late daughter is buried opposite the King Harry pub. The ongoing stagnation over the former playing fields development and King Harry Pub is frustrating for all locals, and has resulted in dereliction of the playing fields and traffic chaos around the King Harry mini-roundabouts.

However we think that we may have come up with a novel solution to this longstanding thorny traffic problem. In Kent they moved a Grade 2 listed barn bodily out of the way of the high speed rail route, but moving a whole building would have HSE in a cold sweat and is very slow and very expensive. The King Harry pub is listed but it is only the original house that is listed - all the outbuildings, WCs etc., were added later and detract from the original period house, which has been partly rebuilt following traffic accidents over the years.

The solution may be an agreement to restore the existing pub as a two-storey building on a single larger roundabout site, with a Pelican crossing or similar at street level for pedestrian access and connect up the footpath which simply ends at the top of St Stephens Hill. The pub would be located on an enlarged roundabout replacing the two mini roundabouts and traffic would be one way around the site which is much safer, with a short new section of road across what is currently the beer garden between King Harry Lane and St Stephens Hill. The car park and beer garden would be across the road. Obviously this would need to go out to consultation but could be a neater and inexpensive way out of a very long standing local conundrum?

PAUL SPELZINI

Potters Bar and St Albans Transport User Group