REMEMBER the 1973/74 ‘winter of discontent’ with the three day working week?

That was when a preferred developer, following consultation with county council officers and a public exhibition of the short-listed schemes, was selected by the Dorchester Borough Council.

The proposed development would not have cost the council anything as the land was deemed to be their contribution.

In the event, the scheme was deferred by West Dorset District Council, which, following Local Government Reorganisation, came into being on April 1 1974.

Various permutations of the scheme have been revived over the years, and decades.

The Channel Tunnel was mooted many decades before it was built but it was eventually built.

It seems from the account in Tuesday’s Echo that the fruition of the full Dorchester scheme is as far away as everAs an aside, the architectural importance of the site has always been understood and was, or should have been, taken into account by the various developers who have come forward in the past 42 years.

Frank Greenslade

Crossways