Rebuilding the George Hotel in 2009/2010

Just for the record, here's an image of the old George, taken from more or less the same place as Isabella's below. Picture by Paul Gillard. .
July 3rd 2010: "Here is a picture of The George being thatched, taken today from the church tower. Please add it to the archive of photos of the rebuilding on the Hatherleigh website if you want. Isabella Whitworth." Thanks Isabella.
June 22nd 2010: ...and thatching stops, as another fire breaks out. (Blame it on the George ghosts?) picture by Steve Cook
June 2010: thatching starts ... picture by Steve Cook
May 6th 2010: the roof goes on!
April 22nd 2010: It's still rising!
April 9th 2010: Details of the lease for the new George are online here. (Enter 'Hatherleigh' once you reach the page, and then log on). There are two brochures available. It's described as a 'newly built coaching inn'. The brochures suggest that opening time will be October. At 14.50 presumably ;-)
March 21st 2010: The equinox on Saturday marked not only the first day of spring but the moment when The George finally rose above the hoardings like the proverbial Phoenix. Here's the view from just down into Bridge Street ... ... and here, looking downhill from the top of the Square.
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March 15th 2010: A review of progress, from another angle
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Update Feb 18th 2010: After a few hiccups S&N report progress being made again with the re-build. Here are a few of the latest images they've sent us, including one with the site still covered in snow. The large image is roughly where things have got to today. Concrete's been poured we hear, so there may have been a little more progress than appears. We also hear they've found a well in the old courtyard (mid left??) and we have asked for details.
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Update Jan 28th 2010: S&N Project Manager tells us that although work started in November/December things got held up by the big freeze. As a result the rebuild is behind schedule a bit. But things could catch up: an ETA of September/October 2010 is deemed possible - depending how much time can be made up. "We will know more once watertight," says Richard. We've asked if we can go on site to take photos at intervals but Health and Safety prevents that. However, Richard sent a couple of shots from December - see one, right. More recent ones are promised.
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Jan 20th 2010: Alan Toogood sent us this pic, taken on December 4th 2009, showing early groundworks with some blocks laid (bottom left).
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Nov 10th 2009: This was the view from the Square today.

Previous planning stuff

June 11th 2009: True to their word, owners Scottish and Newcastle are undertaking a rebuild of the George Hotel following the destruction of Xmas 2008. This page follows the re-build, starting with the planning process.

Initial plans were submitted to West Devon Council in May 2009. To find the proposals, The West Devon web site will show you the full proposals in full and we recommend you go there to check what is being considered at time of writing, including comments already being received back from various sources. Do a Planning Search on Planning ID: 12916/2009/OKE.

You'll find our own comments in the old news sections of this site. We have some serious reservations that we hope S&N will listen to. Despite our best efforts to help we've unfortunately been funnelled to their Press Office, which does not understand what is taking place. Our feelings are summed up in the above two pictures. On the left is a flavour of what was there; on the right is a flavour of what is being proposed, from S&N's own 'mood boards' that have been on show in the Community Centre. The boards include two floor plan sketches from those mood boards as below:

• The Ground Floor
• The First Floor

All legal decent honest and truthful comments about the proposals can find an outlet here. email us if have something to say. (We reserve the right to edit submitted material). And, just to be clear, we welcome 'in favour' comments and feedback as well.

June 9th, from Tony Conner who lives right next door to the site: "My wife and I were dismayed on seeing the plans, as the proposed extra bedrooms and dining room mean having more windows overlooking our property.The original building had just four small windows at the top end of the NW wall; now it's proposed to add a further four .Before the fire we were able to enjoy a certain amount of privacy but all this would be lost, with the residents of the George being able to look directly into our rooms. It seems to us that that at no time has the designer or the brewery considered the the people involved with the rebuild. We live here, so why should we suffer the loss of privacy and the lowering of the house value? My wife and I with our neigbours were the only people to be affected by the destruction of the hotel. In fact work is still being carried out to this day on our property and not once has any one from the brewery contacted us to find out how we were and if we had any problems as regards fire damage to our homes. Around the site there are hoardings and scafolding - some on our land - but not once have we been asked if it was alright. We have given every help possible in order that it could be rebuilt as near as possible to the original, but if these plans are accepted we cannot see how we can look forward to its completion." (ED: Tony has already written a model letter of objection to the Council, which you'll find on-line at the above West Devon web site reference.)

DO YOU HAVE STRONG FEELINGS OR RESERVATIONS ABOUT THE PROPOSALS? We advise anyone with objections to the S&N proposals to formally respond to West Devon Planners. Writing a letter is easy - don't lose sight of the facts and keep emotion to a minimum and your voice will be heard. Under normal circumstances planning objections should stick to obvious problems and issues (like windows, sizes etc), but in this case the building is of such importance - both historically and from the community point of view - that we think 'higher level' subjective ciriticism is justified. We even think that long time visitors should provide feedback. Personally, we think the lack of function space is the biggest issue, together with the risk of 'city chic' taking over.