Church Pond was originally part of the formal grounds of Park House. The picture above shows it around 1900.

With the descent of the Park House estate, Church Pond was allowed to degenerate and decay. No maintenance work had been carried out for 55 years when the pond was acquired by John Eaton in 1999. As can be seen from the pictures below, it was little more than a swamp!

At his own expense John started work to restore the pond, for the benefit of the village.

The works were extensive and took a great deal of time, money and enthusiasm to complete:

As well as clearing the Pond, John elevated the existing underwater causeway, to provide a walkway around the pond and to provide a way to carry out future maintenance work.

Unfortunately the local bureaucrats, who hadn’t taken any interest in the pond during the previous 55 years of neglect, now decided that all this improvement work was actually not a good thing.

In fact, now was actually the time when they could best interfere in the maintenance of the pond!

A long battle with the Council Planning department followed:

http://archive.eveshamjournal.co.uk/2002/9/19/249783.html

http://archive.eveshamjournal.co.uk/2002/9/23/249272.html

John was finally victorious at the end of 2005 when it was ruled that the Council’s enforcement action was out of time and the restorations could remain.

http://archive.eveshamjournal.co.uk/2005/12/1/388072.html

Who knows how much of our taxpayers money was wasted in the process, but at the end of the day the final results of John’s work were a simply stunning transformation:

 

(With special thanks to John Eaton)