Yesterday was D-Day for Tim Heath, the ‘Chairman’ of the Blake Cottage Trust and also the ‘Chairman’ of the Blake Society. The two titles make him sound like a trustworthy man, so let me enlighten you quickly.
For a start he is NOT a worker, his brothers, both hardworking doctors with families, told me that he hadn’t done a days work in his life. He hasn’t needed to because he’s lived in his parents’ house. Now if everything has gone to plan, his long years of squatting in that house have finally come to an ignominious end. His older brother told me some weeks ago that on May 31st he would finally be evicted from the house, if necessarily by bailiffs. I don’t know yet whether or not that happened, but I have sent a message to his brother asking for news.
For people in Felpham and elsewhere, who worked hard to raised as much money as they could to buy Blake’s Cottage in the first place, the news of his eviction from his family home brings a problem with it. He hasn’t any money, he’s never done any work, he hasn’t any savings, he doesn’t own any property and certainly NOT Blake’s Cottage, which is officially ‘held in trust for the nation’, by the five man team of the Blake Cottage Trust.
But I have a horrible sneaky feeling that, that is where he will head now that he is homeless. He may not own the place, but he has a key to it. Somebody in the Felpham Village Conservation Society might try to discover from the Charities Commission who oversee societies like the Blake Cottage Trust, whether he has any right at all to live in the cottage. He has a key to the front door but he doesn’t own the place and if he starts to live in it illegally, someone in the conservation society might set the wheels in motion to remove him.
I will be very interested to know what happens and if I hear anything germane to this situation, I will report it on this blog.
Watch this space.
Beryl Kingston Blog 