Austrian Count takes revenge on local cricket club

Horses for courses: Konrad Goess-Saurau calls stumps
13 April 2012

For 23 years the members of Winterbourne Bassett Cricket Club have taken pride in maintaining their slice of summer sporting tradition.

Once a piggery field, the cricket square has been faithfully groomed and tended and each season spectators gather on the verandah of the wooden pavilion to watch the game unfold.

But the club has played its final match after meeting its most formidable opponent yet, an Austrian Count by the name of Konrad Goess-Saurau.

The count, who established the Marlborough Cup horse race, wanted to use part of the field for a housing development.

He set up the Winterbourne Basset Village Trust to administer the land, which handed down an ultimatum to cricketers to support its plans or face eviction. The club refused and the planner rejected the scheme for 12 houses.

Now the club, which has invested an estimated £100,000 in developing a clubhouse, electricity, water and storage facilities, as well as pitch maintenance, has been given it marching orders.

Officials have been told to comply with the terms of the £700 a year lease, they must return the land to its former state, removing all the signs of their hard work.

The trouble began in 2003 when the 54-year-old count, who owns a neighbouring 4,500-acre estate, announced his intention to sell part of the land through his company Everset Holdings.

Four trustees, who live in the village were appointed to administer and maintain the land with the agreement that ten per cent of the estimated £1 million selling price would be returned to the village for recreational development.

If permission was not granted, they said the village would lose the use of the field. At the time villagers were angered by the 'big stick approach'.

And last night with that threat a reality, villagers and cricketers alike said an important part of local life had been lost.

Des Clarke, chairman of the 40 member club, said: "Count Goess-Saurau wanted us to support a planning application which would have split the cricket pitch. We refused.

"It was turned down by planners anyway and a year later he terminated our lease. The Count gave us notice. We have now just played our last match.

"We have always played at this field. We have developed it and considerably improved it. We are desperately upset because of all the work we put in - it is now all destroyed. We must have spent nearly £100,000 pounds out of our pockets and it's all down the drain."

The pitch was a piggery field' when the club first started to use it in 1983. A timber pavilion on a concrete pad with electricity, showers and toilets was built, along with a brick-built storage garage and a septic tank.

Every summer visiting teams come to play at the field, and the club is in the Swindown and District mid-week league. On Wednesdays evenings there is a youth coaching.

Club captain Ian Sharpe, who has been involved with the club since it began, said the club, which had a yearly lease, had initially been asked to move before the season began, but after taking legal advice it was allowed to remain until the end of the season and now has three months to clear out.

A special President's eleven versus Captain's eleven was played on Saturday with members past an present gathering to say farewell

"It's a very difficult time and there were very mixed emotions on Saturday," said Mr Sharpe. For me personally it's a very sad time, a lot of sweat and hard work has gone in over the years so to lose the ground is hard.

"At the end of the game I stood and looked at the field and thought 'this is the last time I will play cricket here'.

A villager, who did not want to be named, said: "I think it's a terrible shame that a well established village cricket club can be turfed out in this day and age for no particular reason.

"We want more green areas for our children as well as houses. there has to be some balance. This is awful."

The cricket club is not the only group to bear the brunt of what would appear to the count's anger. It is not clear what will happen to the land now. But last night a spokesman for Kennet District Council said there had been no planning application since 2004 when the application was made for 12 houses by the village trust.

Two years Phil and Lesley Catling, who live in a 19th century chapel next to the cricket field were overjoyed when the council threw out the plans.

But far from being the end of the matter, they returned home one evening to find a 6ft steel fence had been erected around their home in apparent revenge.

The couple claimed the count warned them the fence would be removed only if they refrained from objecting to further planning applications. Last night it still remained. None of the trustees were available for comment.

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