Ilex Avenue article

When the Queen Mother was a child, she walked under the towering cathedral of oak trees while staying at nearby Goring Hall manison, home of the Bowes-Lyon family. The avenue is still impressive today, even though the trees have been thinned out by the forces of nature and council culling.

Squirrels dart from trunk to trunk, bats ping through the air at dusk and foxes criss-cross the area at night in search of prey. The dirt pathway is much used by walkers, people exercising their dogs, mountain bikers and horse riders.

In recent years they have had to contend with a slip road to Goring Hall, formerly a school but now a private hospital, dissecting the path, but it has had less impact than originally feared. However, any future plans to expand the hospital further should be resisted to maintain the quiet dignity of the area.

At the Ferring end of Ilex Avenue, rampant undergrowth hides the remains of a ruined flint farm building. To the south stands Goring Gap, a greenfield site consisting of farm- land and playing fields, separating Worthing from Ferring.

On Saturdays and Sundays during the winter, the area echoes to the shouts of footballers playing on two pitches off Fernhurst Drive. When summer arrives, families with picnics sit and watch the cricket, the perfect English pastime.

Developers are desperate to snap up the surrounding land, knowing one of the last strips of vacant real estate near the sea would be worth millions. But they will have a major fight on their hands because most residents want the gap preserved as a semi-rural retreat where they can sit and look out over fields of corn towards the sea, just as people did 200 years ago.

There is a conservation group' devoted to the preservation of Goring Gap and Ilex Avenue, which runs for nearly a mile from St Mary's Church, Goring, to Ferring.

The trees were planted by David Lyon, who bought the Gonng Hall estate in 1834. Before the Great Storm of 1987, there were a total of 245 trees lining the avenue. The tempest wreaked havoc, but despite the damage Worthing still boasts the best known avenue of Mediterranean evergreen Holm Oaks in Britain.

And we should do everything to preserve it.