I need metal bollard to protect my historic home from drivers

A WOMAN wants a permanent bollard installed outside her historic house to stop vehicles from crashing into it.

Sandie Harrow, who lives on the corner of Bell Street and Bell Lane, Henley, wants it installed a few metres from her front door to prevent lorries and vans from damaging her home.

She says this would deter drivers from turning left, from Bell Lane, down the narrow lane outside hers and her neighbours’ cottages, which often they can only achieve with multiple point turns.

Ms Harrow is also concerned that lorries making a blind turn are a danger to children walking to and from nearby Rupert House School and wants a “No left turn” sign installed at the exit of the lane.

Oxfordshire County Council has offered to install a plastic flexible bollard but would charge her £1,400 and Ms Harrow says that a solid metal one is needed anyway.

Ms Harrow, 78, who owns clothing boutique Stocks in Bell Street, said she first experienced the problem about 15 years ago and it had gradually become worse.

She said: “You have the main Henley-Marlow road and then you have the road in front of our little cottages where they allow huge lorries to come up and down.

“There was one lorry that was wider than a dust cart and you would not have got two fingers between the side of the lorry and the side of the houses. What does that do to houses with no foundations? My house is dated 1635.

“I don’t want to stop people using the lane, I want to stop large lorries doing it.”

Ms Harrow said her house had suffered a crack above the door frame from a lorry hitting it and her security cameras had also been damaged.

The house was also damaged in the Nineties when a vehicle crashed into it, while in another incident her car was hit by a school bus leaving her with a repair bill of thousands of pounds.

A number of plant pots she installed outside her house to discourage drivers from turning left on to the lane have been damaged.

Ms Harrow has now installed a bigger, heavier plant pot but recently this was moved by two delivery men. “I’ve had to take the initiative to protect the general public, which is just ridiculous,” she said.

“You could have a child going to school and there is only my pot to protect them. One day there is going to be a serious accident on that corner.

“This is one of the prettiest terraces in Henley with Grade II listed houses and the council wants to put in a plastic bollard that wobbles.”

A council spokesman said its plastic bollard would bend if it was hit by a vehicle and then right itself.

He added: “As the bollard is to protect the resident’s property, it is usual that we ask them to cover the cost.”