Davies did not, however, become an Olympic medallist by letting the opposition
walk over her. Rousing a local councillor, she got the application called in
by Wiltshire council, which will consider it on November 30. She has a
barrister and planning consultant to argue her case. Is Bradford-on-Avon
cheering her on? Not quite. The man tending the geraniums outside the taxi
office (a wooden hut) sums up local opinion.

“This is annoying. I don’t believe in people arriving and overturning
decisions.” Snip, snip go the secateurs. “The town is full of old people.”
Anyone who knows Bradford-on-Avon will associate it with the ancient bridge,
whose 13th-century arches stride across the Broad Ford from which the town
takes its name. It seems more bridge building is in order if Davies is to
get on with the Bradfordians.

It’s ironic, really. Who wouldn’t want an Olympic star to join their
community, in this of all years? If Bradford-on-Avon can’t get to the London
Games, it knows someone who can. Besides, Davies isn’t an average blow-in.
Brought up in Plymouth, she is a West Country girl, and for 20 years she has
lived on the other side of the Cotswolds, near Cirencester.

With three children, she chose Bradford for its local schools and colleges.
Four-year-old Finley – a keen swimmer, inevitably – will go to the primary
school; towering 13-year-old Gracie, playing netball for the West of
England, has a place at the comprehensive, and rugby-playing 18-year-old
Elliott, 6ft 2ins, is considering university at Bath. Berryfield won’t be a
weekend home – Davies may have to travel to London for work – but escapes as
soon as she can.

“Friends said I should just walk away from it,” Davies confesses, “and forget
the deposit.” The sum of £200,000 is, admittedly, much to write off, (the
total cost of the property is £1.1m) but, because the Castlemead proposal
had not been revealed by Davies’s searches, it would probably have been
returned. But that isn’t her style. She is already committed, on behalf of
her children as well as herself. What rankles, though, is the unfairness.

There has been a cloak-and-dagger air to the proceedings, a feeling that
Castlemead has been sneaking something under the radar. Fairness is as
important for Davies, the householder, as it was for Davies, the sportswoman
(on her website, mention of her silver medal in the 1980 Olympics, in which
she finished just behind East Germany’s Petra Schneider, is qualified by the
comment that “Ms Schneider has since admitted that her performance was
heavily drug-enhanced”).

Now, she is exasperated to find that the planning rules do not appear be
applied equally to all players. When she applied to build a garage, she was
told that it had to look like a folly, whatever extra expense that involved,
because of its position near a Grade II listed building; but there seems to
be no requirement on the care home to fit in.

The issue has arisen, in part, because of the ding-dong history of the site.
Berryfield was built in the 1840s, a composition of Bath stone, Tuscan
columns windows and neo-Classical frou-frou; an early occupant was Ezekiel
Edmonds MP, who came from a family of rich clothiers. During the Second
World War, it became a maternity hospital, which later morphed into a
general hospital.

Some years ago, the NHS sold it, allowing Ashford Homes to restore the main
block, convert the stables and kitchen wing, and build three new dwellings –
an ideal use of a brownfield site which restores Berryfield to its original
use. But naturally enough, Bradford-on-Avon wasn’t happy about losing its
local hospital, and succeeded in securing a covenant, to the effect that any
redevelopment would include a new health facility.

Castlemead is now providing that facility, even if it won’t be a GP’s surgery
but a private, luxury care home that won’t be accessible to all locals. To
the town council, the Castlemead care home is better than no care home – and
it may fear that Castlemead will withdraw from Bradford-on-Avon altogether
if it is not allowed to build on the scale that it wants. When asked,
Castlemead declined to comment.

There is a view that developers like Castlemead are now being favoured because
of the economic state we’re in. Councils are prepared to make allowances to
encourage activity which they might not make in more prosperous times. Yet
the consequences of their leniency will be with us for a long time.

On the other hand, Davies is lucky that the planning application is being
heard now. Under the present rules, there is an explicit requirement for
planners to respect the settings of historic buildings. This has not been
included in the draft National Planning Policy Framework, although the
Historic Houses Association is campaigning hard that it should.

Indeed, Berryfield illustrates exactly why such a policy is necessary: not all
historic properties are buffered with the parks and gardens that would once
have kept the outside world at a respectful distance.

Before I leave Berryfield, it’s boots off: Davies shows me around her new
home, as yet unfurnished, and doesn’t want the pale carpets to be spoilt.
From the kitchen we descend to the basement, being tanked to provide storage
space and family rooms: I worry for Elliott’s head given the low ceiling
heights, but a teenager possibly wouldn’t worry about the absence of
windows. Davies must hope that the over-inflated scale of the Castlemead
project won’t mean that she has to live permanently underground.

Clive Aslet is Editor at Large of ‘Country Life’