The owners of one of the most treasured buildings

in Rochester are locked in a planning row with Medway Council.

Jonathan Wilmot and Robert Tucker say the council refuses to answer questions over a development that caused the destruction of part of a historic Tudor wall, once a major feature of Restoration House, their home in Crow Lane.

They are demanding to know what action Medway Council is taking to put right planning breaches they say have blighted their property.

They say requests for information have been met with a brick wall of silence. Mr Wilmot and Mr Tucker believe that a judicial review is the only way of getting answers to their questions.

A petition of 9,000 signatures calling for the restoration of the wall, and the removal of the homes that now obscure it, will be presented to Medway Council.

The alleged planning anomalies relate to a housing complex on a former brewery site adjacent to the Restoration House gardens. Developer Future Homes, now in administration, pulled down a 30ft section of the wall before Mr Tucker recognised its antiquity and called on them to stop.

The wall has since been spot listed by the secretary of state for the environment.

Now one of the newly built residential units partially blocks its view from the gardens of Restoration House, to which it once belonged.

Mr Wilmot said he was puzzled why English Heritage was never consulted about the development scheme.

Mistakes

“This is a site right in the heart of historic Rochester. You would have thought it essential that English Heritage should have been brought in.

“Had they been it’s doubtful if these dreadful mistakes would have been made in the first place.

“The wall is clearly marked on old maps. It is beyond belief that it has been missed by so many so-called experts.”

They also want to know how archaeologists failed to spot the historic significance of the wall, which was more than 100ft long. This wall is not exactly inconspicuous.”

A spokesman for Medway Council said: “Mr Wilmot and Mr Tucker have chosen to lodge proceedings for a judicial review on a site adjacent to their house at Restoration House.

“In the light of that approach to we will not be issuing any statement on the matter as it will be for the courts to decide if it proceeds that far”