Yahoo News New plan for Jake Mangle-Wurzel's home and his grave in back garden
A new house will be built on the ‘eyesore’ site where eccentric late Huddersfield local character Jake Mangle-Wurzel lived - and where he is buried.
Jake, 83, died from skin cancer in August 2021. He wanted his remains to stay buried at his home in Peat Ponds, Salendine Nook, where he had lived for 50 years and arranged for his remains to be buried there. He built a grave himself, recycling a used gravestone from a woman who died in 1903.
A property developer Arif Sharif bought the site, however, and had plans to improve it. Sharif had already made unsuccessful plans to demolish Jake's fire-damaged home and build a four-bedroom detached house. This was rejected by Kirklees Council. There was also uproar from the community who wanted Jake’s grave to be preserved.
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The new plans show that the grave will be fenced off during construction and any excavation within the fenced off area will be carried out with hand tools. The plans state the new building on the site will have a ‘more traditional style’ than previous plans. Planning permission was granted on the new development on October 14, this year.
The planning statement says: “A planning application was submitted for a replacement dwelling on this site in in 2023 (Ref: 2023/91560), but this application was refused as the Council felt that the scale and modern design would introduce an unsympathetic, incongruous, and cramped form of development that would result in the overdevelopment of the site.
“As a result of that decision, the scale of the building has been reduced significantly and the style of the building has been amended to a more traditional style.”
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