Flower sellers fume over Ludlow Buttercross ban

Traders said they have been brightening up the 18th century Buttercross building for decades – but have now been told they must stop for health and safety reasons.

Ludlow Town Council said the site on Broad Street is part of a "changing environment".

With the upper floor above set to open as the town's new museum venue in the coming months, traders must move the plants to allow access to the lift behind.

Christine Link, 56, of The Gobbett Nursery that has traded there for 30 years, said she would rather chain herself to the ageing pillars of the historic building than give way.

She said: "We've been here for 30 years, my husband Gordon and I and his father before him.

"We've always displayed our plants on the steps of the Buttercross.

"I've been doing this for donkey's years, and no one has ever tripped over plant.

"I feel I need to fight this because this is our livelihood.

"If that involves me chaining myself to the pillar of the Buttercross, then I will do."

She said not being allowed to display their plants on the steps would hurt trade so much they may have to leave Ludlow altogether and look for somewhere else to sell.

Gina Wilding, clerk of Ludlow Town Council, said the town council had offered an area in front of a door to the side of the stepped entrance to use for displays.

"We are trying to be reasonable," she said. "We are trying to accommodate for everyone who might use that space.

"But it is a changing environment."

She said an access ramp was set to be put in, legally required to fill most of the stepped entrance, and with visitors coming through likely to increase dramatically, traders could not expect to simply carry on doing what they had been doing when it was simply a market area in exactly the same way.

She said the town council had debated the changes, with the number of traders allowed under the Buttercross agreed to be cut from four to two in 2014.

Gobbett Nursery had been allowed to stay, but traders had to balance their use of the area with the needs of people wishing to access the museum, she said.

The new town museum has been long-awaited in Ludlow, following the closure of Shropshire Council-run museum space in Ludlow Assembly Rooms in 2014.

Ludlow Town Council has overseen a renovation of the disused upstairs of the Buttercross building, and the lift was installed more than a year ago.

Many of the exhibitions at the site are now in place and ready to go, but the new museum has yet to be given an official opening date.