Thelma Ruby, a 99-year-old, has vowed to chain herself to a tree to stop a huge £200,000,000 expansion at the Wimbledon tennis championships.
The All England Club is set to build 39 new courts – including an 8,000-seat show court – on the adjacent former Wimbledon Park Golf Club after receiving a green light from the Greater London Authority in September.
Those plans will nearly triple the size of the current Wimbledon site and one elderly local resident, at 99 years of age, has decided to take drastic action.
Ruby, who worked as an actress and appeared in Coronation Street as well as on stage with Judi Dench, has lived on Wimbledon Hill Road for over three decades.
‘I have chosen the tree and I am going to chain myself to a tree so that one of those 800 trees maybe I can save,’ Ruby told the BBC. ‘Let them arrest me.
‘They admit to cutting down 300 trees, but experts tell us it is more like 800 trees. Cutting down healthy trees.
‘Wimbledon will be the top, where they are as they have always been and as they continue to be, without desecrating this glorious, glorious landscape.’
Earlier in the day, at a local protest, Ruby added: ‘I live in a flat overlooking this magnificent landscape, which was designed by Capability Brown.
‘The club talk about planting new trees, but can you imagine how long it would take for newly planted trees to give the benefits that we now get from mature trees?
‘I look several times a day out of the window and it gives me strength to carry on. It gives me inspiration.’
The All England Club insist they have conducted an extensive public consultation process since applications were first submitted.
Over 7,000 members of the public have attended tours and information events about the site.
The All England Club have also stated that their expansion plans will ‘create 27 acres of beautiful new parkland, free for the public to access and enjoy’.