‘When I saw it I was appalled’: row over modern fountain splits Yorkshire town down middle

Militant pensioner says a majority want a traditional feature but project leaders call row an attack on democracy

Ilkley is an affluent, leafy town, one point of Yorkshire's Golden Triangle" where average house prices top 560,000. Last year it was named the best place to live in the UK, and its tree-lined streets hark back to the days when it was a spa town where wealthy Victorians took the waters, Charles Darwin among them.

Now the peace and quiet of this favourite municipality of the middle-classes is being rocked by a row between the, often older, traditionalists in the town and a charitable body of volunteers who were hoping to give it just a flick of a modern makeover. The fight centres on the proposed design of a fountain, to be built at the heart of the town at the junction of its two wide shopping avenues.