Fulbeck Parish Councillor retires after 59 years of service, including a campaign to stop the dumping of nuclear waste in the village
A long-standing parish councillor who fought against the dumping of nuclear waste in his village has retired after 59 years.
Julian Fane, 84, stepped down from being a parish councillor after almost six decades of serving the village where his family have lived for over 400 years.
Although he wasn’t born in the village, Julian was brought up there and can trace his family’s time in the village all the way back to 1622.
He said: “The first member of the family who lived at Fulbeck Hall commanded Lincoln Castle for the Royalists in the Civil War. There’s quite a bit of history behind it.”
Julian is described as “a huge environmentalist” and was central to the campaign to stop the dumping of radioactive waste in Fulbeck Airfield back in the 1980s.
He has planted 50,000 trees on seven hectares of the Fulbeck Estate.
Even at the age of 82, he planted 400 trees during the winter in 2022 to honour the 400 years that his family had been in Fulbeck.
After leaving school and completing his national service in the Royal Lincolnshire Regiment, Julian went to Emmanuel College Cambridge to read agriculture.
He then spent about a year and a half in New Zealand and Australia, mainly working on farms but he also dug sewers in Sydney for a time.
“I think that was the best paid job I’d ever had,” said Julian.
“I came back to England in 1964, not quite knowing where my agriculture would take me.
“I rented a farm from my uncle who was then the owner of Fulbeck Estate. I was married in 1965 and it was that year that I joined Fulbeck Parish Council.
“After 12 years, my uncle died and I inherited Fulbeck Estate through a family trust then carried on farming until about 20 years ago when I retired, but I still live in Fulbeck.”
Julian has served as a parish councillor for 59 years, 14 of which were spent as chairman across two separate spells.
He continued: “In 1986, I suddenly found myself in the middle of Mrs Thatcher’s nuclear waste plans to bury five train loads of radioactive waste per week for 50 years on Fulbeck Airfield.
“So quite unexpectedly, one was involved with the campaign which ended on May 8, 1987. It was about 15 months that the village was campaigning to avoid nuclear waste being buried here.
“Inevitably people said we were just being ‘nimby’ (Not in my back yard), but in fact our little scientific group produced what they thought was the best national solution which strangely enough now is the present national policy, which is evolving all these years later.
“What our little group in Fulbeck suggested is now national policy is quite ironic in a funny way.
“Otherwise, the routine parish council things that have gone on, I’ve been part of that and part of Fulbeck because I’ve got deep roots here and I love the place.”
Julian’s daughter, Alix Fane, joined the parish council this year.
“It's quite nice that there’s another Fane there,” he added.
Alix said her father is “a pretty remarkable man”.
“The more I try to help [in Fulbeck],” she continued. “The more I realise what he has done.
“He quietly does the right things. He doesn’t look for recognition, he just does it.
“He gave the village hall to Fulbeck for a pound.
“He’s a fountain of all knowledge and has written a book on Fulbeck.”
Julian said that he will still be available to the new parish council, should they have any questions about the village.
He said: “When one is 84, if I had done another four years on the parish council I might have been getting a bit past it. I think there comes a time when you should stop.”
One of his main concerns about the village is the high average age and house prices, which means younger people who grew up in Fulbeck struggle to afford a house there.
He recounted one year where the school, village shop closed and resident parson left all within six weeks of each other, “which meant the whole make-up and ethos of the village changed for the worse.
“People are perfectly pleasant, but we are an extremely old village.”
Around 20 years ago, Julian proposed to build 12 new affordable houses in Fulbeck, but this was rejected.
One of Julian’s last ideas as a parish councillor was to commemorate this year’s coronation by letting the village verges grow out to let the wildflowers grow, which the new parish council are looking to take forward.
