A MEMORIAL to the late Cardinal Basil Hume to be put up in Ampleforth has been described as something out of the Ground Force TV gardening show.

The £50,000 wooden cross is to be brought from London to Ampleforth Abbey, where the leading Roman Catholic churchman was Abbot for more than a decade.

The abbey plans a high-profile celebration when the 50ft cross is put up beside the main road into the village in the North York Moors national park.

But the plan has divided locals, with one describing the monument as more appropriate to Alan Titchmarsh's Ground Force programme than to Ampleforth.

Councillors have questioned how appropriate it would be to bring the cross from its present home, outside Westminster Cathedral, into the abbey grounds, which are also home to the famous Ampleforth College public school.

Approval for the move was only given on the casting vote of moors park planning committee chairman Coun Philip Shaw at a recent meeting.

The dark-red cross has a galvanised steel scroll at the top and is set in wooden decking.

Ampleforth parish representative Pat Chandler said: "I can see the point of it being up here.

"But you just wonder if grey wood decking has something more to do with Ground Force. I loathe it."

County Coun John Fletcher said he was concerned the cross would be more suitable in an urban setting than on a Ryedale hillside.

He said: "I have some reservations. The artist who designed it did so in the context of its being in a piazza."

National park authority chairwoman Helen Schroeder said she would not be unhappy to refuse planning permission.

Other councillors fear its roadside site could distract drivers and be a hazard to motorists.

But a spokesman for the abbey said it was only right that the cross be relocated at Ampleforth from its temporary home outside Westminster Cathedral.

He said: "The local community has a particular stake in Cardinal Hume's commemoration.

"An important part of the reasoning behind siting the cross so prominently by the road running through Ampleforth has been to give expression to the strong sense felt by local people that this exceptional man belonged to each of us in the locality in a personal way."

Updated: 11:50 Monday, February 18, 2002