The battle for the future of Shropshire’s landscape has now reached the critical stage where the concept of ‘Localism’ – that favourite word of Eric Pickles and David Cameron – will be tested. The highly controversial and unwelcome turbine planning application at Upton Cressett is being voted on in the evening of Monday, July 8th by Morville Parish Council – whose residents will be primarily affected by the turbines.
Since local parish councillors are elected representatives of the local community, I sincerely hope that there will not be a ‘secret ballot’ at the Morville Parish meeting on Monday, July 8th, which is expected to be a packed village hall.
No issue in my lifetime living in Shropshire has more angered the local community that the idea of these turbines being imposed on Shropshire without proper local democratic consent. As in Parliament, where elected MPs voting records are transparent and accountable, the parish council members must be accountable to the local community by the way they choose to vote.
A week before, in the villlage hall of Chetton on Tuesday, 2nd July, the community of Chetton voted to reject the turbines at Upton Cressett – an important round one victory for local democracy. The atmosphere at the packed Chetton meeting which I attended was highly charged with standing room only, except for the turbine applicant farmer Clive Millington – sporting his trademark tan and neatly clipped goatee beard – slunk off before the meeting started and then later sat in a black 4 X 4 vehicle outside the village hall with another ‘conflicted’ farmer who was also a parish council member, as they both waited for the parish council vote to be announced.
After the vote, I wrote the following letter to our database of the ‘Friends of Upton Cressett’ asking for help and support for our campaign to prevent the turbines desecrating the Shropshire landscape. This followed from a similar (albeit much shorter !) letter for support across the county – and beyond – from Dr Katherine Swift, sent out last week to the ‘Friends of the Dower House Gardens’ at Morville Hall.
Another reason for my letter being sent out to the Friends of Upton Cressett was that – as stated below – Share Energy and Crida – see emails from Jon Halle below to his Eco-Wind fanatics which prove this – have been busy trying to muster as many pro-Crida ‘support’ comments on the Shropshire Plannng Portal as they can by emailing the Green Eco-Army of rent-a-comment Pro Wind activists across the country who have no interest in the landcape, beauty or heritage of Shropshire.
For the last week, the Shropshire Planning Portal has been swamped by comments from eco-activists from Scotland and elsewhere who are simply trying to play a numbers game and who have never visited Bridgnorth – let alone Upton Cressett – or have any idea why the Shropshire Hills are such an iconic part of the rural English landcape.
Dear Friend of Upton Cressett,
Upton Cressett is under full attack. The Shropshire Hills around us the Bridgnorth area are now being aggressively targetted by subsidy funded (that’s us paying through increased energy bills) wind energy ‘developers’ and financially motived landowners who want to turn the historic skyline around Bridgnorth into what developers call a ‘wind turbine landscape’.
These towering industrial turbines –each over twice the height of Nelson’s column and specialising in regularly killing the sort of rare and migrating birds (such as curlews) who regularly fly over the hamlets of Chetton, Morville and Upton Cressett – will change the face of Shropshire forever.
As a lover of heritage and the unspoilt beauty of the ancient English countryside, we need to fight back – before it is too late.
I am writing to you as somebody who has visited the ancient hamlet of Upton Cressett in Shropshire; or as a personal friend who knows our ancient hamlet. Described by Shropshire Magazine as ‘one of the secret jewels of the county’ – Upton Cressett has been open to visitors since the 1970s and we were the proud winners in 2011 of the Hudson’s Heritage Award for ‘Best Hidden Gem’ heritage tourism destination in the country.
If you care about Shrosphire’s heritage, countryside and landscape for future generations, please register as a supporter of our campaign at the Stop Bridgnorth Wind Farm website at www.stopbridgnorthwindfarm.org.
As a supporter, you will be updated on all developments and future meetings. Also – as detailed below – even MORE IMPORTANTLY, please send a brief OBJECTION comment on the Shropshire Council Planning Portal. It takes less than a minute and details of the link are below at the bottom of this email.
Or, if it is easier, just send a brief email to the Case Planning Officer, Miss Dyanne Humphries, who will forward the email onto the portal. Her email is [email protected]
The turbines will be visible from as far as Wolverhampton. Anybody driving out of Bridgnorth on the A458 towards Shewsbury or towards Ludlow or living anywhere around Bridgnorth, Chetton, The Down, Criddon, Stapeley, Upton Cressett, Meadowley, Underton, Tasley, Aldenham and Monkhopton will have their lives impacted. Some residents are less than 650 metres away from the proposed turbines – a distance that is illegal in Scotland.
The proposed turbines at Upton Cressett, our ancient and historic hamlet in the Shropshire Hills above Morville, would be the first in the county. If successful, they are likely to initiate an invasion of further applications with the Bridgnorth area becoming a ‘turbine hotspot’ as the industrial wind capital of Shropshire. This follows on from the desecration of Scotland, Wales and Monmouthshire that has so blighted tourism and local economies, not to mention devastate the quality of life for local residents.
The last month alone has seen applications for five approx 80m high turbines around the Bridgnorth area. The only way we can stop them is by writing to Shropshire Council, Philip Dunne, our local MP, as well as local County Councillors, so that the voice of the real Shropshire community – as well as countryside and heritage lovers elsewhere – can be heard.
I have lived at Upton Cresset for 40 years and no issue has upset the local community more than these menacing and unwelcome turbines. Described by Sir Simon Jenkins, chairman of the National Trust, as an ‘Elizabethan gem’, Upton Cressett, its Gatehouse and the Norman church of St Michael – with three Grade 1 listed buildings and three Scheduled Ancient Monuments (all within approx 1600 metres of the proposed turbines) is one of the most heavily protected heritage sites in the West Midlands.
We have been welcoming schools and visitors for tours and home-made teas since the 1970s.We enjoy giving concerts in the Norman church as well as putting on Shakespeare plays in the gardens. Upton Cressett is used as a venue for the Wenlock Poetry Festival and the Wenlock Festival, with the Gatehouse also being used as a flourishing literary retreat for writers. All this is now under threat – and this applies not just to Upton Cressett but to the heritage and historic landscape of all Shropshire.
If commercially minded wind developers can simply breeze through Upton Cressett’s Grade 1 protected defences, (also protected by Shropshire Council’s own SAM-DEV principles) then what hope is there for the rest of the Bridgnorth area – or indeed other sites in Shropshire which does not have the highest level of statutory protection from English Heritage?
That is why it was so important that the neighbouring parish of Chetton voted to reject the Upton Cressett/Criddon wind turbine application at a packed village hall last Tuesday, also attended by County Councillor Robert Tindall. The government have recently issued guidelines saying that local communities need to have more of a say in whether they want turbines in their areas.
So we must now act and seize this opportunity to be heard. Morville Parish Council are meeting in the village hall on Monday, July 8th at 7pm, and I urge anybody in the Morville or Bridgnorth area who is concerned about the ruination of the Shropshire countryside and the sharp deterioration of local quality of life to attend the meeting to have their voice heard.
The village of Chetton certainly made their voice heard loud and clear on Tuesday with a two minute thundering applause following the passionate speech by Chetton resident Charles Gill as to why the turbines would irrevocably change the Shropshire we know and love.
When John Halle of the turbine applicant company Share Energy (who is not a local resident) made his ‘presentation’ to justify the desecration of Shrophire’s countryside his speech ended with stony silence from the packed village hall audience after he claimed that imposing Crida’s giant turbines on the Shropshire Hills was a price worth paying in order to meet the UK’s EU imposed carbon reduction targets. His Crida colleague Bob Essum, also added that to make up for this landscape desecration, up to £1000 would be ‘generously’ given to any local ‘group’ who could come up with a suitably ‘sustainable’ (i.e green) project.
But the beauty of our Shropshire Hills, and what it means to us lucky enough to live here, is priceless. We cannot be bought off with token promises of a new coat of (ecology friendly) paint for the local
village hall. Landowners and farmers may own the land, but they do not own our Shropshire landscape. That ancient landscape is owned by all of us – by the real community who live and work here – and nobody has
the right to impose Triffid-like industrial structures that destroy the very beauty of what makes this part of Shropshire so unique.
When a local Chetton resident then directly stood up and asked Halle whether his wind company had carried out a ‘green audit’ on the carbon emission efficiency on the Criddon farm of Clive Millington, whose
land he would be paying a very considerable rental sum (from subsidies paid for by the public again), Halle flustered and admitted that no such survey had been conducted and it was of no concern to him what
level of carbon emissions – from diesel fuels, say, for new tractors or Mercedes cars – came from the heavily industrialized farm. That’s ‘green’ developer logic for you.
When another bird-loving resident, who enjoys taking his young son (who wants to be a local gamekeeper) out to watch the local curlews or various types of migrating birds flying above Chetton, asked why Crida’s ‘local ecology’ report (a desk-top report done from miles away) included no reference to the flight path of these migratory birds above Chetton, Halle simply tried to deny such birds existed, admitting birds were not his area of ‘expertise’.
Jon Halle then tried to add that wind turbines did not even kill bats, stop the turbine invasion around Morville and Bridgnorth. Yet only two weeks ago it was widely reported that a wind turbine in Northumberland killed a very rare White-throated Needletail – the world’s fastest flying bird which had not been seen in Britain since 1991 when a single bird was seen in Derbyshire and Staffordshire, at all not far from Shropshire.
But it is not just wildlife that is at risk. As proven by the disastrous harm to quality of life in Scotland and Monmouthshire, the turbines would bring high levels of ‘noise pollution’ sleepless nights for people nearby, other related health issues, up to 40% reduction in local property values, flashing red lights at night, not to mentionthe serious danger to horses and riders on the Jack Mytton Way as the turbines are well outside the ‘turbine distance’ recommended by the British Horse Society.
The Bridgnorth Town Plan clearly states that ‘maintaining heritage’ is a priority for the town, and surrounding area, a heritage that anybody lucky enough to live around Bridgnorth and the surrounding Shropshire Hills is justly proud of. Of the heritage and garden jewels in the Bridgnorth area, one of the highlights are the Dower House gardens of Dr Katherine Swift at Grade 1 Morville Hall, whose approach and ‘historic setting’ will also be harmed by the turbines.
Dr Swift, one of Shropshire’s best known and admired authors, has written to the ‘Friends of the Dower House Gardens’ asking for their help in trying to stop the turbine invasion around Morville and Bridgnorth. The purpose of this letter is to do the same: ask for your help in Objecting to the proposed turbines that will change not only Upton Cressett but also the face of Shropshire.
‘Would the authorities of Worcestershire allow a string of wind turbines along the crest of the Malvern Hills? Of course not’ wrote Dr Swift in her Objection. ‘The hills above Bridgnorth are equally iconic: this is the view that A.E Housman was thinking of when he wrote so longingly of those ‘blue remembered hills’ — it is the view from his childhood home in the West Midlands, and the view which every visitor approaching Shropshire from the east or from the north/south motorway system sees today.
‘Shropshire was once the birthplace of the Industrial Revolutio’ Dr Swift added. ‘ Those days are long gone. It is now our wild unspoiled countryside and our beautiful gardens & listed buildings which provide jobs and incomes for residents and solace for visitors. All this will be under threat if this application is allowed to go ahead’.
At Upton Cressett, we have played a small but important part over the centuries in the story of Bridgnorth, with Shropshire’s history books reporting famous visitors including the young King Henry V in April 1483 – the eldest of the Princes in the Tower – who stayed before crossing the River Severn at Bridgnorth on route to London from Ludlow Castle; and Prince Rupert of the Rhine who hid in the Gatehouse around the Battle of Bridgnorth in 1646. More recently, Baroness Thatcher stayed with her husband Sir Denis and the bedroom in which they stayed has now been re-named the Thatcher Suite, and is open to the public along with memorabilia from her stay in Shropshire.
All of this is open to the public and we greatly enjoy making all this history accessible to everybody – locals and tourists alike. If you have not visited Upton Cressett, or have not recently (we have just finished the final stage of restoration with the new ‘Thatcher Suite’, new mural work by Adam Dant and a newly commissioned tester bed – based on a design at Hardwick Hall – in Rubelli velvet from Venice in the Great Chamber Room) please do so over the next few weeks or summer months so you can see for yourself why the ancient hamlet was described by Sir Betjeman in the Shell Guide to Shropshire as a’remote and beautiful place’. I hope we can keep it that way – along with the rest of Shropshire.
We do not want our treasured and iconic landscape despoiled for the sake of turbines that require traditional energy source back-up to even function, and which will produce hardly enough electricity to boil a kettle in Bridgnorth. Of the several hundred public comments currently on the planning portal, nearly 200 are Objections from local residents who actually live around Bridgnorth – there is just one Support comment from anybody who is actually a local resident. That says it all.
Yet Jon Halle of Share Energy has been busy trying to crank up ‘support’ from wind turbine lobby ‘greenies’ around the country who have no connection at all with Shropshire in order to create a misleading picture on the council’s planning portal. We know this for a fact since the application has been ‘validated’, Jon Halle has been sending out group emails to non-locals begging them to ‘spend a minute posting a supportive comment’ on the Shropshire Council website. ‘We know there is a lot of support but we need to actually show it!’ he wrote revealingly. ‘If we can build these 2 turbines, (around Bridgnorth) they will be the first in the West Midlands and set a great precedent…Please forward to local people!’.
The best way to show support for preserving Shropshire’s countryside around Bridgnorth is to Object to the Upton Cressett turbines on the Shropshire Planning Portal. Write to Shropshire Council, Local Area Planning Office, Westgate, Bridgnorth WV16 5AA, quoting reference 13/01983/FUL. Also please copy in Philip Dunne MP by email at [email protected].
Please go to http://planningpa.shropshire.gov.uk/online-applications/ and enter ‘wind turbine’ in the keyword box to locate the Criddon Hall Farm application.
For those who want to see the magic of Upton Cressett for yourselves, (incidentally Share Energy have never bothered to ask permission to visit Upton Cressett Hall or Gatehouse), we are open on Wednesday and Sunday afternoons from 2pm to 5pm, and Bank Holiday Mondays.
There is also a special opening THIS WEEKEND on Saturday July 6th, (2pm-5.30pm) for the benefit of the Shropshire Historic Churches Trust – all details on our website: www.uptoncressetthall.co.uk.
I look forward to welcoming you at Upton Cressett and thank you for your support.
Warmest regards, William Cash
PS As a counter offer to the ‘local community’, I will offer to personally donate £5000 to the Bridgnorth Amateur Operatic Society if the Upton Cressett/Criddon and The Down (‘The Hills’) wind turbine applications are formally withdrawn (without future re-introduction) before September 1st, 2013.
Upton Cressett Hall, Bridgnorth