Outcry at 3,500 new homes in Hardy country

ROLLING countryside described by Thomas Hardy as a ‘chessboard on a green table cloth’ could be lost for ever under a development of 3,500 homes.

Planning officials want to concrete over 25 acres of fields north of Dorchester, Dorset, in the untouched rural idyll that inspired Hardy’s 1886 novel The Mayor Of Casterbridge.

More than 1,000 campaigners have signed a petition opposing the development proposed by West Dorset District Council, which says the town desperately needs new homes.

Opponents claim it will destroy Hardy’s literary landscape and eradicate an ancient Roman boundary, one the last of its kind in Britain, which has marked the edge of Dorchester for 2,000 years.

Town councillor Alistair Chisholm, the town crier, said: ‘What we are trying to protect is of international importance.

‘If we don’t fight now as hard as we can we’ll be failing not only those we represent today but generations to come.’

The proposal mirrors plans to develop the Gloucestershire farm that inspired the hit film Babe. Woodlands Farm was the home of author Dick King-Smith, who created Babe the pig in his 1984 bestseller The Sheep-Pig.

Barratt Homes is building more than 200 houses on the 12-acre site. Mr KingSmith’s family say developers are ‘gobbling up’ precious countryside.