Our Welsh heritage is under attack

I HAVE actively been campaigning to highlight the ever increasing destruction of our heritage within the old county of Glamorgan with very little to nothing being done to stop this over several decades.

It is argued when important heritage sites are under threat the answer is always that “we need more housing”. Actually the answer is no, we do not. There is massive housing stock within our urban and rural areas that could be utilised for local people. The question is, who are these houses being built for?

The other argument to destroy our heritage – and we are not just talking about Bronze Age burial mounds, or a medieval village, but ancient woodland, natural landscapes and so on – is “we need more roads”. Again the answer is we do not need more roads. As Covid-19 has proven, more of our workforce are working from home, something the selfemployed have done for many years. With fewer cars on the road, investment in new roads is not necessary.

We have lost too much of our heritage. Our identity as a people has been eroded to such an extent that our history seems just to be Norman-built castles and the remains of their monasteries.

The media has to take some responsibility, for under-reporting or failing to report the destruction at many sites. Little was said about close on 1,000 sets of prehistoric remains being trashed by JCBs and some recovered by archaeologists and left unburied and disenfranchised from the Five Mile Lane and St Athan. Further to this we see large-scale development north west of Cardiff and Cowbridge. To say little has been reported about this heritage is an understatement.

Now we have housing developments at Cosmeston, Cogan and just

south of Bridgend. Responsibility for this environmental disaster lies at the feet of the voters in this region – when are you going to wake up and say stop.

Karl-James Langford Barry