The countryside champion’s blots on the landscape

THE Prince of Wales has regularly intervened in architectural matters to defend the countryside or to champion traditional design.

He famously derailed the proposed extension to the National Gallery back in 1984, calling the design a ‘monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend’.

In 2002, he threatened to withdraw his patronage from the National Trust if it proceeded with a design for its new Swindon headquarters. And in 2009, he was accused by leading architect Richard Rogers of subverting the planning system when he called in a Royal favour to scupper plans for the redevelopment of Chelsea Barracks. Yet not all inappropriate development has upset him.

In 2011, he infuriated locals in Truro by proposing to build 98 mock-Georgian houses and a supermarket equipped with 1,200 parking spaces on farmland next to the town.

Then there was his plan a couple of years earlier to build 2,000 new homes on Duchy of Cornwall land, which he owns, west of Bath. This green belt countryside was home to kestrels and buzzards, hares and deer. And let us not forget the proposal by the Duchy to wipe out a wildlife sanctuary on the edge of Newquay in order to build a 200-home ‘eco-village’.

In 2006, Charles allowed the cultivation of alien Pacific oysters in the Lower Fal estuary and Helford river in Cornwall, thus providing another handy income stream for the Duchy, which owns 85 per cent of the stretches of water in question and the whole of the riverbeds.

The problem is that these Pacific oysters are highly destructive to the marine environment. In 2008, Natural England warned about the marine damage being caused to these beautiful stretches of water. It transpired that the Duchy had failed to carry out an environmental impact assessment, as required by law, before issuing the licence.

No prosecution followed and with the passage of time, the fears about the damage these invasive non-native species can do has proved to be sadly accurate.

Meanwhile, the alien oysters turn up in expensive London restaurants and are described as ‘sustainable’.