Cavendish’s revolt

There’s a special kind of pinkwash on walls of old houses in Suffolk. Ox blood is sometimes in the limewash and sometimes elderberries. The village of Cavendish in the Stour valley has old pink thatched cottages by the church and village green, near which Leonard Cheshire VC is buried. But now there is trouble in Cavendish. Someone wants to build a 50-acre solar farm, which will entail 1,532 lorry journeys on a narrow road. The real problem is what comes next: acres of good farmland covered with ugly panels. Cavendish has had trouble before. The local judge Sir John Cavendish was killed in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 and had his head stuck on a pole. Since then things have been fairly quiet. But as the fields of East Anglia are covered with solar panels, it will not be peasants revolting next but householders.