Would YOU give up £275m to save your village?
By James Delingpole
GO ON, admit it: if someone were to knock on your door right now and offer you 100 times the value of your home, no questions asked, you’d take it like a shot.
You’d probably even take it — let’s be honest — if, as a result of the deal, your neighbours’ property values were trashed and their views and tranquillity were ruined.
‘after all, i’ve worked hard all my life,’ you’d justify to yourself. ‘i’ve done my bit and i’ve got my retirement and my family to think of. it’s about time i had a bit of luck, for a change . . .’
this is why i think we should all nominate as our hero of the week a remarkable man named robert Worsley.
Until yesterday i’d never heard of Mr Worsley and, in all probability, nor had you. He’s a 48-year-old farmer who lives in an attractive, albeit spectacularly grand, house on a 550-acre farm in West sussex, not far from the south Downs.
But this week, this ordinary father-oftwo did something so selfless and noble it almost recalls the New testament scene where Jesus is taken to a high mountain and tempted by satan with the kingdoms of the world.
the deal was this: in return for a 10,000home development to be built partly on his land, Mr Worsley was offered the lifechanging sum of £275 million. think of all the farms, Lamborghinis and private jets you could buy with a tidy sum like that.
i’m sure it must have crossed Mr Worsley’s mind. But despite the temptation, he told the developers to hop it.
Explaining his decision yesterday, the farmer said: ‘We are a rural community who don’t want this development, who don’t want to see sussex being ruined.
‘i hope i am speaking for an awful lot of people who would have their quality of life diminished and the enjoyment of the countryside, which is the reason why they live here, diminished, too.
‘it’s not really about me. it’s about the fact that sussex is being eroded away. that is the story i would like to tell.’
and it’s a story which, let’s hope, will be celebrated locally for generations.
Without the selflessness of Mr Worsley and his equally determined neighbours, who have also shunned large offers from developers, there seems little doubt that twineham, a patch of English rural heaven with an early tudor church and a name dating back to anglo-saxon times, would have been concreted over and turned into yet another dreary housing development.
Besides 10,000 homes, Mayfield, the developers, have plans to build an academy, primary schools and shops across 1,200 acres.
Yes, of course, Mr Worsley putting his foot down technically makes him a Nimby. You could even make the reasonable case that Britain badly needs new houses, and that if everyone took the line Mr Worsley has, then we’d never have sufficient affordable space for our increasing population of immigrants and broken families.
BUT that doesn’t appear to be the view of the thousands of commenters on Mail Online and twitter. as far as Middle England is concerned, Mr Worsley is a hero for our time.
‘simply astounding! Hopefully others will follow suit! Bravo indeed,’ says one twitter user.
‘What a breath of fresh air this fellow is — a man with fine morals and consideration,’ wrote a Mail Online reader.
‘the world needs more people like him,’ another chipped in.
as a country dweller, i couldn’t agree more. One of the things that has struck me since moving from London to the middle of nowhere in Northamptonshire three years ago is how fragile Britain’s matchless countryside is and how vulnerable to development.
From the day i arrived at my new home i found myself embroiled in a two-year battle against a proposed wind turbine that would have ruined the view for miles around.
as with the development threatening Mr Worsley’s village — which local Mp sir Nicholas soames has described as ‘ completely unsuitable’ — this turbine was wildly inappropriate for a renowned beauty spot.
still, though, the turbine would have been given the go-ahead (no doubt with many more built in its wake) had it not been for a concerted campaign by the community that cost us thousands of pounds in time and legal fees.
We didn’t begrudge it though. as country people so often are, we were acutely conscious of the way our rural fastness had been shaped by past generations and of our duty to preserve it for future ones.
My landlord — the local toff: who said noblesse oblige is dead? — led the way. His estate is crumbling; he could use the money. But when a developer offered him millions to put a wind farm on his land, he said a very determined: ‘No!’
You may think that’s an easy decision when you’ve been lucky enough to inherit a Capability Brown landscaped estate. But estates barely pay for their upkeep these days and sadly, my landlord is the exception, not the rule.
Just look at the array of titled landowners from the Duke of roxburghe and the Queen’s cousin the Duke of Gloucester to the prime Minister’s baronet father-in-law sir reginald sheffield and Earl spencer, who have been raking in millions from ruining their land with wind farm developments.
Only a handful have resisted the easy money, among them the Duke of Northumberland, who has refused wind farms on his land because ‘they divide communities, ruin landscapes . . . and are ugly, noisy and completely out of place’.
it’s not just wind farms, of course, which are putting our dwindling areas of unspoilt Britain in peril.
solar farms are a menace, as is the proposed Hs2 rail link from London to Birmingham and the 300,000 new homes it is estimated Britain needs every year.
STRIKING the balance between the infrastructure and energy needs of our growing population and the equally important need to preserve the beautiful spaces that make Britain such an attractive place to live is never going to be easy.
But one thing is for certain: if it weren’t for the principled, selfless behaviour of countryfolk such as Mr Worsley there would be far fewer of those idylls.
the history of our landscape is the history of continual destruction, depredation and industrialisation by the greedy and soulless many.
Only thanks to the efforts of the heroic few is there still so much left for us to enjoy. Mr Worsley is among that heroic few — and we owe him our eternal thanks.