MARCH OF THE MADDING CROWD
Protest to save landscape from developers in Hardy country
IT was the landscape immortalised by one of our greatest novelists.
But the green fields outside Dorchester in Dorset could soon disappear for ever beneath thousands of new homes.
The unspoilt countryside north of the town was lovingly portrayed in Thomas Hardy’s 1886 novel The Mayor of Casterbridge. It is also a stone’s throw from Hardy’s birthplace and where he went to school.
So precious is this land to the residents of Dorchester that hundreds marched to protest against the development.
Kate Hebditch, of campaign group Save The Area North of Dorchester or STAND, said to marchers: ‘All of us are here for different reasons. It might be that we want to follow in Thomas Hardy’s footsteps and see how closely his descriptions of Casterbridge still match our town.
‘It might be that we know that this is a rich area for wildlife, and that animals and plants need all the help they can get to survive right now. But all of us are here because we love this stretch of countryside.’
Dorchester mayor David Taylor said: ‘If they do this, they will destroy the countryside and wreck our county town.’
West Dorset District Council is under pressure to build more than 15,000 new homes by 2036 in one of the worst areas of Britain for affordable housing. But the protesters say the earmarked site is the only green space around Dorchester – immortalised as Casterbridge in Hardy’s novels – that has not been developed. In The Mayor of Casterbridge, Hardy described the town as ‘like a chessboard on a green tablecloth’.
Downton Abbey creator Lord Julian Fellowes, who is president of the Hardy Society and lives at Stafford House, near Dorchester, has also spoken against the plans.
The West Dorset group of the Campaign to Protect Rural England said the development will turn Dorchester into ‘yet another road encircled, featureless urban mass’.
The average price of property in west Dorset now stands at £318,000, well beyond the means of most people raised in the area. The council said 35 per cent of the new homes would be affordable housing and local people will be given priority.