Words could ring true today

At the moment I am reading a book entitled House and Home about the history

of British houses. It was published in 1985.

In the chapter on the building of the many rows of Georgian Terraces in Islington village, on what had been dairy farmland and market gardens, a local historian, John Nelson, had something to say about that in 1823.

I quote: “Alas and welladay, while the pen is recording the fleeting beauties of the spot, the demons of destruction, in the form of brick-makers, road-cutters and sewer-diggers, are despoiling the fair face of nature and throwing the fields and their pathways into chaotic confusion.” ‘Alas and welladay’ is an archaic exclamation of woe.

Sadly, almost 200 years later John Nelson could have been writing about our own town and surrounding villages, couldn’t he?

BOBBY VICKERY Ashurst Close, Horsham