News

Windfarm to be allowed at Naseby

24 December 2011

The Battlefields Trust is disappointed to learn that a wind farm can be built next to the battlefield of Naseby, despite officials admitting the large turbines will ‘harm its setting’.

The Parliamentarian victory at Naseby in 1645 was the decisive battle of the First Civil War and the largely unspoilt battlefield is an extremely rewarding one to visit. The historical importance and educational and tourist potential of the site was recently recognised when planning permission was granted for a visitor centre to interpret the battlefield. Last year, members of Daventry District Council blocked plans to build turbines near to the battlefield because of the impact the development would have on the area.

But this week, depite admitting that the the turbines would damage the setting of the battlefield national planning inspector, Paul Griffiths, overturned that decision, meaning that six turbines can be built.

The attached 'decision document sets out why the windfarm builders' appeal has been upheld. Paragraph 51 admits the turbines will harm a heritage asset but in what the Trust considers to be an extraordinary piece of thinking paragraph 53 claims that because the assets are so old the 25-year life of the turbines is not significant!

Speaking out the decision Martin Marix Evans of the Naseby Battlefield Project commented

'It does mean, for me, that once they are built I'll not see the
battlefield unsullied again in my life. If this argument is acceptable, we
might as well fit fans to Stonehenge for the next quarter century.'

Please click here for a copy of the decision document