Icons of England

Compiled by the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England and edited by CPRE’s president, Bill Bryson, ‘Icons of England’ seeks to find the sights, smells and sounds that are quintessentially English. Various celebrities write about their favourite representation of rural England.

Writer, Terence Blacker lives in the South Norfolk and writes about the ‘ordinary beauty’ of his local landscape. He lives near the planned 130m wind turbines at Dickleburgh  and is a member of  the opposition group 4Villages.

In ‘Icons of England’ he talks about this ordinary beauty being something that had been taken for granted until a local planning officer referred to the ‘unexceptional quality of the landscape’ when supporting an application for a wind-measuring mast. Terence describes how his community has got caught up in the much larger debate concerning the future of the planet and how those opposing similar schemes are seen as  ‘villainous and selfish’.

He goes on to say how ‘landowners and developers whose only motive is financial are suddenly heroes of the environment. What chance has our little patch of ‘unexceptional’ landscape against the might of political correctness?’

His thoughts have resonance here in what the Greater Norwich Development Partnership prefer to call ‘Greater Norwich’ but the residents prefer to call the villages of Rackheath and Salhouse. Substitute ‘proposed eco-town’ for ‘proposed wind turbines’ and we are talking exactly the same language – even down to airfields!!

It is his summing up that makes it worth continuing to fight these developments: “In years to come, when the ugly remains of greed and political panic litter the landscape – the true icons of early twenty-first Britain – future generations may wonder what on Earth possessed their parents and grandparents to give up so easily what is so precious.”