Follow Magdalen Hill Down example (From Hampshire Chronicle)

Follow Magdalen Hill Down example

3:13pm Wednesday 17th June 2009 in Your Say

SIR — I hope Mr Melligan’s photo (Chronicle letters, June 11) of an abandoned car and skeletal building will not seduce your readers from the important truth that the old camp site is a vital part of the proposed country park. Had Mr Melligan wished to put an objective case unbiased by the Church Commissioner’s financial interest, he would also have presented to your readers a photograph of the wildflowers and lepidoptera which beautify the old camp site, but which are absent from the adjoining arable land.

To realise our dream of a Bushfield Country Park comparable to St Catherine’s Hill, Magdalen Hill Down and Shawford Down, the species-void arable land must be restored to quasi-unimproved chalk grassland as has recently been done at modest cost at Magdalen Hill Down.

The restored grassland would then be colonised by wildflowers and lepidoptera from the old camp site.

The features highlighted by Mr Melligan are transitory and would be removed under any regime.

Some of the brick structures on the camp are valuable nesting sites for birds and interesting historical remnants. They should be made safe and preserved.

The camp roads should also be retained to permit all weather nature study — invaluable for disabled people and parties of school children.

Much of the initial cost and future maintenance of the park would, again following the example of Magdalen Hill Down, be met by lottery and other grants. So the burden on local authority funds need not be great.

The Church Commissioners own the freehold and advocate the business use to maximise their financial return.

But they are also surely in the forefront of enlightened landowners and as such would they not be prepared to grant a long lease subject to a right to repossess in the event of a profitable planning permission being granted?

This is precisely what they recently agreed for Magdalen Hill Down.

In the meantime, perhaps the Church Commissioners would themselves remove the abandoned car.

A country park without the old camp site would be Hamlet without the Prince.

George Yorke, Pearson Lane, Shawford.