Pilgrimage route at risk of ruin from ‘prison camp' style solar farm
The green energy site is proposed on St James's Way – the English segment of the Camino Way, which leads to Santiago de Compostela in Spain and has been used for 1,000 years.
Residents in the rural village of Monk Sherborne, in Hampshire, said the 216-acre solar farm and its 9ft-high security wall would make it 'look like Stalag Luft III'.
There have already been over 50 objections to the proposal – due to be built on land owned by Queen's College, Oxford – with several citing the harm it may cause to St James's Way.
The 68-mile route from Reading to Southampton forms an important part of the Camino Way, which became the first road on the Unesco World Heritage Site list in 1993.
Paul Cave, 72, a retired consultant and local councillor said: 'With the over two metre-high wall around the outside, it will look like Stalag Luft III. It will be like a scene from The Great Escape.
'I think the people that made the decisions did so on Google Maps from their desks. We haven't seen them out there at the right times looking at the effects it will have on people.'
If built, the solar farm would also surround numerous Roman sites, including a recently uncovered villa, a Grade I-listed church and the grave of George Austen, the brother of the author Jane, which is in the churchyard.
The site, known as the Stokes Lane Solar Farm, will provide energy to power 9,390 homes annually and will operate for 40 years.
Concerns have also been raised about the environmental impact of the development on local wildlife, including skylarks, hares, owls and badgers.
Simon Minas-Bound, who sits on Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council, said: 'I just can't believe that, out of all the places in the area, this is the one that they chose.'
He said he feared it would cause permanent damage to the landscape and was 'setting a dangerous precedent for future developments'.
Kim Fleming, 60, who has been a resident of the village for 18 years, said the solar farm 'will directly impact on the extremely small yet historically significant village'.
She added: 'We just feel totally betrayed by Queens College Oxford. We feel this massive solar farm will engulf this village, swallow it up and it will not have any benefit for the village.'
Company director Bryony Crowther, 51, said she has 'nothing against solar per se', but was critical of the carbon footprint associated with 'a foreign company using panels imported from China'.
She added that the solar farm would be almost bigger than the entire village, and said: 'Please, please see sense and help protect our English villages and communities.'
Monk Sherborne Parish Council's letter of objection said: 'While we acknowledge the role of renewable energy in meeting national sustainability targets, this proposal is unsuitable for its intended location due to the significant and lasting harm it would cause to the local landscape, ecology, and heritage assets.'
A spokesperson for Solar2, the renewable energy developer behind the proposal, said: 'Viewed within the context of the climate emergency, energy security, environmental degradation, and growing risks to UK food production, this proposal is a necessary and urgent response.
'We believe the need for projects such as Stokes Lane Solar Farm outweigh their minimal and localised impacts – a view that we explain consistently through our engagement strategy.'
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