BY THE BANKS OF THE AVON
SIR,—Near the spot where, succeeding the legendary Guy of Warwick, the old Warwick historian, Rous, made his home five hundred years ago, and close to Blacklow Hill; on which the Black Dog of Arden wreaked ven- geance on Piers Gaveston, " the minion of a hateful King," Shakespeare's Avon glides sweetly through typical Warwickshire countryside. This historic and placid beauty is threatened by a proposal of the East Midlands division of the British Electricity Authority to erect a huge generating station at a cost of £11,500,000, drawing water from the Avon, occupying 259 acres of good agricultural land and, of course, defiling thousands more. The cooling towers will be plainly visible from Royal Leamington Spa and from the historic Guy's Cliffe House at Warwick, and will mar the landscape for many miles around.
It is national policy to attract visitors to our beautiful countryside, and Sir Patrick Abercrombie in his development plan for the West Midland Region gives it as his view that this "heart of England area should be developed as a national cultural and pleasure resort. These aims are quite incompatible with the proposal to erect a huge generating station on this spot. Unless the vandals are checked the visitors whom we are seeking to attract to the Festival of Britain Year in 1951 may be shocked by the sight of smoke and dirt belching over the countryside which they are asked to consider as one of England's loveliest rural scenes, and the visitor to Kenilworth Castle, mounting Amy Robsart's Tower, will have his gaze drawn to a multiplicity of huge and ugly cooling towers of the type with which we have become all too sadly familiar. Surely the fair face of Warwickshire need not be so besmirched ; is it too late to appeal to the Englishman's sense of beauty, and for every lover of Shakespeare's War- wickshire to unite in protest against this outrage ?—Yours faithfully;
GEORGE PURCELL, Mayor.
The Mayor's Parlour, Royal Leamington Spa.
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