PYLONS ON MARCH
Sir, — One of your correspondents advocating the case of the Minister of Power for putting up pylons regardless of public opinion brings my name into a letter likening pylons to windmills.
May I point out the falsity of his analogy? Windmills could never be underground. Windmills never marched in straight lines from a central generating station. Windmills were hand made and not all of a pattern and some were probably more worth preserving than others.
It is sentimental to glorify pylons. We all really know why pylons are to be allowed to industrialize and change the character of downs and modest agricultural landscape far more effectively than ever will our new and well-landscaped motorways. The reason is money. It is hardly likely that a Ministry, which will not even put low-tension wires underground, will bury large cables. Since we live at a time when money is regarded as more important than aesthetics we must expect the electricity undertakings to continue to ruin country districts with overhead wires and cables.
Advertisement
Yours faithfully,
JOHN BETJEMAN,
43 Cloth Fair, Smithfield, E.C.1.
August 31, 1964.
Sir, — I was in England earlier in the summer and enjoyed a few lonely walks across the Sussex Downs and in that lovely stretch of country between Haslemere and Midhurst. I know no countryside in which I would rather walk; none more beautiful, nor more rewarding — physically and aesthetically.
It came as a shock to learn that some crass bureaucrat has approved plans to wreck forever this precious heritage — one of the few remaining features of England that has no equal, anywhere in the world.
Yours faithfully,
EDWARD WHITEHEAD,
445 Park Avenue, New York N.Y.
August 31, 1964.