I HAVE known the landscape of the Swindon area and the Marlborough Downs since I was a child, and it has inspired my writing ever since - most particularly Ulverton. The final chapter consists of a battle between developers and local people wishing to preserve a part of their loved landscape. This fictional tale is nothing, however, compared to the astonishing story unfolding around Coate Farm, as reported in your pages over the last few months. It is hard to believe that this area, associated as it is with Swindon’s most famous child, the naturalist Richard Jefferies (he was born and grew up there), is under threat yet again. This time it is a proposal to build 900 houses on a patch of England - consisting of small fields, copses and hedgerows, unusually intact - that is probably the most minutely examined, celebrated and cherished, anywhere in the country. And this despite a petition signed by 52,000 local people.

Amazingly the planning officers and inspectors charged with removing the area’s high landscape value at the last local plan inquiry apparently had no knowledge whatsoever of its literary and historical associations and thus of its place in our heritage. Crucial and irrevocable decisions are being made from a position of ignorance, wilful or otherwise.

Worse still the council has seen fit to rename the area Commonhead, prior to development. The deep, resonant, ancient names of the area apparently stand for nothing against the whim of a few grey suits at a meeting.

The area around Coate Water and Coate Farm is Swindon’s proudest heritage, living not just in words or glossy brochures or dusty exhibits, but in trees, water, grass, flowers, animals and birds. The intricate mesh of nature that Jefferies so memorably celebrated in his internationally-renowned works, precursors of today’s environmental movement.

This crass act of council-approved vandalism will be deeply regretted by future generations who will wonder at how we allowed it to happen. We must not let it happen. The proposal will be decided by Swindon council’s planning committee on March 8, time is running out.

ADAM THORPE Grand Rue Nimes France