Bronterre News

WALK THROUGH Borth, near Aberystwyth, and you’ll be struck by the number of posters in people’s windows signalling continuing fierce opposition to a ghastly plan to carry out substantial civil engineering works on the wild, uncluttered beach near the village’s Bronze Age sunken forest.

This would be vandalism. How else is it possible to describe the digging of a vast and ugly hole – about 40 feet deep – in this Special Landscape Area beach in order to install concrete foundations and concrete and steel piles to support a 30-foot cast-metal effigy of a windblown oak tree?

From where could such a dotty yet destructive idea have emerged? Well, from artist Robert Davies, who declares a wish to create “a cultural response” to changes to the coastline that have taken place during the thousands of years since the Bronze Age. (Imagine if you like the forest then a sea of green.) Robert’s blind spot seems to be that he does not see that the simple thrill of looking at these wonderful and increasingly visible ancient tree relics renders entirely superfluous any imposed – and, in this case, alien – representation.

And so to the practicalities. These are that Ceredigion County Council and the community council long ago declared themselves against this madcap scheme, but an appeal to the Welsh planning inspectorate resulted, very regrettably, in reversal of the county council’s refusal of planning consent. 

But, at an official level, all is not lost. For between high and low water the beach here is owned by The Crown Estate and let to the county council under a so-called regulating lease, which gives the authority management powers over the foreshore, and the council says it hasn’t received any formal written application for its consent, as leaseholder, to erect the structure.

Support for Davies is vanishingly small. It would be so much better if he now admitted defeat and gracefully withdrew, leaving undisturbed this heaven-sent stretch of unsullied serenity.