'This is likely to be our final chance': Campaigners in final plea over Oswestry Hillfort homes plan
Campaigners against plans to build up to 100 homes near Oswestry's historic hillfort have issued one last plea for support before the eight-year development fight comes to an end.
The action group, Hands Off Old Oswestry Hillfort (HOOOH), is urging people to respond to Galliers Homes' proposals to build 91 homes in close proximity to the hillfort.
The final deadline for comments is Thursday, April 16, and HOOOH has highlighted its points for objection.
The group claims the proposals exceed Historic England’s northern limit for development, and would cause "substantial" harm to the views to and from the hillfort.
Other concerns also relate to pedestrian and cycle links to the former railway and a new footpath link between Whittington Road and Gobowen Road to improve access.
A spokesperson for HOOOH said: "Exactly eight years since major development by Old Oswestry was first proposed, we are asking for your support once more in opposing the latest bid to build houses in the hillfort’s immediate hinterland landscape.
“This third planning application, for 91 houses, is still as large and as damaging to the significance and experience of this outstanding Iron Age hillfort and its setting as previous ones.
“Be warned, this is likely to be our final chance to stop this widely opposed and unnecessary development. It will have very tangible, negative and irreversible impacts on a nationally important heritage landscape – entirely senseless when Oswestry has alternative sites for housing.
“We know these are hugely challenging times. We are all very rightly prioritising the protection of our families and livelihoods through this devastating Covid-19 pandemic. As you stay safe and maximise time at home, we hope you will find time to stay with this fight in protecting this fascinating hillfort and special landscape – the Stonehenge of the Iron Age.
"These places of calm, escape and connection with our ancestors and nature will be all the more valuable to us when we come through this awful crisis.
“While we are striving to safeguard family and friends in our community from this dangerous virus, let’s make sure that ruinous planning under the cover of a national crisis does not usher through development that we have passionately opposed for almost a decade.”
