Hands Off Our Land: the fight to protect TS Eliot's village

From aloft St Michael’s Church tower, across the graveyard and a meadow, above the roofs of thatched cottages, the view says one thing: England.

The last roses of the Indian summer glow pink and yellow; the flag of St George, red and white against a blue sky, stirs in the breeze; in the distance dust rises behind a tractor; a rider passes, the clip-clop of hooves gently piercing the afternoon silence. It is a panorama unaltered for centuries: the first vicar took office here more than 700 years ago.

At my side stands Martyn Sowerbutts, a retired company director, and in the file he carries is a very different picture. It is a mocked-up photo that shows the same view, but here, where now the farmer ploughs, stand row upon row of houses, crowding the horizon like an advancing army.

In one corner is an industrial park, its factory units and warehouses at odds with this rural setting. Only two fields remain – perhaps 100 yards across – between the church, the village and the suburban streets. Sowerbutts produces a map, 'Indicative Sketch Masterplan’, displaying the potential footprint of this development. It gives detail – shops, the industrial zone, two schools – in bright pinks and oranges.

The plan had been found in a field by a walker, who handed it to the village preservation society. Now it is taken by locals as evidence that the village is in great peril of encroachment. The map had, it seemed, been dropped by a careless planning officer when he visited the threatened fields: that it fell into the preservation society’s hands and is now pinned to every noticeboard in the village was (for the campaigners) splendid luck.

We are in East Coker in Somerset, and, as in many villages across England, people here fear they may soon be swamped by development. Local campaigners’ minds have been concentrated both by the threat of urban expansion to the south of Yeovil (a town of 42,000 residents two miles away), and by the publication in July by the coalition government of a draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF).

The NPPF has created common cause between organisations such as the National Trust and the Campaign to Protect Rural England, as well as lobby groups and commentators across the political spectrum. The Daily Telegraph has been leading a widely supported 'Hands Off Our Land’ crusade.

There is near unanimous fear that the 52-page NPPF, intended to replace more than 1,000 pages of planning law, will create a legal 'presumption in favour of sustainable development’ and encourage local authorities to adopt a default position in favour of developers getting the green light. It appears that, although the draft NPPF is yet to be modified in the light of the many criticisms and is not yet in force, councils are already being prompted to abide by its intentions.

The National Trust and others point out that there are already 330,000 sites with planning permission for new homes – more than two years’ supply at current building levels – and 740,000 unoccupied houses. The housing crisis, the NPPF’s critics say, is one of demand – would-be home owners cannot raise the finance; the average age of first-time buyers is now 37.

The argument in favour of more relaxed planning regulation is that economic growth is being strangled by red tape and delays. David Cameron has been drawn into the row, arguing that his government is seeking 'balance’: the countryside, where he lives and which he loves, is, he assures us, safe in his hands.

In south Somerset, a microcosm of the wider picture, the council argues that provision for further houses is essential: there is, I am told, a long waiting list for social housing; an expectation (and hope) that Yeovil’s industry will expand, requiring more people; regular (if slowed) inward migration from other parts of England; and (as elsewhere) a surging population of elderly residents.

But if the East Coker urban extension (a sanitised term for suburb) were to be built with its originally intended 3,700 houses, the development would quadruple the village’s 2,000 population. More English countryside would have vanished, much of it productive Grade I agricultural land. The tale is local, but the fear is widespread: villages everywhere are bracing to fight the bulldozers.

So why are we here in East Coker, rather than any other village under threat in these new Gradgrind times?

The answer lies in St Michael’s, where the ashes of the Nobel prize-winning poet TS Eliot were interred in September 1965 behind the simple legend poet. His remains, his local connections and East Coker, one of his Four Quartets, are the aces in the pack of those fighting to defeat the urban extension. To build here, they say, would be poetic sacrilege.

I ask villagers whether they have read East Coker, with its references to change – 'Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended…’ – which on the face of it accept the ravages of development. Few have. 'The poem’s beyond me,’ one man says.

Even Sowerbutts, the secretary of the East Coker Preservation Trust (set up in early 2010, when it became clear that the extension towards East Coker was the council’s preferred option), admits, 'I’m not a big reader, not a fan of poetry.’

Eliot was American by birth, but became a British citizen; his ancestors had emigrated from East Coker in the 1660s. He himself visited the village before the Second World War, and wrote East Coker shortly afterwards. The poem’s strength as a rallying cry lies in its evocation of Somerset countryside with 'shuttered’ lanes and sleeping dahlias 'in the empty silence, / Waiting for the early owl.’

The literary connection attracted eminent interest in the plight of this widely spread parish (some of the north is already home to bungalow sprawl, though this – unlike the possible extension – lies on the distant Yeovil horizon and does not disturb the view from the village).

British and American academics, plus the former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, have bombarded South Somerset District Council (SSDC) with their protests. Moves are afoot, backed by these notables, to have East Coker and its surrounds declared a World Heritage Site, a long process, but one that might – the campaigners hope – give the council further pause for thought. It is, at least, helpful to have the heavy guns of academia pounding the council redoubt.

The immediate fight is over the council’s Draft Core Strategy, which sets the framework for new development – including how much housing and employment space is needed (and where), together with roads, schools, shops and parks.

The council’s present assessment is that in order to meet expected growth it must plan for 16,000 new homes by 2028 – half of them in and around Yeovil. Local communities will, the council says, be vulnerable to speculative builders taking advantage of the relaxed provisions of the NPPF only if planners fail to draw up this master plan now. This applies to all local authorities, half of which as yet have no such plans.

Campaigners, by contrast, argue that South Somerset’s projections are based on out-of-date statistics; that migration has slowed; that the prospects for employment are no longer so rosy.

I study maps, listen to claims and counter-claims, my notebook filling with the words 'appalling’, 'travesty’, 'diabolical’, 'devastating’. I am told that there are villagers who agree with the planners, but they keep a low profile: I certainly don’t meet any.

I telephone a man believed to have an interest in development. He says he probably can meet me, but, after consulting with associates, calls back (very politely) to say that he has 'no comment’.

Along with the shadowy developers, another villain in East Coker is the SSDC leader, Cllr Ric Pallister, who has been accused of regarding East Coker as a mere dormitory for retired people. 'He hasn’t a clue,’ says Gloria Mead, who tends her vegetable garden in diamante choker and wellies. 'He doesn’t know what makes us tick round here.’

Pallister has been the council leader since May. He is a retired Royal Navy commander – a pilot and air traffic controller with the Fleet Air Arm – who looks the part, with a trimmed white beard and upright carriage. He declares (unusually for a powerful local politician) that 'I am not politically minded’, and became a Liberal Democrat (the party controls the SSDC, just) because he greatly admired what Paddy Ashdown, formerly Yeovil’s MP, did for the town.

Affable, relaxed and tactile, Pallister is generous with his time. He denies feeling the heat. 'I am used to hostility and can sleep at night. If they get rid of me, I wouldn’t care because I would have done the right thing. I could draw my pension and depart.’ He has been told that he operates like a 'battlefield’ commander, an image that clearly appeals.

I ask him if he wishes that Eliot’s ancestors had come from anywhere other than south Somerset. He laughs. 'This is about more than TS Eliot,’ he says, adding that the references in the opening stanza of East Coker were prompted by a ring road proposed before the war. 'Houses…/ Are removed, destroyed..., or in their place/ Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass’. 'It didn’t happen,’ Pallister says. 'There was never the money to build it.’

He is bullish about the town’s prospects and the local economy. 'Yeovil is where companies want to be,’ he says. He stresses the housing list and the ageing population, and the need for new homes. 'We must,’ Pallister says, 'provide land for growth.’ He plays down 'Cokergate’ (as many villagers call the discovery of the map in the field) as simply an attempt by a planner to show approximately what an urban extension would look like wherever it went: 'you could squish it this way or that – or pick it up and place it elsewhere.’

Indeed, things are far from being set in stone. There have been, Pallister tells me, two major recent shifts (climb-downs, even?). The first is a reduction of the proposed number of homes in the urban extension from 3,700 to 2,500 (this is, Pallister says, his own preferred number). Second, a traffic consultants’ report, still unpublished, has found that building in the south towards East Coker brought no advantages in terms of congestion or lower infrastructure costs (as had previously been argued) compared with building to the north-west of Yeovil, the other candidate area for the urban extension.

The report evens the choice between the East Coker and the north-west. 'Ergo,’ Pallister says, tapping the north-west area on the map before him, 'this one starts to rise.’ He says he will make his mind up as to the best location when all the evidence is in, though I sense that he himself remains in favour of the East Coker option, not least because altering tack would cause delay.

But, he says, 'I would change my mind if it was the right thing to do. I don’t care if they claim credit and say, “We have won”, and bask in it.’

Naturally enough, the campaigners in East Coker contend that the best place for the urban extension, if one is needed at all, is to the north-west of Yeovil, where there are no historic buildings, no Grade I farmland, no stone villages, no TS Eliot. This location, I am told, was earmarked years ago at parish workshops, and no one (in East Coker) knows why or when that changed.

Marcus Fysh is an engaging 40-year-old venture capitalist, whom I meet at his parents’ 14th-century home on the edge of East Coker parish. On the kitchen table are several well-organised files of documents essential to the village cause. In May he was elected a Conservative councillor on the SSDC for the area of Yeovil closest to East Coker, on a platform that included opposition to 'massive expansion’ of Yeovil.

Fysh argues that the council’s evidence thus far has been shoddy – 'incomplete, inaccurate, out of date and not objective’. He cites the East Coker-born tourism guru Prof Terry Stevens, who argues that damaging the environment of East Coker could cost millions annually in lost local revenue. Fysh suggests that the council wants the money that goes with new housing (a government-paid New Homes Bonus) to lavish on grandiose schemes such as sports complexes.

He asks what hope other, less blessed communities that face a similar menace may have if East Coker, with its advantages of listed buildings, TS Eliot, Grade I land and articulate defenders cannot see off unwanted developers. If East Coker loses, England and a hundred other threatened communities (especially under the NPPF presumptions in favour of development) lose too.

Fysh takes me to the north-west site. It certainly seems more suitable. An escarpment separates East Coker from Yeovil, undermining council claims that the urban extension there could be an 'eco-town’ where people would leave their cars at home; few could struggle on foot or by bike up such an incline. The north-west, although further from the town centre and employment, is on a level with the town. Campaigners in any case say that the 'eco-town’ is a red herring, considered by the council only to attract a feasibility grant. In reality, the requirements for such a project, including generous open space, would price any development out of the market.

The fields Fysh shows me are pleasant but un­exceptional: an industrial park has space for new enterprise; an adjacent site is already zoned for housing; access to the A303 (Yeovil’s umbilical link to the wider world) is far easier than from the south; Montacute House, a major National Trust property, is near, but well out of sight; the land is less fertile; the population is sparse; and no poet is interred here. 'No heritage or villages would be impacted,’ Fysh says.

During my visit to East Coker, the local land grab had seemed, if not a done deal, still odds-on despite Pallister’s two concessions. A week later the landscape looked very different. News breaks that there are to be 375 redundancies at the helicopter builders AgustaWestland, the Italian-owned jewel in the crown of Yeovil industry, following 132 in the town at BAE Systems and 90 at the nearby Royal Naval Air Station at Yeovilton announced a few days earlier – all of which appear to torpedo growth projections.

I phone Pallister, who remains as upbeat as the news allows. The cuts, he says, will make Westland more competitive, a leaner operation, but they are not fatal to the wider economy. There have been redundancies before – Westland has shrunk down the years from 10,000 workers to 4,000. However, meetings arranged for local people to discuss the Draft Core Strategy have been put on hold (the one concerning East Coker would have been held in mid-November) and will not now take place before Christmas.

Ahead lie many hurdles: a vote of the full council, a planning inspector’s report and finally signing off by the Secretary of State. With the time­table in disarray, it is not certain how long the process will take, but it seems unlikely that it will be completed this time next year as the council had intended.

'We are going to draw breath. We will not plough on if it isn’t right,’ Ric Pallister says. What about the threat to East Coker? 'Whether this means that we don’t extend to the south, I can’t say. If we don’t need to, we won’t. If we do need to – and it is the right decision, democratically decided – then we will.’ The council’s case must be evidence-based, he points out, otherwise the inspector will say, 'On yer bike.’

As far as the East Coker Preservation Trust is concerned, this stock-taking confirms their view that it is impossible to predict housing need accurately. 'There will be no rejoicing in East Coker over redundancies,’ Martyn Sowerbutts says, 'but they do show just how precarious are the economy and employment situation.’ Might East Coker – if not spared by a change of council heart – be spared by austerity? Hard times may yet prove a better ally than a former Poet Laureate.

But no one is dropping his guard. Paul Moorhouse and his wife, Vicky, came from Doncaster to buy the East Coker Post Office/shop in 2007. The first jolt to their new way of life came when the Post Office was closed, damaging the shop’s trade; the next was the threat of competition from the proposed urban extension shops. Moorhouse, smiley and extrovert despite the blows, has two reasons to oppose the extension. The first, commercial, is the danger to his shop, and the second is personal, in that the family (he has two daughters, 11 and six) fled an urban environment with its 'gangs, noise, traffic, pollution’ to enjoy the peace, safety and neighbourliness of a village. Moorhouse accuses the council of 'sitting in ivory towers, playing with people’s lives’.

Bob and Gloria Mead are long-rooted villagers, Bob’s father having taken a lease in 1918 on the farm they now own close to the proposed extension. Mead, 85, milked cows from the age of seven to the age of 77, and has just had a second knee replacement – not that you would know it from the way that he scurried to fetch his deerstalker hat and join us in the vegetable garden. Mrs Mead, as ever in her choker, leads me to an aerial photograph of the village to show just how little space there would be between East Coker and the urban extension. 'I don’t know what they are thinking of. We worked here all those years, and we want the next generation to do the same.’