00:00I'm Tony Ward and I've lived here at Sarendal. It's the only place in the world called Sarendal
00:13for 20 years and there's been people living here for thousands of years. This house has
00:20been here 400 years. Just behind us, coming up to 300 metres from the property, there's
00:26going to be 2,000 acres of solar panels, many of which are going to be 4.5 metres high.
00:33They're not the 1 metre high ones with grass halfway up them with sheep around them. The
00:38sheep won't last very long if there are sheep. It's an industrial site and it's a rape of
00:45the countryside. There's so much history around here. People come to enjoy the footpaths,
00:52the peace. There's going to be lights on the various panel developments and the battery
01:00developments and those are going to spoil the darkness. The night sky is so crisp and
01:07clear here. There's going to be humming from the panels and the batteries as I understand
01:13it. Wiltshire Council has put huge effort into footpaths around here, making them accessible
01:22to people so they can come and enjoy the peace and quiet we love and that we're trying
01:27to protect. When we moved in 20 years ago, we put in ground source effect heating which
01:34was run under the fields in front of the house. But behind the house, to defray the cost of
01:41the large pumps that are needed for ground source heating, we wanted to put solar panels
01:46on this log barn just behind us. Just a ribbon of solar panels along there. We understand
01:53why you can't put solar panels on a listed building on the stone roofs 400 years old,
01:59but this is a broken down cow barn and it needs a purpose to make it maintainable and
02:08give it a reason for being there. So the solar panels we thought were a good idea, but we
02:13were turned down on the grounds that balloons flying over the house would not be able properly
02:20to read the way the house had developed over the centuries. So we do get balloons flying
02:27over because the balloon industry at Bristol comes out towards Marlbury and sometimes they
02:34land, they've landed in our fields in the past. And now with this 2,000 acres in front
02:40of us, those balloons won't be able to come anymore. So we weren't allowed to put the
02:45panels on this otherwise not very purposeful space. And now 20 years later, the balloons
02:54that would have been upset can't even come because there's going to be vast amounts of
03:00countryside covered in panels.
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