DON’T you just love the directness of children?

“Why,” one small boy asked a member of the Earl of Radnor’s staff on Saturday, “does he want to build on our meadows?”

How on earth was the poor chap to respond?

Honestly, I felt some sympathy for him, faced with that innocent, upturned gaze.

We were at the gates of Lord Radnor’s ancestral estate in Bodenham, mounting a polite, very British protest against his plans to develop, in conjunction with St Nicholas Hospital, an estate of a rather different kind at Britford Lane, Harnham.

Right in front of these far-fromwealthy people’s houses, in fact, destroying their sought-after semi-rural setting and reducing their value.

And slap in the middle of one of the most unspoilt views of the Cathedral accessible to the general public.

The Earl has recently acted as patron of the Barons’ Trail celebrating Magna Carta, the historic basis of our rights and freedoms. The project has deservedly been a huge success and raised oodles of cash for the Trussell Trust’s charitable work.

How apt, then, that it provided the inspiration for a demonstration that was very much about the little people in this land. The children had worked hard, creating and decorating a cardboard cut-out baron, along with an assortment of pictures and placards to express their families’ concerns.

Lord Radnor didn’t pop out to say hello. He may well have been elsewhere.

Shame, as I’d have liked to ask him how he regards his relationship with the city of Salisbury, and whether he feels any particular responsibilities to it.

His agent, however, did turn up, listened courteously to what people had to say, and promised to pass it all on.

The meadows have not as yet been officially designated for development.

Wiltshire Council is conducting a strategic assessment of potential housing sites which is likely to take until next year.

But there will soon be an initial public consultation about the scheme, staged by the would-be developers.

Its opponents see this as putting the cart before the horse and wonder why it can’t wait a few months.

They also wonder why, when the city came within 1cm of a major flood last year and our councils are stockpiling sandbags, anyone is even thinking of building on the green corridor of land that is known to hold water.

With Wilton’s sheep fair field also being eyed up for housing and vital facilities such as Salisbury’s bus station and youth hostel already gone, it can seem as though everything’s for sale to the highest bidder in modern Britain.

But some things ought not to be.

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