Free-range pigs are not a blot on the Old Sarum landscape

DRIVING past Old Sarum, or walking up on the monument itself, I always enjoy seeing the pigs rooting around on the fields alongside the A345, living as free-range a life as it’s possible for farmed animals to do in our industrialised society.
I certainly don’t tut-tut and say to myself: “What unsightly agricultural activity!”
Apparently, though, some people do - among them Feilden & Mawson, the architects who have drawn up a proposed management plan for our historic airfield.
That’s how their document classifies the pig farm: “Unsightly agriculture.”
In an earlier draft they also called it “intensive”, despite the fact that free-range is exactly the opposite of the inhumane factory farming methods which are still permitted by some, otherwise civilised, European nations.
The architects say: “The visual impact of pig arks in the fields around the airfield is a major negative factor on the setting of both the airfield and the Old Sarum Scheduled Ancient Monument.”
Luckily for the pigs, and for all of us who like our free-range bacon - the kind that doesn’t turn to water the minute it hits the frying pan - the architects acknowledge that their little huts are “outside the control of the owners of the airfield”. However, they add helpfully: “They are on council controlled land which could be managed in the medium term.”
Ominous, that word “managed”. I rather thought the land was already managed – by a farmer.
Or do they mean tidied up? How do you tidy up free-range pigs, I wonder?
I also wonder why they might be proposing this course of action.
Is it simply to improve the setting of our First World War airfield?
Or is it because someone wants to build houses (470 is the figure I’ve seen mentioned) round the edges? And because buyers might turn up their noses at the prospect of porcine neighbours happily wallowing in the mud?
According to Laverstock and Ford parish council this “conservation management” scheme would destroy 65 per cent of the airfield’s surviving perimeter, one of the things that makes it so special in conservation terms.
English Heritage agrees. Both bodies regard the plan as “not fit for purpose”. The parish council says it would be more apt to call it a “development framework”.
We all recall the childhood tale of the Three Little Piggies who build their homes of straw, wood and brick respectively. Only the brick one survived the huffing and puffing of the Big Bad Wolf.
What chance have a few rows of rustic arks, do you reckon, against the ferocious wind of change that’s howling through towns, cities and green spaces the length of Britain, blowing in the diggers, the concrete mixers, and the big money?