I saw the letter (CP, 17-07-20) from Howard Hawes regarding the possibility of building on Seaclose Park.

As a child of 6, I watched in wonder as the late Jack Hinton built a wall that belonged to the first house put up on what used to be allotments and a large garden next to our house at Blackbridge Road, Freshwater.

Little did I know then what was in store. The fields and paddocks that were bordered by Easton Lane, Victoria Road, and Guyers Road, all built on over the next few years. Our childhood playground gone forever.

Read Howard Hawes' letter here.

Thankfully the pond is still there, in Marsh Close. Also vanished is the glebe land down Victoria Road, where we used to pick crocuses on the way home from All Saints.

I’m not the only one to watch in horror as the West Wight, as well as many other places on the Island, has its green spaces gradually overwhelmed by housing developments, destroying acres of woodland and fields and depriving future generations of things we, as children, took for granted.

I remember my stay at Carisbrooke High School from 1974 to 1977, when Priory Lane was still a country track winding through the fields to the duckpond, and all the fields towards Gunville still untouched. I could go on.

The thing we all appreciate is, folks have to live somewhere, but surely there must be other options to ruining the countryside and clogging the place up with even more traffic? Leave all green fields and open spaces alone.

Pennyfeathers should be stopped, leaving those fields as a nature reserve or at least somewhere to walk the dog.

One last thing. I read a while back that the track from St Mildred’s Church at Whippingham to Folly Lane was used to bring the bodies of French soldiers during the Napoleonic Wars for burial at the church.

An ancient trackway, like Priory Lane, another sacred place, also due, if I’m correct, to be built on. All this beauty is of God? I wonder how much longer there will be any beauty left for anybody to admire.