Oswestry hillfort campaigners weigh up legal fight
Campaigners fighting to preserve the land around the Iron Age Old Oswestry Hillfort could launch a legal challenge against Shropshire Council's decision to include the site in its planning policy.
Dr Mike Heyworth, director of the Council for British Archaeology, said the site must be protected from development.
He said, if necessary, campaigners will fight the decision under European law.
A site in the shadow of the hillfort has been included in the latest draft of SAMDev – Shropshire Council's list of preferred sites for development over the next decade.
But campaigners and members of Hands Off Old Oswestry Hillfort say the setting of the monument is as important as the hill itself and should be protected.
Dr Heyworth said: "The key part of European law may be the European landscape convention. This is a relatively new thing for the UK, not entirely tested yet. That is one which we will be looking at very closely.
"Part of our concern is that this is an incremental picture, that this scheme is just a stalking horse. If this site gets developed, then who is to say that they won't then be proposing a little bit more, a little bit more, and then the whole of north Oswestry has exploded into a development zone."
His comments were echoed by Sir Barry Cunliffe, archaeology professor at the University of Oxford, who said allowing the development at the foot of the 3,000-year-old monument could be "the thin end of the wedge". He said: "It is worth making a fuss about this particular issue because it does look like the thin end of the wedge. There would be nothing really to stop developing land right up to the very boundary of some of our major archaeological sites."
A spokesman for Shropshire Council said the sensitivity of the Old Oswestry Hillfort and its setting have been recognised throughout the plan-making process, which started in 2010.
