When the Wind Farm Came

I live near Haworth, home of the Brontes and I have spent many hours running and walking the moors above Haworth. At the moment there is a proposal to build a giant windfarm on Haworth Moor and the surrounding area. There is a campaign to stop this windfarm being built because of the environmental impact it will have on the land and the historical links to the Brontes. I have written a piece about the potential impact the windfarm will have looking back when it is too late.

When the Wind Farm Came

I remember Top Withens in the old days. The days when I would park at Penistone and look around me, taking in the rolling hills of green with villages in the dips and farms on the hillsides. I turn towards the bleak moors, equally welcoming and unforgiving, depending on how nature feels. I see a group of trees towards The Height, and further along, my eyes take me to a lone tree beside an old farmhouse. I know from experience that this is Top Withens, the farmhouse made famous by the Brontes. This is my destination, where I can clear my mind and reset myself. Some days, I might see a few people; others, I’m the only person for miles.

Living with autism and dyspraxia, these vast open spaces are essential for me. These are places where I can go and switch off from an increasingly non-stop world that seems to be getting faster and faster and, for me, increasingly out of reach as my mind struggles to digest and process everything that is going on around me. I quickly become overwhelmed and withdraw from life, reverting to someone who says little because I am still trying to process what happened hours or even days ago. For me and others like me, the moors are a lifeline where we can go and take in the world at our pace and in our way without feeling pressured, overwhelmed, or confused by the need to try and keep up with a pace beyond me and others.

All that changed when the windfarm came.

The construction of these giant windmills took at least two years, far longer than we were told it would. The moors were a mess. On good days, we were limited to where we could go, security guards stopping us from passing through places where previously we could roam. Fences and machinery further blocked our path, and the constant noise and feeling of being watched made us feel unwelcome from somewhere we used to think of as our backyard of nature. The moors turned into a quagmire of mud, water, oil, and other chemicals we didn’t know a name for. Plumes of smoke rose into the air from all the drilling and lifting. The moors turned into a scene from a dystopian film rather than a place of peace and beauty.

On bad days, when it rained, or the mist came down, and there were no workers or security guards, it was impossible to move with any degree of freedom because the thick, deep mud, oil, and other chemicals created a film of man-made ice, making it difficult to walk on and impossible to run. The moors I once loved had become a sea of mud with nothing growing or living on them anymore.

Now, after the wind farm has been built, the fences pulled down, and the workers and security guards have gone, we are left with a vast tract of concrete blocks separated by thin strips of green. Where I could once go and stand anywhere and see for miles, I now get interrupted views of what was once mile after mile of beautiful moorland, now a steel jungle stretching around Top Withens and far beyond. The noise of the windmills is relentless, their blades whirring nonstop day and night, creating a humming you can’t switch off from that goes right through you and makes you wish for the peacefulness of silence.

Where once I could go and switch off from the world, reset my mind and body, and be at one with nature, I am now constantly reminded of the 24-hour world we live in, the relentlessness of a world I cannot keep pace with as the blades whirr faster than my mind can process their movement. I can no longer go here to find myself. I have lost my place of tranquillity forever, and my world has become much smaller since the wind farm came.