Why is Merrow Downs so important?
If you know Merrow Downs, you will know how important it is, for people, wildlife and nature more broadly. It is a gorgeous area of open chalk grassland, alive in the spring and summer with wildflowers and skylarks, with the woodland at the edge home to badgers, bats, dormice and owls.
From the top of Merrow Downs on a clear day you can see planes taking off from Heathrow, the Wembley arch and the whole of the skyline of the city of London, about 30 miles to the north. Merrow Downs is loved and used by residents from all over Guildford and beyond. Families come to walk (a path leads from the Downs up to Newlands Corner and the North Downs Way), people bring their dogs, teenagers have picnics there in the summer. At night it is a great place to star gaze because it is so high up and rural, but yet so close to Guildford.
Why is it under threat?
Because Merrow Downs is part of the Surrey Hills National Landscape (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) you might think it is protected from development. Sadly, this isn’t the case. A local private girls’ school, Tormead, has built a floodlit astroturf hockey pitch on the Urnfield, what was a grass sports ground just behind the woodland you can see in the photo above. The 8 floodlight towers will shine down above the treeline for up to 12 hours a day, 6 days a week for five months of the year, between 1st November and 31st March, beginning in autumn 2025. For many years Tormead School used the competition standard hockey pitches at Surrey Sports Park and at a range of other local schools. But Tormead wanted its own facilities to host competitive fixtures. The development was initially refused – unanimously – by our local planning authority, but Tormead appealed against this decision and it has been allowed by the Planning Inspectorate.
What’s our concern?
We are a group of local residents who came together because we love Merrow Downs and we think it deserves to be protected for the future, for people and for wildlife. Most of us have children and we believe in the value of sport and of time outdoors. But Guildford is blessed with a wide range of sporting facilities already, and unspoilt green space is just as important in helping us all stay fit and well, mentally and physically. This hockey pitch is a specialist facility, not the sort of pitch on which you can also play football, for example, so it doesn’t have a wide community benefit. But Merrow Downs benefits the whole community – people with all sorts of interests, passions and capabilities. Building floodlights on a high ridge in a nationally protected landscape (and digging up 1 hectare of chalk grassland and replacing it with astroturf) seems to us to be not just reckless. It is simply wrong. But Merrow Downs benefits the whole community – people with all sorts of interests, passions and capabilities. Building floodlights on a high ridge in a nationally protected landscape (and digging up 1 hectare of chalk grassland and replacing it with astroturf) seems to us to be not just reckless. It is simply wrong.
So what’s the status now?
It has been a five year battle for local residents who have used all available avenues within the planning and legal system to limit the harm to the Surrey Hills from this development. Indeed, the planning application was originally refused unanimously by our own local Council and only approved by the Planning Inspectorate through an Appeal. Since then, we have scrutinised the developer’s plans to ensure they stacked up with what the Planning Inspector allowed. We have been through judicial review, we have questioned our local Council on numerous occasions, and we have collaborated with other local residents’ groups that share our love of Merrow Downs. We do not believe that Tormead’s lighting design for the floodlights meets the strict limits on light pollution set by the Planning Inspector and we will continue to work to ensure that the school operates within the limits placed on them.
What are we asking of you?
– Help spread the word about our campaign to protect Merrow Downs – both the land and the remaining dark skies which we are gradually losing
– Show your support by subscribing to our campaign news using the tab at the top If you haven’t been to Merrow Downs then come and visit and see how gorgeous it is. Fabulous nature, right on our doorstep. Thank you for your support.
