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Plans to build a 190 acre solar farm on countryside that inspired legendary novelist Thomas Hardy have been met with a madding crowd.
Locals are up in arms over the proposed plant, which would be equivalent in size to 150 Wembley Stadiums, with some 150,000 panels covering fields of green land in Dorset.
The farm would be able to power 13,000 homes each year, and would be just three miles away from another site where a similar-sized solar farm has already been earmarked.
Between them they will cover about 400 acres of verdant land in the Blackmore Vale, a patchwork of fields that have captured the imagination of Victorian author Hardy and poet William Barnes.
Countryside campaigners after facing a fresh fight with developers to prevent a housing estate being built next to a historic manor that inspired Thomas Hardy.
Objectors including Historic England and the Hardy Society thought they had stopped plans for 120 homes on land close to Wolfeton House, which the Victorian author visited frequently.
Last year a government planning inspector ruled against the development, stating it would cause permanent harm to the landscape near Dorchester, Dorset.
But the developers say the inspector commented that some housing might be acceptable and have now come back with a new plan for 89 properties on the rural plot.