Latest news with #DukeOfMarlborough
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Campaigners call on King Charles to help them stop Britain's biggest solar farm as £800m 3,500-acre project is set to spread across Winston Churchill's Blenheim birthplace
Campaigners have called on King Charles to help them stop Britain's biggest solar farm set to spread across the Blenheim Estate where Sir Winston Churchill was born. The £800million Botley West project is expected to cover almost 3,500 acres of land in Oxfordshire with solar panels. This includes 2,000 acres of the Blenheim Estate, which the Duke of Marlborough's half-brother Lord Edward Spencer-Churchill, who runs the property, has agreed to lease. Locals branded the plans an outrage and Tim Summer has written a letter to the King citing an act from the early 18th century to explain that he must intervene. He claimed that the Blenheim Estate does not officially own the land, explaining that it is leased by the Crown to the Duke of Marlborough. He supports this claim using the 1705 Queen Anne Act of Parliament, which gave the Blenheim Estate to John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough. Mr Summer said: 'Leasing and giving ownership of Blenheim land to a third party who will directly enjoy financial benefits is against the 1705 Queen Anne Act. 'I therefore humbly ask that the Crown steps in to enforce its ownership of the Blenheim Estate as Queen Anne intended and refuses the Blenheim Estate land to be handed over to any third party.' Since May, the Planning Inspectorate has been examining the scheme and will eventually send a recommendation to Energy and Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband. The King, a lifelong environmental campaigner has not commented on the Botley West project. But the argument was presented at a hearing in Oxford and the Planning Inspectorate has asked for further clarification from Blenheim. A spokesperson for the estate said: 'We are aware of the comments made during the public examination which are not correct in relation to this project.' The King, has installed solar panels at Windsor Castle and a solar farm on a former horse grazing paddock at Sandringham. If the Blenheim Palace plan goes ahead, protesters said children being born now will be middle-aged before they see the green fields surrounding their homes. Meanwhile, Blenheim Estate is set to make £128million from leasing their land to German company Photovolt Development Partners (PVDP), which has created UK company SolarFive Ltd specially for the project. At the moment Blenheim are said to make £150 per acre per year from its land. PVDP said the going rate for leasing land for solar panels is £1,000 per acre, a 567 per cent increase. Mark Owen-Lloyd the director of PVDP said: 'Should the project be granted consent, Photovolt will become one of many tenants of the Blenheim Estate, who have leased their land for centuries. 'The restrictions apply only to the World Heritage Site that is Blenheim Palace, which will of course have no solar panels installed on it.' More than 11,000 homes across 15 villages within a mile of the panels will be affected, with the panels visible from most of the land in the 60 square miles surrounding the massive solar farm.
Times
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Snobbery and sex appeal: the remarkable lives of Sargent's ‘dollar princesses'
By the time the 9th Duke of Marlborough decided to have his young family painted by John Singer Sargent in 1905, the artist had, according to Marlborough's American-born duchess, Consuelo Vanderbilt, 'gained a distinct ascendancy over contemporary artists in England'. Writing in her 1952 autobiography The Glitter and the Gold, Vanderbilt remarks that when the American artist displayed his portraits at the Royal Academy they 'were always the most startling and most discussed pictures, and were usually surrounded by crowds in violent disagreement over their merits'. Now, on the centenary of Sargent's death, a fascinating subsection of his work is going on display at Kenwood House in London. Heiress: Sargent's American Portraits is the first exhibition to focus on his paintings and sketches of
