Once more the grounds of Dorothy Stringer School in Brighton are under threat.

Some years ago the headmaster of the time wanted to build a night hockey pitch, complete with floodlights and a pub. The present headmaster wishes to build a football pitch with artificial grass and floodlights, no doubt bringing traffic at night to nearby quiet streets.

There are other night-lit football pitches within 20 minutes’ walking distance.

In the course of such disruptive development, 50 magnificent trees, some of them rare elms, could be destroyed.

The grounds of the five schools on this site are unique and very beautiful. They retain traces of the farm that was once there, with groves, coppices and superb views. They are not just for the schools; they are an amenity for thousands of us who live near by.

The trees now stand threatened. Their destruction would degrade the Stringer field for ever.

The resulting noise and light pollution would render thousands of our lives miserable each evening – look what happened at Blatchington Mill when a night hockey pitch was built there.

Beauty and peace like this in a built-up area is so rare. To suggest destroying it for what seem to be commercial reasons is the equivalent of going into an art gallery and offering to slash an important painting.

I devoutly hope this scheme will cause an enormous public outcry and be stopped as completely as the earlier one was. It is simply barbaric.

Peter Linden, Osborne Road, Brighton