REGARDING your article “Village at War”, Friday June 5.

Those of us in Chailey who put fields to good work with local beef and dairy farmers were annoyed to read that the sheep and alpaca keeper at Tomkins, Philip O’Conor, calls us ‘hypocritical’ – it is he who is negotiating with a London finance firm to develop a solar ‘farm’ in the middle of beautiful, historic, and once agriculturally productive farmland.

When a number of us discussed the solar power project with Mr O’Conor back in 2013 we offered to rent land to him, some of it at no cost to him, to help make his sheep-farming business viable.

Also, we undertook to find additional parcels of land in the area available to rent in order to double or even treble his own acreage, to give him and his family the living they desire. Mr O’Conor rejected these offers.

Far from “not supporting Mr O’Conor’s local farm”, as Hadstone Energy claims in your report, we have tried very hard to support him in keeping his land in agricultural production.

Well over 400 people have signed our petition against this plan, and more than 200 people have registered objections on the Lewes District Council website, because this is a much-loved area of Sussex countryside, enjoyed by people who come from far and near to walk the footpaths across these fields.

There are four different footpaths that have views of this site, including the Greenwich Meridian Trail, and they would be ruined by covering the ground with 20,000 solar panels.

James Bamford, Markstakes Farm, South Chailey