A major conservation organisation has branded proposals to turn part of a wood mentioned in the Domesday Book into a quarry as the largest threat yet to a single site of ancient woodland.
Some 50 hectares of ancient woodland near Tamworth, Staffordshire, has been proposed as a new site option for inclusion in the county’s Minerals Local Plan as the preferred site to extract nine million tonnes of sand and gravel over a 13-year period.
The recommendation to allocate Hopwas Wood for future mineral extraction was made to the county council by LaFarge Tarmac, part-owners of the wood, and the council is now consulting on the new site options.
The Woodland Trust said the plans ‘represented the largest threat to a single ancient woodland site in England that the charity has seen in its 42-year history’.
