The tranquil corner of England about to be lost forever

The view from the top of the tower of St James’s church in Louth, on the eastern edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds, is breathtaking. Above soars the highest spire on any medieval parish church in England, at 289ft. Below is one of the most handsome Georgian towns in Britain, a cluster of delightful narrow streets lined with elegant pink-brick houses. To the grammar school here came Capt John Smith, an early leader of the Jamestown colony in Virginia, Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin and the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, all Lincolnshire-born.

To the west lie the gentle, undulating folds and valleys of the Lincolnshire Wolds National Landscape. To the east is the Lincolnshire Marsh, a tranquil low-lying coastal plain of rich farmland, ancient woodland, old windmills, small market towns, pretty, straggling villages and big skies, with the blue sea sparkling beyond.

A timeless English view to cherish and protect, virtually unchanged in almost 500 years since Lincolnshire folk gathered in St James’s church to protest against Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries, a Lincolnshire rising that marked the beginning of the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536.

Now the spirit of rebellion is rising once more in Lincolnshire hearts for this peaceful, pastoral landscape is about to be lost forever, under threat not from the king but the High Priest of Net Zero, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband. In order to bring intermittent power to the energy-hungry cities of the south, this narrow strip of farming country is to be grubbed up and covered with gigantic wind turbines and monstrous pylons taller than St James’s steeple, with fields of crops replaced by fields of solar panels and cattle sheds by electricity substations. Instead of birdsong the air will be filled with the dystopian crackle and hum of high-voltage electricity transformers.

On the front line sits Alford, a quiet market town centred on a lovely Elizabethan manor house of brick and thatch, a 14th-century church, a spacious marketplace complete with a Victorian corn exchange and a tall five-sailed tower windmill built in 1837. The town will be at the epicentre of a vast complex of electricity substations, with pylons ranging north and south, blighting homes, ancient farms, hamlets and villages.

Like little Willoughby, a tiny village a few miles south of Alford, where Smith was born in a 16th-century farmhouse called Covell’s Farm, which is still standing in Chapel Lane. Smith features prominently in the story of the Native American princess Pocahontas as the man she saved from death at the hands of her father, Chief Powhatan. The 15th-century font in the local church of St Helena’s, where Smith was baptised, is still in use and there is a stained-glass window illustrating the story of Jamestown.

A little farther south lies one of the National Trust’s most beloved properties, Gunby Hall, a uniquely pretty red-brick William and Mary-style house described by Tennyson as “a haunt of ancient peace”. Home to the Massingberds for more than 250 years, Gunby has had to fend off threats before – during the Second World War, the Air Ministry wanted to build an airfield that would have required the hall to be demolished but the owner at the time, Field Marshal Sir Archibald Montgomery-Massingberd, appealed personally to George VI and it was eventually built farther south near Spilsby.

Spilsby is a quaint little market town justly proud of being the birthplace in 1786 of local hero Sir John Franklin, who, according to the inscription below his statue in the marketplace, was the “Discoverer of the North-West Passage”.

Just outside Spilsby the extravagantly pretty village of Old Bolingbroke gathers about the ruins of John of Gaunt’s castle, where his son, the future Henry IV, was born in 1367. During the Civil War, the castle was a Royalist stronghold, and the ruins gaze mournfully across the barley fields to where Oliver Cromwell defeated a Royalist army at the Battle of Winceby in October 1643. The castle was pulled down not long afterwards.

East and south is Coningsby, where the church tower sports the world’s largest one-handed clock, 16.5ft in diameter with a hand 9ft long. At RAF Coningsby the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight visitor centre has Spitfires, Hurricanes and one of only two airworthy Lancaster Bombers still in existence.

Next door to that stands spectacular, moated Tattershall Castle, one of the first major brick buildings in Britain, with more than one million used. More of a fortified tower than a castle, it was constructed in the early 15th century using expensive newfangled brick as a show of wealth by Lord Treasurer Ralph Cromwell, who fought with Henry V at Agincourt. The view from the top stretches from Lincoln Cathedral to the Boston Stump – for now.

Up the road in Victorian Woodhall Spa, one of the only remaining prototypes of Barnes Wallis’s bouncing bombs sits outside the Petwood Hotel, which served as the home of 617 Squadron, the Dambusters, who flew from nearby RAF Scampton. The hotel’s Squadron Bar, where the officers celebrated their successful attacks on the Ruhr dams and mourned their lost comrades, has on display photos and memorabilia of Wing Commander Guy Gibson VC, Group Capt Leonard Cheshire VC and their officers, while there is a memorial to all the members of 617 Squadron in the centre of the village.

To the north of Spilsby, cradled in the Wolds, is tiny Somersby, barely a dozen houses but rightly celebrated as the childhood home of that most English of poets, Alfred, Lord Tennyson. His father was the rector and the rambling rectory where the poet was born in 1809 stands unchanged across from the church, although it is now a private house and hidden behind a yew hedge. As a boy, Tennyson roamed the countryside of “the well-beloved place where first we gazed upon the sky”, and here are his “Babbling Brook” and the “woods that belt the grey hillside…”

A mile down the road is Elizabethan Harrington Hall, where Tennyson has the narrator hope in vain that the daughter of the house might “come into the garden, Maud…” – a splendid suggestion as the gardens, laid out along mellow red-brick terraces, are quite beautiful.

These are just a few of the peaceful places that will fall under the shadow of the pylons. And who will want to visit the traditional, much-loved resorts and long sandy beaches of Lincolnshire’s glorious coastline when it becomes a nuclear waste dump, as is proposed? Sunny Mablethorpe, where Tennyson and his brother wandered among the sand dunes reciting poems into the wind; “so bracing” Skegness, with its donkey rides, Diamond Jubilee Clock Tower and jolly fisherman skipping along the seafront; the caravans of Ingoldmells, the site of the first Butlin’s holiday camp…

Solar Energy UK, a trade body for the industry, said in a statement: “It is right that infrastructure of a nationally significant scale is decided on a national basis. Doing otherwise risks local concerns overcoming vital national interests, notably energy security and the economy.”

How wretched that the “national interest” requires the wanton destruction of this green and pleasant land. Explore the charms of East Lincolnshire while you still can.

Where to stay

The Petwood Hotel, Woodhall Spa, is a comfortable Edwardian country house hotel that served as the base for 617 Squadron (the Dambusters) during the Second World War. Doubles from £155 B&B.

Brackenborough Hall Coach House is a selection of spacious self-catering apartments in various outbuildings of a Georgian farmhouse, set in 800 acres just outside Louth. From £300 per night.