Valleyfield under threat!

Jul 4, 2020

Members who attended the Humphry Repton study day in 2018 at Broomhall, followed by a walk around the landscape at Valleyfield to explore what remains of the historic designed landscape, will be dismayed to learn that there has been a damaging incursion into the Valleyfield landscape during the Covid-19 lockdown.  It is reported that vandals have broken through one of the gates into what is now known as Valleyfield Woodland Park, armed with a mechanical digger, and have created an off-road bike circuit with much mounding and excavation in the Pleasure Ground, the area of parkland immediately to the south of the site of the old mansion house, comprising the Cow Park, East Park and Flagstaff Park.  The Valleyfield landscape is included in Historic Environment Scotland’s Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes in Scotland, so is regarded as of national significance.  Quite apart from breaking the law, this development flies in the face of both national and local development plan policies regarding the protection of Inventory sites.  Accordingly, SGLH has written a strongly worded to the leader of Fife Council to express its dismay at this development, and urging the Council to work together with the Police and other interested parties to identify and prosecute the vandals, to level the new earthworks, and to secure the boundaries of the site to as to prevent further incursions.

VALLEYFIELD LETTER 19.06.2020