A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
N0 one would think of breaking up some glittering monster of a factory on a by-pass. They would not turn out the clerks and typists from the administrative block, nor let the workers buy their benches and tools on an easy instalment system. They would not leave the factory to the wind and rain and weep crocodile tears over its passing. Oh no. Factories are industry and therefore sacred and to be protected. But for some reason a big estate is not an industry, even though it supports itself and could make a profit if it were allowed to do so. It gives its people a full and healthy life compared to the queueing, canteens and music-while-you- work of the factories. Is that why the big estate can be pillaged and raped ? Chatsworth, with its timber and farms, its garden and park, its livestock, its cared-for cottages and model village, must be destroyed. The trees in the park must be felled, the deer slain, the fountains choked, the gardens turned into allotments, the farms sold to indifferent owners, because there is no place for Chatsworth in the present economy. We are being destroyed by the machinery we thought would set us free. Chatsworth must go the way of countless smaller estates, some of them very beautiful, which we have seen broken up—the former owners living in a lodge, nissen huts in the devastated park, the Food Office in the drawing room, the Pensions' Office in the library and a Ministry com- missionaire drinking tea in the hall. Hedges will no longer be trimmed but replaced by concrete posts and wire. Deciduous trees will be felled and quick-growing hideous conifers planted in their place.
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