29 JANUARY 1983, Page 18

Complementing Sizewell

Sir: I write to defend the CEGB against a vile injustice perpetrated by Mr Richard West in his article on Sizewell (15 January). Mr West suggests that the CEGB forces the opponents of Sizewell B to fight on ground of the board's own choosing. Thus the Council for the Preservation of Rural England has to base its case on economics. The arguments are all to do with utility. Beauty is useless, and a barbarian board ravages the countryside.

But in its Statement of Case the CEGB says: 'The objective of the architectural treatment would be to complement the rec- tangular shape of the A station in the set- ting of the Suffolk Heritage Coast and the Suffolk Coasts and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.'

Has it never occurred to Mr West, as he stands upon our lovely coast, that the very large rectangular shape of the A station cries out to be complemented by the even larger domed shape of the B station? Anyone of aesthetic sensibility realises that the board merely needs to think of a second complement, to the violently ugly pylons which bestride the landscape far inland from Sizewell, for joy to be unconfined.

Andrew Gimson

Mansard Cottage, Aldringham, Leiston, East Suffolk