from Sunday Herald, 02 December 2012
An historic hill will be entirely eaten away by a quarry
and disappear from the skyline under plans to be considered by a local
authority this week.
Sheep Hill, in the Kilpatrick Hills on the Clyde in Dunbartonshire, is the site of ancient Bronze and Iron Age forts. But local residents and experts say that they will be destroyed by the expansion of a stone quarry.
The hill also features in a famous painting by the 19th century Scottish landscape artist, John Knox, in the Kelvingrove art gallery in Glasgow. It is used by geology teachers to show how the landscape has been shaped by volcanoes and ice ages.
Allowing the hill to be wiped off the map would be “an act of wanton destruction of our environment and inheritance”, according to Clydebelt, a local environmental group. They are calling for Scottish ministers to intervene to save the hill.
“Sheep Hill is liable to be destroyed,” said the group’s secretary, Sam Gibson. “This would leave a gaping hole in the side of the hills showing the workings of the quarry and fully visible from Bowling, Old Kilpatrick, Erskine, the Erskine Bridge and further afield.”
A proposal to revise mineral permissions for an existing quarry run by a local firm near Sheep Hill is due to be discussed by West Dunbartonshire Council on 5 December. This has provoked fierce opposition from local groups.
They say that, as well as damaging important archaeological remains and ruining the landscape, expanding the quarry would threaten wildlife and trees. The North Bank Environmental Group has filed a formal complaint to the ombudsman about the council’s handling of the development.
“The planning authority has kept the local community in the dark about this potential environmental vandalism for very nearly ten years,” alleged the group’s Derek Fabian.
Silverton and Overtoun community council pointed out that digging away the hill would be irrevocable. “When Sheep Hill is gone, it is gone,” said the council’s Rose Harvie. “Future generations will look back and wonder how such destruction could have been permitted.”
Dr Euan MacKie, a renowned archaeologist and honorary research associate at the National Museums of Scotland, has studied Sheep Hill since the 1960s. “It would an act of appalling vandalism to destroy it,” he told the Sunday Herald.
He accused the quarry company of having little concern for the area’s rich archaeological heritage, and the local authority of failing to capitalise on it. “Sheep Hill fort is an important archaeological site which should not be destroyed,” he said.
The government landscape agency, Scottish Natural Heritage, previously expressed concern that losing Sheep Hill to quarrying would damage the landscape. But according to one official, it won’t say anything now because its “level of involvement in planning cases has become more restricted”.
The quarry company, William Thompson and Son, did not respond to repeated requests to comment last week. It has extracted whinstone at its Sheep Hill quarry for use in construction projects for decades.
A company director, Andrew Thompson, was quoted in a local newspaper saying that a “hornets’ nest” had been stirred up by the revision of minerals permission. “I understand fully people’s objections to this but it’s not like we would be immediately drilling into the hill the next day,” he said.
“I’ve said all along that if someone can find another site where the minerals are as suitable for quarrying then we will move there. At the end of the day, I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t. I either don’t use the land and my company has nowhere to quarry, or I do quarry the land and I’m the bad guy.”
West Dunbartonshire Council pointed out that permission for quarrying at Sheep Hill was originally granted in 1949, and that would not be revisited. The purpose of the revision under discussion this week was to bring the planning conditions up to date in line with current best practice.
A council spokesman added: “Sheep Hill itself, in the southern part of the site which has not yet been quarried, is the site of a prehistoric vitrified hill fort which is a scheduled ancient monument. Scheduled ancient monument consent for the removal of Sheep Hill fort was granted in 2002.
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