Where Mike Oldfield created, from hills, ferns, rocky streams and whispering forests, two of the greatest albums of all time, Hergest Ridge and Ommadawn, is under threat.

We only have until 16 Feb to lodge objections to a windfarm proposal that would destroy all this.

They intend to put a wind farm, nearly 1000 metres high, in the hills across the valley from Hergest. You will see them from the Ridge. They will be around 1000ft higher (300m) higher than where he flew gliders… and that was already at nearly 1500ft up (425m). Almost impossible to believe, they will be 2000ft (700m) above the valley below (it’s the back cover of Mike’s album Hergest Ridge 2010). That’s about twice the height of The Shard!

The result is that around The Beacon on Bradnor Hill, certainly from the hillside and possibly even from in the house itself, this will be in the view. BTW if you don’t know, it’s on top of a huge hill, in Herefordshire, but about 5 mins stroll to Wales.

We know the views mattered to him. He said, “I was content being right out in nature. The Black Mountains outside my window… fantastic.”

Actually, Mike, they weren’t. They were 22km away. That’s the point. From the top of Bradnor you can see half of Shropshire, deep into Worcestershire and half of Herefordshire. Plus a big of Wales where, the other side of the valley they want to put this gigantic windfarm.

The Beacon and the rest of the hills here, where this windfarm is going, are so high, you feel like you can see the whole planet from the top.

Look at the cover of Hergest Ridge. That is what the fish-eye lens shot is telling everyone whose never been ‘to this small planet with who knows where.’

We need to save this place.

It is the high altitude views that Mike commented upon, that make this place extraordinary. They inspire everyone who comes here and which will be destroyed by the windfarm.

Future generations won’t be able to see and feel the landscape that healed and inspired Mike. They won’t hear drums, and the murmuring of mountain streams. The air his gliders rode upon will be a place of machines interrupting the view of this Herefordshire/mid-Wales landscape over an area of some 10,000 square miles. If he rode across there in future, if we don’t stop this, it won’t be simply the grass, snow and Westerly breeze, of ‘On Horseback’. It will be the city and the noise of industrialisation. I urge you, listen to the song and see if you think 30 wind-turbines fit with that. We need windfarms, but not in one of the UKs great places of land, sky and wonder.

Water-break-its-neck, just below the proposed windfarm

The Details

The Issue

They intend to put a wind farm, nearly 1000 metres high, in the hills around Hergest. Future generations won’t be able to see and feel the landscape that healed and inspired Mike. They won’t hear drums, and the murmuring of mountain streams. The air that his gliders filled will be the places of machines interrupting the view of this Herefordshire/mid-Wales landscape over an area of some 10,000 square miles. Mike has specifically stated that the views from The Beacon were part of his inspiration.

It’s not just gliders who fill these skies

Why it must be stopped

Does this matter? Well, to fans, yes of course. But it matters to the world. Mike’s music revolutionised how we enjoy music today. He established studio-composition. What he did back then is how most composers work now. Even if the music is to be played by others, they build it first and test it in their studio at home. They can submerge themselves in a place. They can literally fly to Japan and sit and write the music for a game or a film looking at sakura, acers, pagodas. That’s how people do it now. One example: Goldfrapp deliberately rented a bungalow in the middle of nowhere for six months to make Felt Mountain… and you can hear it in the music. It seems obvious now but it was not then. Mike made it happen, inside the lid of his grand piano, in his living room, in the Welsh Marches in 1975.

“It was like an Aladdin’s cave - they recreated Abbey Road
in my little cottage. The sheep were very bemused.”
Mike Oldfield

This is what Mike’s site also says about this place:

The official Oldfield site is explicit that Hergest Ridge was “a lament to the soothing environment Oldfield enveloped himself in directly after his debut’s overwhelming success.”

The Oldfield site is equally clear about Ommadawn: “Originally released in November 1975, Ommadawn remains one of Oldfield’s favourite works. Recorded at his then home at Hergest Ridge…”

Even more importantly, his first song, sung by himself, on one of his own studio albums, is about this place: On Horseback, at the end of the album Hergest Ridge. That is how important it was in his work. It marks a moment when he has found how to be OK with the world and to create what many still regard as his masterwork.

Why this place matters to the world

Well, it was Bradnor actually where his home was, looking towards Hergest. And that is the point - it’s from Bradnor Hill too that you will see these turbines. You will see them right across this landscape.

The influence of this place is everywhere in his music. His influence fills our screens, and it fills our minds.

“I had no idea then that what we had just done would ring down the years
and delight succeeding generations. When I emerged back into the sunny day
the skylarks were singing, high above the hillside ferns."
Robert Reed

Mike has taken the Welsh Marches to the entire world.

This is what Hergest is like, as Mike knew it, riding through the snow.  We must keep this landscape intact.

For generations to come

People come from all over the world to find the place where he healed and made music that stands alongside the greatest works in musical history.

They come, they don earbuds and walk over Hergest looking out on his view, his landscape, his understanding. And soon it will be turbines.

If you subscribe I will keep you posted about this

This is an ancient place. It has one of the largest collections of prehistoric remains, including the remains of a complex bigger than Stonehenge. Mike put that in his music. It is a place of dark skies where Wordsworth changed how he saw both Night and Eternity. Mike put that in his music too. It’s in these albums, but it’s in much of his music. Incantations summons up nature and examines night, seeking a night of beauty and light. Later he turns again to the Heavens in Tr3sLunas. However it’s Music of the Spheres where he seems back on the top of these Hills, the entire universe in motion above. But there is Return to Ommadawn too!

Others are resisting the destruction of archaeology and art history. And they are many,

Our job is to stand up for Mike Oldfield in this land. People come to The Beacon where he lived, just as people visit the Birthplace of Elgar. But what we are talking about is much more important than a birthplace of an artist. This is the place where Ommadawn was actually inspired and created!

Hergest Ridge is even more extraordinary. In the history of British music there are no other works named after a place where the artist lived, where the work and the artist became one. The most famous that comes close is Fingal’s Cave. That came about because Mendelssohn took a sightseeing trip!

If we keep this place, maybe other artists will come. They will see what happens when one really becomes part of landscape. Other parts of Britain and the world will be shared and understood through music.

At the moment, there is no other places that can claim this is ‘composer X’s land’. But this IS Oldfield country. Let’s love it.

The blue dot is The Beacon. The blue line circles Hergest Ridge. The red area is the proposed windfarm with the tops 500m above Bradnor and Hergest. If you look at the front page of this website, there is an image from the valley floor, which was taken from the Stone Circle that Mike probably knows and shows the ridge where the windfarm is proposed.

It is down to us, Oldfield fans, to save the context of his most important musical works: the open skies he loved and the cradled night that inspired which he found in these hills.

We have until Monday 16 February 2026 to object.

Please don’t think that’s not worth writing an objection! It will have impact. Elsewhere, ordinary people who loved the work of Thomas Hardy, D.H. Lawrence, Tolkien, Dylan Thomas have stopped projects like this by complaining in their thousands.

TEMPLATE OBJECTION (copy, customise, send)

Copy in the 20th Century Society. It will give them the evidence they need for their report. They have big clout.

To: PEDW.infrastructure@gov.wales
CC copy to: catherine@c20society.org.uk

Subject: CAS-01907-D7Q6Z1 — Representation / Objection (Nant Mithil Energy Park)

Dear Planning and Environment Decisions Wales (PEDW),

I am writing to object to the Nant Mithil Energy Park proposal (CAS-01907-D7Q6Z1).

I am not opposed to green energy; however, this scheme risks serious harm to a cultural landscape whose value is internationally recognised through Mike Oldfield’s work (Hergest Ridge, Ommadawn, and related albums), and through the wider tradition of progressive and world music that his Marches-period work helped shape.

I request that the Examining Authority require a full and explicit heritage assessment of the development’s impact on the cultural value and associative setting of this landscape, including (at minimum) effects on night character/dark skies, horizon and skyline, sense of remoteness, and the ability for the public to experience the place that informed and is now inseparable from this body of work.

Personal paragraph (please customise):

What Mike Oldfield’s music means to me is: [2–5 sentences].

I have / have not visited this landscape.

[If I have] It meant this to me: [1–3 sentences].

[If I have not] I hope to visit because: [1–3 sentences].

This proposal would diminish that cultural experience in a way that cannot be repaired.

Yours faithfully,

[Full name]

[Town / Country]

Send it here:

PEDW.infrastructure@gov.wales

CC catherine@c20society.org.uk