MORE than half a million pounds have been spent to remove nearly four kilometres of overhead power cables in order to restore views of a historic valley.

Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) has carried out the work over a three month period and replaced the infrastructure with underground cabling to provide clearer views of the Valley of Stones National Nature Reserve near Littlebredy.

The ancient trail, part of the south Dorset ridgeway area, dates back to the Neolithic times and SSEN worked carefully with Natural England and Dorset Archaeology to ensure the site was fully assessed before works could take place.

The project forms part of the distribution operator’s ongoing £15million investment programmed to replace 90km of overhead distribution lines in areas of outstanding natural beauty.

SSEN’s project manager, Carl James said: “With any of our undergrounding projects in this scheme, we have to fully understand the environment before we can agree that the area would benefit from works. This involves both our in-house environmental teams and external agencies who can advise us through their expert knowledge of the site and its history.

“In the case of Valley of Stones, we engaged archaeologists from Wessex Archaeology to work on the exploratory excavations in the proposed area of undergrounding, so we were fully confident that our work would have no negative impact on the environment or the wildlife within it.”

SSEN said the new cabling would provide a ‘more robust and flexible power supply’ to the surrounding area and help to adopt low carbon technologies.

Tom Sunderland, senior reserve manager at West Dorset National Nature Reserves for Natural England, said: “The work carried out by SSEN to remove the overhead powerlines has dramatically improved the visual amenity and landscape quality at the Valley of Stones National Nature Reserve (NNR). This benefits walkers and visitors to the NNR and has helped to restore an important ancient landscape.

“SSEN worked closely with Natural England to carefully plan the removal of the overhead powerlines to ensure that no damage was caused to the National Nature Reserve during the work.”