The Duke of Beaufort, as landowner, wishes to build a large wind power station on the profoundly beautiful and historic Mynydd-y-Gwair (The Hay Mountain), North Gower.  The developer is National Wind Power.

The proposed site includes Penlle’r Castell (Summit of the Place of the Castle).  This motte and bailey castle, which is documented from 1287, sits above the boundaries of Carmarthenshire and Neath and Port Talbot and is the highest altitude point of Swansea at 1200 feet above sea level.  It commands panoramic views across the Bristol Channel, along the Somerset and Devon coastline, much of Glamorgan, North to the Brecon Beacons and West to the Preseli hills of West Pembrokeshire.  Mynydd-y-Gwair is a large, unfenced, grazed common of significant conservation value.

S.O.C.M.E. strongly opposes this development
Our objectives are

• Prevent the desecration of our natural heritage.
• Resist attempts to despoil an area of overwhelming natural beauty for the financial gain of absentee beneficiaries.
• Protect an important natural recreational resource.
• Preserve the rights of residents to quietly enjoy their property and prevent encroachment on their human rights and civil liberties
• Support the protection of the sites of archaeological interest under threat.
• Support the protection of the many species of endangered birds documented in the area.
• Support local graziers in the protection of traditional hefted flocks and in their concern for animal welfare issues.
• Highlight existing road safety issues.
• Support the indigenous farming population, whose traditional farming methods have honed this landscape, in their opinions that the ecology will be irredeemably ruined
• Challenge the pursuance of producing erratic, small supplies of highly subsidised electricity at the cost of destroying the social fabric and ‘sense of place’ of local communities.