How do we care for our countryside when none of it is under our direct stewardship and when the common land is not ours? Adam Trimingham (The Argus, August 19) raises deep and potentially painful questions.

Who made the Sussex countryside we love? We did. Who can give it attention and care and love? We can, we who live on it and could live from it as did our ancestors.

The Friends of Stanmer Park fought Brighton and Hove City Council when it wanted to build a centralised car park, tantamount to charging to come into the park.

The “downland dual carriageway” has not “damaged the woods so badly they will never be the same again.” This is good copy but has no ecological meaning. The Great Wood still covers 300 acres (as in the 18th century), is in good biodiversity health and regenerating from the storm damage of 1987.

Go to www.fosp.org.uk and download our 2005 Plea for Stanmer Park.

The council has awarded us a £1,000 environmental sustainability grant to complete it and we intend to survey users’ wishes. We will create a park brochure for visitors, like the Friends of Sheepcote Valley have.

We support Adam Trimingham’s vision of Stanmer as a village welcoming visitors, with farm animals and a countryside centre.

Stanmer’s is one of productive land in an ornate setting and from both these elements it can draw its livelihood and provide it to the community of its users.

Will the new South Downs National Park Authority fare better in managing it than the council and National Trust have? Only time will tell.

The Friends of Stanmer Park will endeavour to allow all of us to rediscover Stanmer’s unique character.

We belong to land more than it belongs to us and it maintains its character in spite of some of our actions.

Marie-Angel Chevrier
Friends of Stanmer Park
Newberry Lane, Cuckfield