The Power & the Glory

The City of Durham is in spots an unspoiled medieval museum piece in the heart of the Newcastle coal country. The crowning glory of unspotted Durham is its thousand-year-old cathedral ("half Church of God, half castle 'gainst the Scots") from which warrior monks, centuries ago, issued to battle against marauding Border chieftains. Last week Durham Cathedral's Very Reverend Cyril Argentine Alington sallied forth to battle again, against a new incursion. This time the enemy was a power plant.

Durham's City Councillors had approved the plant. As blueprinted, it would rise above the River Wear 300 yards from the city line. Its smokestacks and cooling apparatus would undoubtedly smear the cross-river view of the cathedral's square-towered majesty. Stiffening his sinews, summoning up his blood, Dean Alington cried: "This proposed erection is an outrage. I shall fight it with all my power."

The Dean had power--in his pen and in his past. Author of 28 books, he was onetime Headmaster of Eton. Conning a mental list of some of his old boys, he wrote them letters inveighing against the threat to Durham's ancient beauty. Old Etonian Viscount Cecil rallied the Old School Ties, roused the bonnets of the House of Lords. In the House of Commons Durham-born Samuel Storey demanded an investigation. Town & Country Planning Minister William Morrison hastily promised one.

London's tight-spaced Times gave three columns to the battle between Durham's Dean and the industrial revolution. Britons turned from the big war to watch this little one.

Durham itself was divided. The City Council stuck by its power plant. One veteran member shook a gnarled old fist at the cathedral. "Yon bloody parsons gets their money regular," he cried. "It don't matter to them if Durham is unemployed and hungry. A feast of beauty the Dean calls his ruddy cathedral--but it won't fill empty stomachs. The Dean and that lot, they'd like to keep this ruddy city as it was centuries ago."

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