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| Main article by Leslie Ellison | |||
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| The creation of a 10-turbine wind farm on The Wold will change the skyline of Burton Latimer for at least several generations to come. This section of the site will track the progress of the developnment with reports and pictures. | |||
| Early in December of 2005, helicopters dropped into position an almost complete building, its brick walls already neatly set in mortared rows on vast slabs - like a giant version of the wonderful "Bayko" building set that taught many a child of the late 1940's how to build intricate architectural models, and predated "Lego" by two decades or more. This was to be the powerhouse and control room for Burton Latimer's wind turbine farm. Soon, by the 10th of December, the foundations were being made ready for the great turbine towers. And exactly a month later huge mobile cranes started to rumble onto Burton Wold and the erection of the towers began in earnest on four sites.
On the bright sunny afternoon of January 11th, a van was parked next to the control building in a churned up muddy spot next to the huge circular base of one of the new wind turbine towers. The number plate proclaimed it came from Mannheim. Like the brick building, most of the technical know-how necessary for the project has been imported.
The sole occupant got out and I greeted him with a polite "Gruss Gott" and he broke into a smile and said (in German) that he was relieved to hear German being spoken, as his schoolboy English was a bit rusty, and could I please tell him if there might be some Gasthof in this little nearby place with the tall Kirchturmspitze? I suggested a few places nearer at hand than the Travelodge at Thrapston, where he said he was staying at the time, and extolled the virtues of the several eating places in Burton that he might like to patronise; then we got to talking about the new Germany and he began to bemoan the problems the good taxpayers of the old Bundesrepublik were having to face in paying for rebuilding the infrasructure of the Eastern part that came back in from the cold in 1990..... Suddenly the earth vibrated and a vast mobile crane rumbled up on a massive caterpiller -tracked wheelbase. Down stepped a an equally massive driver who asked, in a rich Ulster accent, how he could get across to the site over the stubble field where a tall tracery of steel was going up?
It was then I noticed that every one of the gigantic pieces of machinery on the site had McNally emblazoned on its side...... The inventive genius and expertise that is helping to change the face of Northamptonshire today may now no longer come from within our shores, as it did when the canals, then the railways were linking the county to all parts of Britain, but the brawny hands who operate the construction equipment still continue to come from the Emerald Isle. Click here to read about the archaeological investigation into Burton Wold, before the wind farm was built
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