Catherine Ward is delighted the Worcestershire Beacon caf burned down and has not been replaced; Frank Hill, secretary of the local branch of the CPRE, thinks Malvern Hills District Council rejecting plans for affordable housing is a cause for rejoicing (Your Letters, December 17).

Such letters illustrate the attitudes that are helping reduce the Malvern Hills - and rural England more generally - to a sterile dormitory for the wealthy and well connected.

Ms Ward argues that development detracts from the "peace and unadulterated beauty" of the Malvern Hills.

She forgets, or is unaware, that the Malvern Hills is not a purely 'natural' landscape. Much of what she admires is the product of human activities, such as grazing, cultivation and scrub clearance, that have gone on over thousands of years.

Mr Hill congratulates MHDC for its ability to see "the long-term consequences" of housing development in Alfrick.

He makes no mention of the high and rising house prices that are forcing many long-established residents of rural areas to move into adjacent towns, or remain dependent on their parents for accommodation well into adulthood.

Both of them perceive rural development as a threat, to be resisted at any cost.

They seem to want to preserve the Malvern Hills in aspic - unrealistic, unhealthy and unsustainable.

We need to see and utilise rural areas as a living and dynamic resource. A new caf, of sympathetic design, would encourage more people to climb the Beacon and appreciate the wonderful views.

More affordable housing - with appropriate covenants regulating its occupancy and resale - would enrich the social mix of places such as Alfrick, saving them from becoming middle-class enclaves. We need to think creatively and we need to think in terms of people, not just aesthetics.

Let's conserve the best of our past but let's not look back to an imagined idyll that never was. Let's look forward to a living countryside open to all.

Graham Gardner, Birtsmorton.