PERSISTENT rumours circulating that there are plans to build a restaurant and visitor centre in Savernake Forest have been dispelled by its owner, the Earl of Cardigan.

For months now, Lord Cardigan, who owns the 4,500-acre forest along with his family trustees, keeps getting told by locals that the restaurant and visitor centre will be built at the unique road junction in the middle of the forest, Eight Walks.

However the Earl, David Brudenell-Bruce, has said once and for all that these rumours are completely false and that if any development would take place, it would have to go through him and he would reject it in a heartbeat.

"When I first heard about this rumour to build some kind of a visitor centre at Eight Walks along with a restaurant of some kind, I was horrified," said the 64-year-old.

"I keep assuring people that I talk to in the forest that that is completely false and yet the rumours persist. So I want to categorically say that this will not happen.

"This is designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), due to its woodland, grassland flora and wildlife, and an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), so there is no way this would go ahead as it has to be approved by me and that will never happen.

"Savernake Forest needs such a development like a hole in the head.

"Thousands upon thousands of people walk through this forest and it will not be tarnished by anything like this."

The supposed point where the development would be is along the 4.2mile Grand Avenue, which was laid out and planted in the 1770's by Lancelot Capability Brown.

That private road stands in the Guinness Book of Records as Britain's longest avenue.

Halfway along its length, right in the middle, Capability Brown created a unique road-junction, where eight roads meet at the same very point, known as Eight Walks.

"I want to assure people that no such appalling idea is going to happen, and that we will continue to try to maintain Savernake’s wild and unspoiled nature, especially right in the very middle of this ancient Forest," he added.

The Earl of Cardigan is the 31st hereditary warden of the forest, a line that dates back to 1067, shortly after the Norman Conquest. Since 1939, the forest's management and timber rights have been leased to the Forestry Commission.