From the train window: a plantation of wind turbines (Figure 3.1). These are the flat lands of Lincolnshire, made more relentlessly horizontal by these huge verticals. Smooth and white, their needle-sharp sails slowly furrow the air. Spaced at regular intervals, they punctuate this farmland–fenland mathematical grid. Trees mark the forgotten field boundaries and absent hedges – grubbed up to create giant super-fields. In the presence of these new structures, the chestnuts and oaks, in place for 200 years or more, look like the tiny trees used by architects to adorn their models. Amongst these pale giants stand the still-functioning relics of another form of power supply; as testament to the grand plan of the last generation, the pylon's latticework stands out black against the grey sky. Lines of wire add more horizontals to this expansive landscape, like a musical score sheet. In the foreground a string of modest wooden poles and wire carries electricity to the local population.

Rural places have always supported the grand infrastructural projects of modernity. A system of canals, then later the rail network and later still motorways, promised connection and transport of goods and people. Acts of destruction and creation, each one in turn added a layer of patterned ground to the landscape. The passage of the Electricity Supply Act in 1926 and the construction in the years following of the national grid with its ambitious system of transmission towers and wires contributed a new stratum to this palimpsest, and with it a new iteration of rural modernity.

This chapter examines reactions to the introduction of the physical infrastructure of the national grid into the British countryside. It maps the often angry and polemic responses from sections of the public, together with those from commentators concerned with the aesthetic appearance of rural places and their preservation. It argues, however, that a significant contrast can be made between these anxious responses to technological interventions in the landscape and a set of films and pamphlets created by the British Electrical Development Agency (BEDA). These materials were designed to promote rural electrification and offer a surprisingly different vision of rural modernity.