The various claims and counter-claims of the protagonists in the current Bradford footbridge campaign are confusing, to say the least, to those watching from the sidelines.

One of the problems is that in almost all of the illustrations we have been shown, including that printed next to the letter headed ‘Council’s reply’, Wiltshire Times, November 13, Page 19, those in the original consultation leaflet and the presentation made in St Margaret’s Hall in June, we are never given accurate indications of the true scale of the proposed cable-stayed bridge in relation to its location. The viewpoints are always chosen so as to minimise the apparent impact. Bradford readers may therefore find it instructive to see this photograph of part of the Kingston Mills site showing a pile-drilling machine which has recently appeared there.

The height of the machine can be estimated fairly accurately from the height of the man, shown arrowed in the bottom right-hand corner. Assuming that the man is 6ft tall (1.83m) then the height of the driller in the photo is about 22m, precisely the height that Mr Lovell considered to be perfectly acceptable for the pylon of his cable-stayed bridge.

Readers should note that at this height the top of the drill is almost level with the camera viewpoint near the Scout hut on St Margaret’s Hill. It dominates every building in its vicinity, and is shockingly visible from almost everywhere in the town.

How the designer and the council could ever have thought this acceptable is a mystery, especially given that the council's original brief to the bridge designers who submitted their proposals in 2007 was, in line with the Conservation Area requirements, that the bridge should preserve or enhance the character or appearance of the area and protect open spaces and views into, out of and within the area.

While it is true that Mr Lovell has offered as a concession to reduce the height of the pylon to 18m, it can be seen that this will make hardly any difference to the eyesore potential of the structure in its intended location.

The claim of the councillors, writing in the letter referred to above, that a suggested alternative truss design would have to be 7ft high in order not to fail under its own weight, must also be questioned. Those councillors know perfectly well that in the course of the original discussions of the bridge working party in 2005/2007 several designs were offered by well-known bridge builders and designers for simply supported beam bridges that were not anything like that high, including Mr Lovell’s own original and very elegant design, the one accepted by the working party in May 2007 but since consigned to oblivion.

Bryan Harris, Orchard Gardens, Bradford on Avon.