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Relocated Dalby Forest sculpture plan approved

Phil Catterall/Geograph Hawldale Rigg in Dalby ForestPhil Catterall/Geograph
Dalby Forest is situated on the southern slopes of the North York Moors, with more than 8,000 acres of woodland

Plans for a sculpture by a Turner Prize-winning artist to be installed in Dalby Forest have been approved after a change of location was put forward.

Rachel Whiteread has been commissioned to create a concrete cast of a Nissen hut to mark the Forestry Commission's centenary and the end of World War One.

The artwork was due to be erected near Low Dalby village but attracted a number of objections from residents.

It is now set to be located at Adderstone.

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Getty Images Turner Prize-winning artist Rachel Whiteread next to a piece of work from her show 'Detached'Getty Images
Rachel Whiteread was the first female winner of the Turner Prize
Getty Images Nissen hutsGetty Images
Nissen huts were invented and built during WW1

The artwork's original location was chosen as it was the site of Dalby's former Forestry work camp site, which was made up of a large number of Nissen huts.

The huts - steel structures built for troops in WW1 - were used to house men sent to build the forest in the 1930s.

But some local residents claimed the location would lead to congestion in the village and attract "litter, graffiti, urination and the like".

However, members of the North York Moors National Park Authority planning committee approved the application by a vote of 10 to three, although some members expressed concerns about the design.

Janet Frank told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: "A Nissen hut is one of the ugliest buildings there's ever been.

"If any of our farmers wanted to build a Nissen hut in the national park we would say, 'no, that's going to have a horrible landscape impact'."

Committee chair David Hugill, however, said: "We did not see it as a Nissen hut; it was a piece of art, and there's a vast difference between a Nissen hut which you would see on a farmstead back in the day to what was being proposed here."