I WAS present at Gilling at the meeting in December when the Abbot of Ampleforth, the Right Reverend Timothy Wright, was host to Mr Colin Bland who proposed to establish a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre at Redcar Farm in the grounds of Ampleforth Abbey.

As Simon Horsborough pointed out (Evening Press, January 25), it was a pretty tempestuous meeting but it was my understanding that the men who were to be treated had no previous criminal records, had already been weaned from their drugs and constituted no greater threat than any other group of patients.

There must be a few parents in rural Ryedale who would have been immensely relieved that something positive was being proposed to help cure the curse of addiction now so prevalent among the young and which constitutes so great a threat to family life.

I think Redcar Farm would have been an ideal site and in any case the Abbot had written so many safeguards into the proposed lease arrangements that any threat to local peace would have been more imaginary than real.

Another opportunity to relieve human suffering and grief has been lost.

Frank S Rickards,

St Oswald's Close,

Helmsley,

Updated: 11:08 Monday, January 29, 2001