PYLONS campaigner Rosalind Craven has won backing - and donations totalling hundreds of pounds - from complete strangers across Yorkshire.

The 61-year-old widow says she has been amazed and moved by people's reaction to her "David and Goliath" battle against National Grid plans to build three pylons on her land at Home Farm, Huby, near Easingwold.

One woman from a Yorkshire coastal town sent a cheque for £500 to help meet Mrs Craven's bill for taking on the company at the High Court, which could come to tens of thousands of pounds.

The well-wisher said she herself had had a struggle with her local council over building work behind her house, adding: "I have just a little idea of what you must be feeling."

Another supporter, who sent her a £20 note, said: "I am deeply sorry you have not won your case against National Grid. To ride roughshod over your own piece of Little England disturbs me. What next for ordinary folk? Although I am a pensioner, it gives me great pleasure to help a bit. Please, please fight to the bitter end."

Another donor sent a £5 note, saying it was just a token gesture. "If I had £5,000, you would have had it," added the supporter. "An injustice has been done."

Another sent a book of poems to console her.

Mrs Craven said she had also had a number of phone calls in support. She said she wanted to check that the woman who sent her £500 could really afford it before she cashed the cheque.

"I am absolutely amazed," she said. "It's real generosity from people I have never met.

"I do find it quite moving. It has all been very pressurising, but this makes me want to carry on the fight and not give up."

National Grid won an injunction preventing Mrs Craven blocking its access to her land at the end of a two-day hearing at the High Court in Leeds last month.

The company claimed £65,000 in costs against her, but the full amount has still to be determined by a district judge at a later date.

Mrs Craven, who says her own costs come to about £2,000, despite representing herself in court, is still waiting to see whether she has been successful in a bid to take the case to the Court of Appeal in London.

Work has started on building the pylons, which are part of National Grid's scheme to construct a power line across the Vale of York from Teesside to Shipton-by-Beningbrough, near York.

Updated: 11:26 Wednesday, January 22, 2003