Residents even commissioned a professional report on how to get the turbine up and running to provide power to the school, local shop and the Trust’s office. But all of their offers have fallen on deaf ears, they say.

After years of dispute, the Trust says it is regularly engaging with residents and they recently held meetings. But they were accused of being “condescending” after refusing the pleas to clear the waters.

“Every country in the world has drained swamps,” Mr Edelstein’s wife, artist Annamaria Succi, told the charity’s conservation representative during the meeting. “But the Trust has managed to create one.”

Roger Davies, who founded the Sherborne Brook Support Group, said that relations “can only be described as pretty poor” and the “community would like the heritage significance of this landscape to be strengthened rather than discounted as unimportant”.

The Trust argued on Friday night that they “work hard” alongside volunteers and partners “to ensure it remains a special place for future generations”, adding: “There is no question of abandonment.”

The spokesman added that they “recognise there are strong views but we need to be mindful of the fact that we are managing a long-term plan for a sensitive area for history, nature and people.”

The charity was bequeathed the 4,500 acre Sherborne Park on which the Broadwaters sit in 1987, as well as around 80 homes in the village, after the death of Charles Dutton, 7th Baron Sherborne. Sherborne House had already been sold and split into flats.

Locals believe that part of the reason for the alleged neglect is because without a country house it is not one of the charity’s “flagship properties”.