Environments of Identity. Agricultural community, work and concepts of local in Yorkshire, 1918–2018 (The White Horse Press, Winwick, 2022)

Abstract

end so save Parliament Hill Fields, as well as many commons whose names will be familiar (Wandsworth, Tooting, Barnes, and Mousehold Heath in Norwich). Octavia Hill also enabled the National Trust to acquire attractive areas in Kent and Surrey that had become accessible by train from London. While Beatrix Potter protected the Lake District landscape, including aesthetic considerations around conserving its small farms (William Wordsworth is referenced, naturally), Pauline Dower and Sylvia Sayer directly addressed land use conflicts. Dower was concerned with defining a Northumberland National Park/ Kielder Forest, and Sayer developing, and protecting, Dartmoor National Park. It is most gratifying that Hadrian’s Wall forms one focus for the Northumberland National Park! However, we read about the dispute of including Kielder Forest within a National Park setting, and eventually it would be designated a ‘Forest Park’, the modern ‘Kielder Water and Forest Park’; noting the area would subsequently have its very own reservoir in Kielder Water. We are reminded of those very twentieth-century conflicts between local government, national parks authorities, state agencies (notably the Forestry Commission), voluntary bodies, and agricultural interests in the English uplands. Sylvia Sawyer’s concerns were similar. If the battle in Northumberland concerned agricultural development and afforestation, her Dartmoor concerns were similar, with added military training areas and reservoir development. Chair of the Dartmoor Preservation Association, her own battles included opposition to the creation of the Meldon reservoir, although many others had been created. Sylvia Sawyer opposed the advance of commercial forestry and helped to restrict military training on the north side of the Moor from the 1970s, thereby improving access. She furthermore dismissed arguments about whether the landscape is ‘natural or man-made’, a prescient stance! The final chapter references other writers in the field, particularly Marion Shoard, the contemporary Cumbrian sheep farmer James Rebanks, but sadly not John Sheail. Providing context is a strength of this work. Influences discussed include Liberal, Socialist, Marxist, Unitarian, and Anglican. Even if one subscribes to the Great Man Theory of History (sic) espoused by Thomas Carlyle, the omission of women is but one elephant in the room. Matthew Kelly effectively compensates this by dissecting not only the attitudes of the time, but also their predilections towards authority, ownership, political and religious background, and naturally issues around class. It is interestingly toe-curling to read of Hill’s attitudes to the ‘working class’ versus her perceived needs of the more affluent members of society. More than that, Sylvia Sayer, who held a title, expressed a certain snootiness to the dwellers within ‘Subtopia’, a pejorative term that apparently refers to the worst aspects of (cluttered) suburban development and to its occupants. The Autor pulls no punches with their eccentricities and prejudices that may be safely explained by them being ‘Women of their times’! A good read indeed.