You don’t have to venture far onto Longmoor Heath, in the Western Weald of Hampshire, to know that you have stumbled on an unusually favoured spot. Lightly wooded and knee-deep in ferns, it is one of those miraculously peaceful landscapes that seem to have slumbered unnoticed and undisturbed since the dawn of time.
Part of the much larger Woolmer Forest, it is like a lost corner of the New Forest, but to many minds is even more scenic thanks to its long views of the steep and comely hills known as the Hampshire Hangers. It is a miracle and joy that such a refuge of perfection survives just 50 miles from Trafalgar Square.
Until a few weeks ago the heath, the forest and vast tracts of land beyond were to be part of the new and long-awaited South Downs National Park. But in July the government inspector, Neil Parry, recommended that they be excluded on the odd grounds that they were not geologically appropriate and the even odder ones that they were not sufficiently lovely. At a stroke the proposed park has been cut by nearly a quarter, from 1,638 square kilometres to just 1,267.
“It’s astounding really,” Margaret Paren, a retired civil servant and CPRE stalwart, told me when I visited the area this week. We were standing by a lovely old barn at a place called Old Ditcham Farm, near Petersfield. “This is a perfect example of what’s happened,” she said. “The barn here has been taken out of the park, but the farmhouse is still in. The land on that side of the road is in, but on this side it’s out. No one in their right mind would suggest that the landscape on one side is worthier than the landscape on the other, but that is in fact what has happened.”
Why it has happened is a question that takes some answering. The South Downs National Park has existed as an idea for over 60 years. In 1947 it was one of 12 areas of England recommended for park status by Sir Arthur Hobhouse, and it was the only one of the original twelve not to gain that recognition in the years that followed. In 1956 it was considered for inclusion but the proposal was set aside on the lame (and, as time has shown, patently incorrect) grounds that it didn’t have adequate recreational prospects. Instead in 1962 it became two Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, designations designed to give all the protections of a national park but without the visitor centres and other touristy paraphernalia.
Finally in 1999, more than 50 years after it was first proposed, the park idea was resurrected. After the usual long period of consultations the boundaries were agreed, and hundreds of hardworking volunteers like Margaret Paren were set to celebrate the birth of England’s newest and in many ways most important national park. So it came as a shock when, in early July, the inspector announced that he wished the park to be much smaller than everyone had supposed it would be.
It is a decision that is truly hard to understand. I spent a long day this week being driven by CPRE members along the back roads of Hampshire and West Sussex, through a landscape of woods, sunken lanes, rolling hills and hidden farms, all of it glorious, all of it now outside the new national park boundaries.
“This would be London’s national park in effect – the one national park that could be reached easily from the city,” Shirley Wright of the West Sussex CPRE pointed out as we paused on a hill in the village of Elsted and took in a view that was ancient, expansive and fine. The Western Weald is not only lovely to behold and to be in, but miraculously unspoiled despite standing in some of the most developmentally attractive countryside on the planet. I can’t imagine that any landscape this uniformly serene and agreeable stands so close to a national capital anywhere else in the world.
Already the South Downs and Western Weald attract more than 40 million recreational visits a year – more than any existing national park. So it would seem logical, on visitor grounds alone, to make it as large as possible. In fact, the very opposite appears set to happen. The inspector wishes to confer park status only on the lofty uplands, which least need rigorous protection (IKEA is unlikely to want to build on a hilltop after all) and withhold it from the populous valleys, where developers would most like to plant their golf courses, executive estates and retail sheds.
The suspicion is that the government has taken fright at the cost of maintaining a national park in an area of prosperous, developmentally promising market towns like Petersfield, Midhurst and Petworth, but that isn’t what it is saying.
It is saying rather that the Western Weald should be excluded on the grounds that it is a landscape of a different character. The South Downs, the argument runs, are chalky uplands, while the more low-lying Weald is made up of older sandstones and clays, which give it an entirely different nature (a fact that, if really relevant, somebody perhaps ought to have noticed years ago). No one disputes the geology, but the logic is beyond fathoming. Most national parks incorporate more than one landscape type – the Peak District has three, the Lake District five – and most people would argue that variety is the essence of their glory. Anyway nothing in the designation guidelines suggests that uniformity of subsoil ought to be an inspector’s ambition.
But the real pain and worry come from the suggestion that the lands to be excluded have for the most part become irreversibly degraded. Here is a typical passage from the landscape assessor’s lengthy report:
I do not consider that Liss, Petersfield or Sheet meet the natural beauty criterion. I also find that the character of the surrounding landscape has been extensively fragmented by the transport infrastructure and urbanising influences. In my view, the character and quality of the ‘Mixed Farmland and Woodland’ landscape character type has been so degraded by the combined effects of settlements, road and rail links, that the tract no longer meets the natural beauty criterion.
And so it goes through many long and bewilderingly dismissive pages. Why -to take just one small point -a venerable railway line that was unexceptionable sixty years ago is now an intolerable scar on the landscape is a question that really could do with answering.
“The inconsistencies are almost comical,” Margaret Paren told me. “According to the assessor’s report, the A272 is noisy and intrusive where it passes through the Weald, but a lovely country lane when it reaches the Downs. They seem desperate to fit the facts to their case rather than the other way around.”
It’s little wonder that nearly everyone you meet believes the real motivation for shrinking the park is to save money.
“If that is so,” says Chris Todd, head of the South Downs Campaign, a coalition of more than 100 pro-park organisations, which includes the CPRE, “then that is really very disappointing because in the overall scheme of things the park budget is peanuts. The estimated cost of the park – that is, the larger park, with the Western Weald included – is £6 to £8 million a year. That compares with the £200 million to £300 million budget you have for a single local authority like Brighton & Hove.
“National parks are in fact tremendously good value. All of them together cost the British taxpayer £1 per person per year. And anyway the £6 to £8 million for the national park isn’t additional costs, but costs transferred from one budget to another. So cost grounds would be a very, very poor reason for creating a park that is smaller than it ought to be.”
A separate but very worrying danger is what all this means for the future of AONB’s. To argue that two of the largest and most important AONBs in the south of England have become critically degraded in 40 years doesn’t say much for government policy, does it? Even worse is the thought of a developer being able to say to a planning inspector: “Look, if it isn’t good enough to include in the national park, how can you claim it’s worth protecting now?”
Submissions from interested parties will be accepted till September 24, then Jonathan Shaw, the presiding minister, or Hillary Benn, the Secretary of State, must decide whether to accept the inspector’s report or to modify it. They won’t make a more important decision this year.
It would be wonderful to think that before taking such a decision, they will come out and do what I did – spend a day driving around looking at it. I can guarantee they will have a lovely day. They really ought to see it while it is still there.
© Bill Bryson
September 2007
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Many thanks to Bill Bryson for taking the time to come and visit the western Weald and see this area for himself. The fact that he was so readily convinced that the area should be part of the South Downs National Park exposes the weakness of the recomnendation that this special corner of Sussex and Hampshire should be excluded.
I would also like to record my thanks to Bill for spending the day with us in the South Downs. It was such a boost to our campaign and the resulting media coverage has been fantastic!
What an outstanding article from Bill Bryson. He brings to it the insight he shows in his wonderful books. Mr Benn, I hope you take it all in!
As a Scotsman schooled in Natural Beauty in the Ochils, Speyside and the Western Highlands, on moving some years ago to the area under threat I recognised in it what it is that makes my homeland so special – an intangible beauty that hangs in the air like the Autumn mists currently lingering in the many hollows of the Rother valley.
That someone might have visited Woolbeding, Iping and Stedham without understanding the urgent need to protect this most English of areas simply beggars belief.
The western Weald is the South East’s last bastion against a suburbia almost uncontrollably metastasizing across an increasingly less green and pleasant land – I strongly urge anyone visiting this site to join me in signing CPRE’s petition.
It is also worth making the point that market towns are important parts of the national park jigsaw and that by leaving out Petersfield they would be creating and uncalled town/country divide.
The Western Weald is an integral part of the Downland experience. Landscapes do not form in isolation but evolve out of nature’s (and man’s activites) over time. In working the land man has contributed to the form we find this beautiful landscape today. We must now rise to protect its integrity as once it loses it protection, it will disappear, hectare by hectare under concrete. Once lost it is gone forever.
Market towns such as Petersfield, Midhurst, Petworth and Arundel rely on produce from the Downs and their hinterlands for their busy farmers markets and rural businesses. To seperate them is simply ridiculous.
The relationships between the chalk upland and wealden settlements such as Ditchling is proven. The uplands provide a dry, safe haven for stock during the wet winter months when the clay and sandstones lay too wet to graze. Whilst sadly much of our stock may have now gone the evolution of these settlements remains strongly linked to the Downs. To seperate them would be a mistake and rob Sussex of some of its jewels as they lay open to the scourge of urban sprawl.
The decision to drop the Western Weald leaves me gobsmacked! The South Downs are part of the Wealden Anticline geologically and the Western Weald is where all the elements of the anticline – chalk, sandstone and clay – are to be seen.
The area between Haslemere, Liphook, Rake, Midhurst and Petworth is one of the most unspoilt in the SE England. Woolmer Forest is of equal value ecologically to the New Forest though smaller. This area is one of the few habitats of the smooth snake.
Midhurst and Petworth in particular are very unspoilt towns and are more worthy of National Park status than some of the towns in the shrunken South Downs Park.
The Northern Weald – ie the area around the North Downs – is urbanised and spoilt. It is absurd to state that the Western Weald is somehow inferior to the South Downs proper.
Bill summed up so well in his article the reasons why the western Weald must be in the South Downs National Park. It is an area of great natural beauty and good recreational opportunities – one can still “get away from it all” in the western Weald – and that is the way it must remain. It has wonderful woodlands and heathlands of national importance, combined with farmland (some of which retains its mediaeval layout) and river valleys. It has had very close conections with the chalk downland for centuries, and the idea of now seperating it off and downgrading parts of it just because it has a “characteristic natural beauty” which is different from the chalk hills has no legal basis and makes no sense at all. It has been actively managed along with the the chalk hills for some decades now, and that investment would likely be lost.
Whereas the Countryside Agency (in designating the original boundary in 2002) took account of cultural heritage, and so included the market towns of Petersfield, Midhurst and Petworth, the Inspector has largely ignored this aspect. Yet these towns have strong cultural links to the chalk hills, and a vital part to play in a vibrant national park.
The important wildlife and recreational opportunities of Woolmer Forest and Longmoor have also been largely ignored, yet they were a crucial reason for these areas being included by the Countryside Agency.
It is worth of note that the Board of Natural England (now incorporating the Countryside Agency) has come out strongly in favour of the originally designated boundary, which includes the western Weald.
The opportunity is now with us to create a viable and much valued addition to the existing family of national parks, and one that befits the South East of England that is under so much pressure in terms of development, infrastructure and quality of life. Now is the chance to give something back, for the benefit of future generations, through a new South Downs National Park that includes the western Weald.
Public opinion is overwhelmingly in favour of that outcome.
It is absolutely incredible that such a beautiful part of the world as the western Weald might be excluded from the new National Park. Let’s hope that people see sense now that a new public enquiry is starting in February 2008.
There is a petition you can sign: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/western-weald/ to help put the pressure on.
The news that the public inquiry will be re-opening in February 2008 is welcome. An organisation called the South Downs Campaign http://www.southdownscampaign.org.uk will be leading the fight for the western Weald to be kept in the National Park. The story was in The Daily Telegraph last Friday: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.jhtml?xml=/global/2007/11/02/noindex/eabryson102.xml
Hurrah for Bill!
And what a showing up he’s shamed the drooling moron who decided (unilaterally it seems) to exclude a beautiful and embattled slice of REAL England from the most strategically sited National Park in the UK. The park must go ahead as originally proposed, it is the only way that a significant area of beautiful and truly rural landscape is ever going to survive in the increasingly depressing and suburbanised South.
I agree wholeheartedly that it is absolute madness to exclude the Western Weald from the South Downs National Park. Bill Bryson’s excellent article highlights admirably just how wrong this would be. This is such a beautiful area that I cannot imagine anyone in their right mind would describe it as “degraded”, but degraded it might become if it is not included. Although I live in Surrey my ancestors lived in Sussex (near Cocking) and my family tree dates back to the 13th century and so I feel I have an affinity with this area. My husband and I have walked the South Downs Way twice and the views from the Downs over the weald are wonderful. However, if the Western Weald is excluded from the Park these views may be spoit through increasing development. It is crucial that the original, larger Park, is reinstated.
Well Bill,
its so very true that the area from Godalming to Rowlands Castle and through the areas you described are an intensely green intensely arboreal wonder that seems to come with the geology of that area.To not classify the this Surrey/Hants border area as protected, or to deem it ugly is philistine at best.There is an excellent service between the Portsmouth area and London which passes close to much of this wonderment – it would be a nice piece of sustainable tourism boost – possibly for the local area.The South Downs are a pretty magical area, my favourite part being the river valleys that exist between Shoreham and Amberley.
Degraded??
I grew up in the West Sussex Downs and have always opposed the campaign for a national Park. The residents and farmers of the Sussex Downs have protected this landscape and made it the beautiful place it is without a great bureacratic national park organisation. The only threat to its future is from national government who continually erode our local democratic powers, through changes to planning law, to go on protecting it.
What we need is not some new organisation and rules that will ring fence one area and keep it in aspic while all outside the boundary is left to IKEA and the house-buliding lobby.
But sadly it is noe evident that this is precisely what will be the result of the CPRE and other’s misguided campaign for a national park.
Insead you should have campaigned to strip away the complex nonsence of planning laws and let the truly local people dicate what happens and we would have superb environmental protection and save millions in bureaucracy at the same time.
- And how on earth does suddenly calling the Downs a national park make them more accessable to London??
I must also add CPRE that you need to lose the painfully conservative airs and graces that beset you all and try to adopt a more inclusive non Daily Mail reading, cattle prodding of different age range and social class into your fold – and take the conservatism out of conservation.
Mostly age range as you will not be able to pass the message on in time to keep this interest alive and besides it’s the next generation who can enjoy or destroy our final enclaved wildernesses…
Presumably areas of A.O.N.B. left out of the new National Park will simply remain A.O.N.B. and therefore as fully protected as they now are – or have I missed something?