Landscape management for our times?

The list of government bodies, NGO's and charities that have a remit to conserve and enhance our natural, historic and cultural landscape and environment is impressively long:

English Heritage, Natural England, the Environment Agency, Countryside Council for Wales, CADW, Scottish Natural Heritage, Historic Scotland, the Forestry Commission, National Park Authorities, the National Trust, Wildlife Trusts, RSPB...

This well-established infrastructure of landscape management is, in many ways, very reassuring; and, due to devolution and the inertness of the Coalition Government's risible 'quango-busting' exercise largely intact in these times of 'austerity', give or take the odd wobble over selling off forests.

There is also an enormous well-spring of expertise and experience wrapped up in these bureaucratic structures and a clear record of achievement and progressiveness over the last sixty years or so: our landscape is in a better place than it would be if this safety net had not been active during a period which will be remembered in history as one, founded on hope and idealism, but dominated by rapacious capitalism and consumerism.

And yet...

A bigger picture

Ernest Howard: 'A typical dry valley in the Yorkshire Wolds, in this case Horse Dale – it’s just waiting for David Hockney to set up his easel and paint.'

As Hockney-mania takes hold at the Royal Academy of Art's A Bigger Picture exhibition of David Hockney's images of the East Yorkshire countryside (and a degree of critical backlash), a great picture of the source landscape in today's Observer magazine (Your pictures; this week's theme: Bend).

Misty morning in the Severn Vale

Misty fields in the Severn Vale

A short walk before a pub lunch this morning in the expectation of more Spring sunshine. Instead a layer of early morning mist was still stubbornly hugging the low-lying fields bordering the Severn Estuary as midday approached; the eeriness emphasised by the regular low honk of an unseen ship's horn on the estuary seeping through the fog. The strangeness reminds me of the nearby Whale Wharf, so-named after a whale was stranded on the shore in the late nineteenth century, became a brief tourist attraction and was then towed to Bristol to be turned into fertiliser.   

Landscape in particular 2: Bolton Abbey estate

Field barns in Wharfedale, Yorkshire Dales

Bolton Abbey in Wharfedale is one of the most visited places in the Yorkshire Dales; on a summer weekend it can seem as if half the population of Leeds and Bradford have taken possession. 

I had visited many times during my childhood, with two sets of grand-parents living down the road, and have a family connection as my grandfather was born on a nearby farm (Deerstones - did our practically-minded forebears have any understanding of the poetry of their place naming?).

Through serendipity I took part in a field survey of historic barns on the Bolton Abbey estate as part of an English Heritage placement during my Masters in Landscape Archaeology.  

This included a blissful week or so spent travelling around the sprawling estate, which takes in most of the tenanted farms in the surrounding area, photographing the many and varied barns and generally observing and interpreting the historic landscape. A day spent poring over the maps and plans in the Estate's archive appealed to another side of my love of landscape.

The work provided a thought-provoking insight into the challenges and opportunities involved in managing historic buildings and landscapes. And made me question some of my assumptions and prejudices about the the roles of landowners, National Park authorities and others in this area.

It also provided another reminder that it doesn't take much to get off the beaten track in even the most popular 'honey pots'; an inquisitive nature, desire to wander and some understanding of the features that make up a landscape, are all that are really needed. 

News from Nowhere

William Morris

News from Nowhere by William Morris (1890) is one of my 'on the go' books that I dip in and out of. The combination of the first signs of early Spring and hearing yet another politician banging on about austerity for the umpteenth time leads me back to one of its central tenants: a shift from a system based on capitalism and spurious ideas of trickle down wealth creation to an egalitarian pastoral society of common ownership.

Yes, its written from a late nineteenth century perspective when idealistic socialism could still be seen as fresh and progressive; yes, its unashamedly and unfashionably Utopian; and, yes, it has jarring elements that make it very much 'of its time' (patronising attitude to women still very much in place) .

Here's a Health to the Barley Mow

Love The Wicker Man and the thought of the spirit of Merrie England living on in the countryside? Then take a look at Here's a Health to the Barley Mow.

And whilst you're at it, have a read of The Rise and Fall of Merrie England: The Ritual Year, 1400-1700 by Ronald Hutton.

Landscape in particular 1: Kenilworth castle

This is the first in a regular series of short-entries on places and landscapes that have long-standing resonance or meaning to me, or are new discoveries.

Kenilworth Castle (Photographer unknown)

Kenilworth castle in Warwickshire is a large, multi-period fortification with an important strategic role between the Norman and Elizabethan periods. Like many such castles it then suffered a long decline, was badly damaged in the Civil War and thus became a picturesque ruin before its modern incarnation as an English Heritage managed tourist attraction.

To me, my brother and our friends though, the castle, and the fields around it, became the playground we were lucky enough to have at the end of our road. The fact that it was an enormous ruin gave us even more scope for adventure: we had about a dozen ways to gain entry illegally, despite having free local resident entry passes, and summer evenings were the time that we would have it to ourselves to play football in, clamber over and generally 'own'; we found and explored a tunnel (actually a medieval sewer into the moat) that allowed a long crawl in the dark on hands and knees; and the lush meadows surrounding the castles that once formed the extensive moat ('the Mere') gave us even more scope for play.

At the time this all seemed very normal and it is only in retrospect that I have looked at aerial photographs and plans and seen how the places that we roamed across were all connected features in the wider historic landscape of the castle and its hinterland: that the raised ground at the far end of the Mere called 'the Pleasance' was created to house the temporary viewing platforms for the elaborate pageant put on for Queen Elizabeth I's visit; that the nearby field called 'Parliament Piece' was the site of a Parliament held by King Henry III in 1266.   

Urban v rural: a false dichotomy

The vast majority of the population in Britain live in cities and large towns and yet much debate on rural landscapes and communities seems to be based on two false propositions underlying this self-evident fact. Firstly, that city-dwelling and experiencing and valuing the countryside are somehow mutually exclusive: 'townies' and urbanites are removed from the land and only understand it as a remote and ill-understood other; at best a vague and aspirational place of retreat should the fast-pace, alienation and all-round brutalism of urban life get too much. Secondly,that rural living is intrinsically more natural, healthy and slower-paced with an all round higher quality of life for bringing up children, retiring to or finding inner peace ie its what we all want and need, if only there were space and resource for all 65 million of us.

Jerusalem: beyond the cliches

Scene from Jerusalem

Although I slightly hesitate to raise the subject of a play that I have not actually seen, it does seem as if the popularity of Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem is a striking example of a mounting contemporary desire to find a new narrative on Englishness and national identity that steers a different course to the tired old dichotomy between backward-looking nationalism and liberal naval-gazing and self-loathing. 

Central to this subject in the play and in England - and it may well be the same elsewhere - is sense of place and landscape; particularly focused on rural imagery, though in an increasingly complex and interesting way. Laura Barton's article on the Guardian website  brings this out well. This seems rich and fertile ground for landscape-related discussion with real relevance and resonance, and will be returned to on this blog.

Finding a broader view

The theme of Landscapism is connecting disparate strands of landscape-related subject matter together. Happily there are examples (although not yet enough) of work that seeks to look at the bigger picture or bring together different perspectives or disciplines.

Two books that I think attempt to move into this territory particularly well are Matthew Johnson's Ideas of Landscape (2007) and Approaches to Landscape (1999) by Richard Muir. The former is an archaeologist and the latter a geographer, but both works survey and critique the varying approaches to the study of landscape both over time and in terms of the differing academic traditions of Britain, the United States and Europe. 

Landscapes is a bi-annual journal that, although its core subject matter is landscape history and archaeology, brings landscape-related writing and research of all kinds - and from around the world - together in a single, accessible publication. A fairly random selection of recent articles demonstrate the diversity of its content:

Horses, Elites and Long-distance Roads

Landscape with snow 

Brixton: Landscape of a Riot

Hohenschönhausen, Berlin – Explorations in Stasiland

Leith Hill, Surrey: Landscape, Locality and Nation in the Era of the Great War 

The English Pays: Approaches to Understanding and Characterising Landscapes and Places

Landings by Richard Skelton is a fascinating study into a particular localised landscape - in the West Pennines - that eschews the normal, often fairly pedestrian take on local history for a combination of poetry, prose and music that brings out a strong feeling for a landscape, past and present.