The Northumberland National Park - Landscape Strategy
Part One - Designation and Landscape Strategy
By Robin Dower,Chairman of County Committee
The history of National Parks in Britain might be encapsulated in successive attempts to define landscape character in order to identify areas commonly accepted as of national significance and then to develop strategies for their protection. It is worth recalling the wartime debates in Parliament from which the case for National Parks leapt into prominence: “It is clear that no national planning of the use of land would satisfy the country if it did not provide for the preservation of extensive areas of great natural beauty and of the coastline”. (Minister of Works and Planning 21st April 1942)
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River Coquet near Alwinton
Photo by Sue Underwood
“We are a large population living in a small island of matchless but most vulnerable beauty. It is reckless folly to destroy it”. (Joint Parliamentary Secretary 29th April 1942).
“Is there anyone who really doubts that a district such as that (The Lake District)- ought not to be a National Park combined with some scheme to give our young people a chance to roam and get their exercise in those sort of conditions? Has not that some spiritual value?” (The Paymaster General 29th April 1942).
Already the twin themes of landscape protection and access for recreation emerge as the perceived purpose of National Parks, but definition of what was appropriate quality landscape was given a more robust outline in John Dower’s Report presented to Parliament as a White Paper in May 1945 by the Minister of Town and Country Planning.
“National Parks may be defined as extensive areas of beautiful and relatively wild country in which, for the nation’s benefit and by appropriate national decision and action (a) the characteristic landscape beauty is strictly preserved, (b) access and facilities for public open-air enjoyment are amply provided, (c) wildlife and buildings and places of historic and architectural interest are suitably protected while (d) established farming use is effectively maintained.”
This definition was taken unchanged as the premise upon which the National Parks Committee (Hobhouse) July 1947 suggested the selection and defined the appropriate extent of future National Parks. Finally the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 charged the new National Parks Commission with the designation of “extensive tracts of countryside in England and Wales which by reason of (a) their natural beauty and (b) the opportunities they afford for open-air recreation, having regard to both their character and their position in relation to centres of population, it is especially desirable to protect.”
Turning to Northumberland, both Dower and Hobhouse had identified The Roman Wall as “a division A” tract, both on the grounds of its rich archaeological content and of the dramatic landscape of the parallel ridges seen so clearly as ‘frontier’ country. In their reports the Cheviot Hills and Central Northumberland Sandstone ridges were worth later consideration, but Hobhouse thought not as a National Park but as a Conservation Area.
When the National Parks Commission came to consider Northumberland there were two reactions which almost accidentally led to a compromise creating the National Park as we have it today:
Firstly – that the Roman Wall was so essentially an archaeological landscape (already protected by the Roman Wall and Vallum Preservation Act of 1936) that perhaps it did not warrant separate designation as a National Park.
Secondly – that the large northern block of the Cheviots deserved higher recognition as satisfying definitions for National Park status already incorporated in the Act.
in 1955 the decision was taken to designate a single administrative tract connecting the Cheviots and the Roman Wall through the moorland and sandstone ridges of Coquetdale and Redesdale but omitting Kielder Forest and much of Wark Forest, a large area of monocultural conifer planting with little perceived recreational value. Right from the start therefore the Northumberland National Park covered four distinct constituent countryside character areas:
- The Cheviot Hills
- The mid-Northumberland Sandstone Ridges
- The Border moors (and forests)
- The Tyne Gap and Hadrian’s Wall
Not all these areas were exclusive to the National Park since lines on maps cut across the areas to reflect conveniently identifiable boundaries on the ground.
Over the years since their designation work has been going on to develop other ways of describing landscape character types with broadly similar combinations of geology, landform, vegetation, land-use, field and settlement patterns. Examples of a particular Landscape Character type may be found in widely different places: these are listed as Landscape Character Areas sharing the same elements in the Character Type but each area having its own distinct identity. In the next issue of the City and County we shall look more closely at the work the National Park Authority is doing to prepare a Supplementary Planning Document on Landscape, setting out against its appraisal of Landscape Character Types such guidelines for new development as will protect the character and significance of the National Park over the next half century.
City and County
May 2011
