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The Lake District and Yorkshire Dales: Refuges from the Real World?

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The Lake District and Yorkshire Dales: Refuges from the Real World? The Lake District and Yorkshire Dales: Refuges from the Real World? Ian Whyte Abstract: The uplands of Northern England contain iconic landscapes which are known worldwide. The eighteenth-century movements of the Picturesque and Roman- ticism placed them centre-stage in terms of influencing landscape aesthetics. The fame of the Lake District in particular generated a growing tourist industry throughout the nineteenth century which placed increasing pressure on the landscape and gener- ated a conservationism movement which again had a much wider than local influence. Out of the tensions between visitors and conservation arose the system of national parks that developed in England and Wales after the Second World War. Key names and concepts: Daniel Defoe - Thomas Gray - Edmund Burke - Claude Lorrain - William Gilpin - William Wordsworth - John Ruskin - Beatrix Potter; Northern Uplands - Lake District - Conservation - Landscape Aesthetics - Picturesque - Claude Glasses - National Trust - ‘Foot and Mouth’ Disease - Windfarms - World Heritage. 1. Introduction The uplands of Northern England encompass a wide variety of land- scapes reflecting distinctive physical and human geographies. Some of these landscapes are iconic; instantly recognisable and world famous, like the Lake District. Others, such as the limestone pavements of the Yorkshire Dales, are less well known globally but are nevertheless still dramatic. This is reflected in the degree of protection given to the landscapes of these areas. This includes designations as national parks (the Lake District, Yorkshire Dales and Northumberland), Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (the North Pennines, Forest of Bowland and Arnside-Silverdale area) as well as many Sites of Special Scien- tific Interest (SSSIs) and nature reserves. Within these areas are World Heritage Sites like Hadrian’s Wall and Fountains Abbey. These em- phasise that the uplands of Northern England are not true wilderness 240 Ian Whyte areas: their landscapes represent an intricate fusion of the interactions of the physical environment and human society over several millennia, creating landscapes of great complexity and variety. The Lake District National Park Authority is currently preparing a bid for World Heri- tage status as a cultural landscape (Website). The roles of such land- scapes in shaping the identity of Northern England and its inhabitants have changed over the last three centuries and are today multi-layered and complex. There is a good deal of truth in the suggestion that these areas act as refuges from the real world; but for whom, in what ways and under what constraints? Even today, despite the range of conser- vation designations which supposedly confers protection from unde- sirable planning developments, these landscapes are in many ways fragile and under threat. The aim of this chapter is to examine how these areas have developed their image of refuges from the real world, and the problems which this has generated for modern inhabitants and visitors alike. A good deal of the focus will be on the Lake District because it highlights particularly well many of the problems faced by such areas in the past and today. 2. The Northern Uplands and Changing Landscape Aesthetics The ways in which the landscapes of areas like the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales have been perceived have varied markedly since the early eighteenth century as a result of changing landscape aesthet- ics. Equally these areas, especially the Lake District, have affected the ways in which landscapes around the world have been viewed, de- scribed and consumed. Changing fashions in what constituted attrac- tiveness in landscape have added elements to, and subtracted them from, the uplands of Northern England. These areas were not always as cherished as they are today. Before the mid-eighteenth century Northern England was not valued for its landscapes at all; its hills were judged to be wild and horrible, the people who inhabited them poor and backward. Travellers from the south, like Daniel Defoe, viewed the uplands in very negative terms. Defoe famously described Westmorland, the most upland county in England, as ‘wild, barren and frightful’ (Defoe 1971: 550). His description of crossing the Pennines between Rochdale and Leeds via Blackstone Edge sounds like an Al- pine expedition (Defoe 1971: 488-489). This can be seen as part of a .
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