INTOXICATED BY the beauty of the Lake District, William Wordsworth wrote in the early 1800s that “every common sight to me did seem apparelled in celestial light”. A few hundred yards from the poet’s whitewashed Grasmere cottage there is now a common sight he would not have found so inspiring.
It is a large “For Sale” sign planted beside a 2.5acre plot of woodland with an enchanting view over the lake. Gushingly described in the estate agent’s brochure as: “An absolutely stunning small wood… with wonderful views across Grasmere towards fells,” it is being offered with a guide price of £20,000-25,000.
Who would want to sell off a treasure like this? To the incredulity of Lakeland lovers and conservationists, the wood, where Wordsworth would have wandered during his communings with nature, has been put on the market by the Lake District National Park Authority – the very body responsible for protecting the area.
Strapped for cash, and claiming that it needs to simplify its property portfolio, the authority has put seven other prime sites on the block, and hopes to raise almost £500,000. They include the romantic Stickle Tarn, a 24-acre lake in the Langdale Pikes (£20,00030,000) and Blea Brows “a wonderful, majestic stretch of shoreline” at Coniston Water (£70,000-90,000). The closing date for bids was Thursday. Those who made winning bids will have been informed on Friday.
The authority claims that all the areas will remain open to the public and be subject to planning restrictions, but the move has brought accusations that the sanctity of the Lake District, Britain’s most popular national park, with more than 15million visitors a year, is being slowly surrendered to commercial interests.
“You really have to question what the park authority is for,” says Ian Brodie, a Lakeland author and former director of the Friends of the Lake District, looking out over the Grasmere vista that Wordsworth called, “the loveliest spot that man hath found”.
“Their job should be to protect the region, and they are not only failing to do that, they don’t seem to have the means or the willpower to tackle the abuses that go on. They say that any land sold off must remain open to the public, but that means nothing if they don’t enforce the agreement. It really isn’t hard for owners to dodge these rules by, say, putting deer fencing around the place, and then leaving one small access gate where it’s difficult to get to.
“You can say that this is just a few small sites, that it doesn’t amount to much in a huge area like the park, but it is the way it’s been handled that worries so many of us. There’s been minimal con- sultation, and the authority’s record of pursuing planning abuses is very poor.”
The Lake District, covering almost the whole of Cumbria, was established as national park in 1951. The authority’s remit was to “conserve and enhance the natural beauty, wildlife and cultural beauty” of the region, but – like Britain’s other national parks – the package came with a serious flaw. In most other major countries, including America, national parkland is administered by a single body with ironclad authority to protect it. When the US National Parks Service was set up in 1913, thousands of people and businesses were evicted from the designated park areas to improve their purity.
The Lake District Park Authority owns less than four per cent of the land it is meant to look after, meaning – in the view of critics – that it is essentially incapable of doing its job properly. The rest of the area is owned by organisations such as the National Trust, the Forestry Commission and private landowners. The result is administrative chaos, clashes of interest and no common vision of how the park should function.
Tourism brings more than a billion pounds a year into the lakes and good houses with prime views carry millionpound-plus price tags. “We are under constant commercial and development pressure,” says Harry Manning, chairman of Ambleside Civic Trust. “We understand that people want to visit here, but the author- ity seems hell bent on developing the national park purely for the benefit of tourists and with no thought for the natural landscapes.
“Two of the sites they want to sell are in our area, and we were not even notified. The attitude was that this was their business and no one else’s. I think they have completely lost sight of their purpose.”
Snuggled 1,500ft up in the hills, Stickle Tarn is a legendary site among Lake dwellers. It can be reached only on foot after a testing 45-minute hike up a steep, rocky path, and – apart from a small dam attachment built in the 19th century – looks much as it did when Stone Age settlers lived here.
It is prized by openwater swimmers, walkers and nature watchers, and the effort involved in getting to it ensures that it remains peaceful and unspoilt. “It’s just a perfect Lakeland spot,” says Pete Kelly, owner of Head for the Hills, a business that regularly takes swimming groups up there. “In the summer when the sun’s going down you can finish work, pack a little picnic, hike up there, have a swim – the water’s incredibly clear. So when it went up for sale, I thought maybe we should buy it. Not to do anything with it, but because it’s gorgeous and it would be nice to feel it was yours. Then I found the dam needs maintenance work, which the owner would be liable for. The cost would be incredible.
“What the authority’s really doing is not selling off assets, but liabilities. They don’t live in the real world. They live in Quangoworld, and you wonder if they are the right people to be looking after something like the Lake District.”
All last week the protests in Lakeland grew. A poll carried out for the Westmorland Gazette found that 93 per cent of people living locally were opposed to the land sales, and on Wednesday afternoon a noisy demonstration was held outside the authority’s main visitor centre at Brockhole, near Windermere. Protesters called for the resignation of the authority’s chief executive, Richard Leafe, who many accused of being obsessed with a coming bid to win World Heritage Site status from Unesco at the expense of issues that matter to locals.
Mr Leafe, 50, who was appointed to the job eight years ago from the Environment Department’s off- shoot, Natural England, was also attacked by Tim Farron, MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, who called for the sales to be halted. “For me this is further evidence of the need for accountability in the governance of our national parks,” said Mr Farron. “None of the people who took this decision have been directly elected, and it seems wrong that we should lose so much because of decisions taken by people who are unaccountable.”
The authority, which has seen its grant cut by 23 per cent in the past four years, denies the land sales are intended to bolster its finances. It calls the disposals “good management” that will allow it to concentrate on other priorities.
“We want to sell this land to people or organisations who wish to manage it responsibly,” said Mr Leafe. “We don’t have to take the highest bid, we have to make the most appropriate choice.”
More than 200 years ago, in his pioneering guide to the Lake District, Wordsworth uncannily foresaw the need for the area’s protection, calling for it to become “a sort of national property, in which every man has a right and interest, who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy”.
What he failed to foresee was the sign up the lane.