Save Our Scenery
Ihave campaigned for the past 55 years in this paper for this SOS - Save Our Scenery. Now, at last, you are all taking up the cause in a big way as you realise how urgent the problem is. I am talking about the unspoilt countryside between the South Downs and the Coastal Plain. I can only repeat the story of how in 1911 the ‘Father of World Ecology,’ the man who started world nature conservation, Sir Arthur Tansley, described the scene south from the South Downs as the finest in Britain.
He knew the whole of the British Isles intimately, from Sussex marshes to Scottish mountains. He had examined every habitat in detail and written books on their fauna and flora. Continental scientists travelled here to meet him and to discuss ways in which they could safeguard their own ecosystems in Europe and farther afield. This was at a time when Sir David Attenborough wasn’t even born.
A German professor 110 years ago was himself amazed at the yew forest in Kingley Vale and its place in the surrounding countryside with views to the sea. This gave Tansley the inspiration to start the world’s first national wildlife protection service, which eventually saw Sussex having one of the first of six national nature reserves in 1952. His memorial stone is placed exactly on the
spot where he sat on Bow Hill overlooking the view that gave genesis to the ideas of protecting the planet.
This view must therefore never be compromised. But that is what is happening now as development fills up the last remaining gaps in the urban jungle on the south coast. Only five miles of unbuilt land remain between Brighton and Portsmouth. There is still a lot of countryside which we all love so much inland of this coastal sprawl, it is true. But from Emsworth to Chichester it is rapidly vanishing.
Back in 1965 we in The Nature Conservancy stopped a proposal to build what was to be known as ‘Alcan
City’ to join these villages into one unit. Now it is happening again. Let us focus on one area today, the fields adjoining the tiny woodland nature reserve called Brandy Hole Copse on the north-west of Chichester. ‘The West of Chichester Strategic Development Site’ is a plan with eyes on these two fields.
So my point today, with my country walk past these two fields described on the opposite page, is: think again about developing them. They are only a small piece of the jigsaw we have left of our open spaces but the jigsaw needs every piece. These are part of the lungs of Chichester. Do not destroy them. Now please read my walk opposite.