We live in an age of unprecedented environmental global, interconnected and universal. Yet though our lives are inextricably connected to global processes, and increasingly mobile, we still live in particular places. Our perceptions of change, and what kind of change might be for good or ill, are shaped by the interaction of localized experience and the wider forces of transformation. Local Places, Global Processes examines how these relationships have been shaped in Britain over time in three ways. First, through essays addressing influential ways of understanding and debating questions of ‘the state of nature’. These are complemented by case studies on conservation, landscape change and management, and how perceptions of environmental change have emerged or been discarded over time. Chapters also draw on a series of site-based workshops that brought together historians, landscape managers and artists to discuss and reflect on particular Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire, owned by the National Trust and the first British nature reserve; the Quantock Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in Somerset, England’s first AONB and a landscape enriched by Romantic association; and the landscape of Kielder Water and Forest, a land of superlatives in Northumberland in north-eastern England – the largest planted forest and artificial lake in northern Europe. The multi-disciplinary approach draws together the exchanges, artworks and writing assembled at these workshops and afterwards. This opens up how being in a place, and engaging with ideas attached to it, shape perceptions of the environment. It provides resources with which landscape managers can think about their tasks and engage various publics in discussion about future environments in light of these histories of place. Rather than a history of these three places, this is history written from them.
Table of Contents
List of Figures Abbreviations 1. Local Places, Global In Search of the Environment, Paul Warde, Peter Coates and David Moon 2. Three Places, Peter Coates, Paul Warde and David Moon A. ENVIRONMENT AND LANDSCAPE 3. The Environment, Paul Warde 4. Landscape Character Assessment and the Quantocks during the Nuclear Age, Emma-Jane Preece 5. The Curious Case of the Missing History at Kielder, Richard Oram 6. Birds and Squirrels as History, T. C. Smout 7. The ‘Nature’ of ‘Artificial’ Forests?, Chris Pearson B. PLACES 8. Not All Those Who Wander are Walking in the Quantock Hills, Marianna Dudley 9. An Amphibious Coping with Floods in the Netherlands, Petra J. E. M. van Dam 10. Names and Places, Paul Warde 11. Constructing the Kielder Plantations, Dams and the Romantic Ideal, Jill Payne 12. The Kielder Oral History Three Case Studies, Leona Jayne Skelton 13. Wild Environmental History, Wildlife Television and New Publics in Britain, Robert A. Lambert ART INSERTS 14. John Clare, Drainage and Printmaking, Carry Akroyd 15. Landscape and the Artist in Twenty-First Century Britain, Jenny Graham 16. A Planned Wilderness, Peter Sharpe C. BEAUTY AND AESTHETICS 17. Beauty and the Aesthetics of Place, Nature and Environment, Peter Coates 18. Light on An Antipodean View, Libby Robin 19. ‘Beauty and the Motorway – The Problem for All’: Motoring through the Quantocks Area of Natural Beauty, Tim Cole 20. The Beautiful and the Global, Petra J. E. M. van Dam 21. Reservoirs, Military Bases and Environmental Joining the Dots, Chris Pearson 22. Species Conservation at Animating Place with Animals, Duncan Hutt D. CHANGE, CHOICE AND FUTURES 23. Environmental A Local Perspective on Global Processes, David Moon and Leona Jayne Skelton 24. Hidden Kielder’s Early Modern Landscape, Matt Greenhall 25. Waterlands to Wonderlands, Paul Warde 26. Kielder Dam and Reservoir, Jonty Hall 27. Kielder Forest, Graham Gill 28. National ‘Wicken Fen Vision’ (2009) [extracts] 29. Kielder Water and Forest The City in the Country, Christine McCulloch 30. Nature, Cultural Choice and History, T. C. Smout 31. Concluding Reflections, David Moon, Peter Coates and Paul Warde Acknowledgements Timeline of Events List of Contributors