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The Women Who Saved the English Countryside by Matthew Kelly review – nature’s guardians
From the Lake District to Kent – the history of four women and the landscapes they rescued
In 1951, it emerged that the BBC planned to erect a 229-metre television transmitter at North Hessary Tor on Dartmoor. Lady Sylvia Sayer, chair of the Dartmoor Preservation Association, was incensed. It would, she wrote, be “landscape-slaughter on a more than usually impressive scale”. The “alien” presence would be “a perpetual reminder of that modern ‘civilisation’ which most people come to a national park to forget”.
Despite Sayer’s forceful rhetoric, her campaign against the mast – her “first major foray into activist politics” – failed. But although she had lost one battle, the war to preserve the landscape of Dartmoor continued: “From her stone cottage in a tiny Dartmoor hamlet, she orchestrated frequent campaigns that combined her verbal eloquence, combativeness and grasp of legal statute and planning processes, placing her among the most effective post-war environmental campaigners and lobbyists.” Branded a “militant conservationist” by the press,Sayer fought on valiantly until her death in 2000. And yet today she is a little-known figure. Matthew Kelly’s book attempts to give her the recognition she deserves, along with three other women who campaigned to save the English countryside: Octavia Hill, Beatrix Potter and Pauline Dower. Their activism has helped shape the modern environmental consciousness, as well as preserving landscapes and access rights across the country.
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