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Beauty - in the Eye of the Beholder?
There’s no accounting for taste, so they
say, and that goes for the rural landscape as much as anything else. That’s
why the appreciation of landscape has long been a difficult thing to pin
down, and why people often disagree about what is valuable within a
landscape. Who would have believed that the towers at Richborough Power
Station would ever be considered for listed building status as a
significant landscape feature while, on the other hand, traditional
orchards, hedgerows and pastures, which have long formed the fabric of the
countryside, have been neglected or lost over recent years?
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Nevertheless, somehow we have to decide what
we want to conserve in a landscape. A lot of recent work has gone into
analysing the features and qualities of the countryside, and trying to
define what gives a particular landscape its character. The end product of
this is the ‘character area’ - a defined area of countryside which
shares certain landscape features (natural vegetation, crops, buildings,
landforms, geology and so on). Once a character area has been defined it
can be used to provide guidelines on how to restore, reinforce, conserve
or improve the landscape of that area in the future.
The Countryside Agency has mapped character areas across
the whole of England. Within the KSCP project boundary these include the
North Kent Plain, the North Downs, the Wealden Greensand and the Low Weald
(see map below). These areas have been further subdivided in more
detailed, local ‘landscape appraisals’ produced by Kent County Council
and Canterbury City Council. English Nature, focusing particularly on the
nature conservation value of different localities, has produced its series
of ‘Natural Area Profiles’.
These documents very usefully bring together all the
background information about geology, soils, agriculture, ecology, and
cultural heritage which have shaped the landscape we see now. In addition
to this factual input, local people were involved in putting together the
character area definitions - they were asked to identify what they valued
in the landscape and what they saw as threats to it.
One of the KSCP’s main aims is to conserve and enhance
the landscape of the Stour Valley, and it seems there is no shortage of
documentation to guide us in doing so.
But what sort of action on the ground is the Project
involved in to conserve landscapes? Some initiatives directly enhance
rural landscapes - managing old orchards, planting hedges or restoring
chalk grassland for example. Others work indirectly - for example, our
free Stour Valley Products Guide (available in libraries and Tourist
Information Centres) helps to promote local products which sustain
traditional land uses. In this and many other ways we are working to
conserve the landscapes we all treasure in this part of Kent.
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Judith Baker, Canterbury and Lower Stour Valley Countryside Officer |
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