A CHILD I GREW UP AT EASE WITH COUNTRY PEOPLE OR THOSE WHO WERE URBAN BASED BUT MADE THE EFFORT TO ENJOY THEIR RURAL HERITAGE. THROUGH HUNTING, SHOOTING AND FISHING I HAD A RANGE OF CONTACTS WHICH EXTENDED FROM LAND’S END TO JOHN O’GROATS, AND IT GAVE ME A WONDERFUL SENSE OF SECURITY, KNOWING THAT I HAD CONNECTIONS WITH COUNTRYMEN THROUGHOUT BRITAIN.
My father was a man of enormous energy who took his duty of stewardship-the historic responsibilities of a landlord towards the land and its people – very seriously and he regarded it as an important part of my early education. He was a Justice of the Peace and sat on the bench every week; he was also a Deputy Lieutenant of the County, Chairman of the Parish Council and his own land agent for the farms and woodland in the north. He served on the Hunt committee, was actively involved in the Pony Club, and each year he was responsible for designing and building a hunter trials course. He bred superb hunters and eventers; hunted, shot, fished and stalked; played for the village cricket team; regenerated the bell tower in St John’s Church opposite our house and rang himself every Sunday. In her own quiet way, my mother was much involved in the church, the welfare of the old people in the village and the early days of Riding for the Disabled.
As I grew older and became more involved in the adult world, I met the ghillies, stalkers, gamekeepers and Hunt servants from whom I learnt the history of mankind’s benign role in managing wildlife. They explained to me how field sports had contributed to the architecture of the landscape and were responsible for creating, preserving and maintaining the habitat of the different species, whether game birds such as pheasants, partridges, grouse or wildfowl, red deer or foxes.
As a child I grew up at ease with country people or those who were urban based but made the effort to enjoy their rural heritage. Through hunting, shooting and fishing I had a range of contacts which extended from Land’s End to John O’Groats, and it gave me a wonderful sense of security, knowing that I had connections with countrymen throughout Britain. I remember being utterly miserable during my first term at boarding school and consoling myself with the thought that, although I had no idea where the school was or how far away it was from my parents, were I to make a break for freedom all I needed to do was find my way to the nearest Hunt kennels, where I would be sure of a safe haven and a route home. Field sports were not seen in isolation in those days, nor had socialist politicians allowed lobbying by a single-issue animal rights group to create an ethnic minority among country people; they were, and still are, the catalyst that binds many communities together and provides them with the folklore that defines their regional identity.
AS MACHINERY INCREASINGLY REPLACED MANPOWER, 50 PER CENT OF THE AGRICULTURAL WORKFORCE LEFT THE LAND TO FIND ALTERNATIVE EMPLOYMENT IN TOWNS. THE SELF-SUPPORTING INFRASTRUCTURE OF VILLAGES BECAME ERODED, MANY OF THE OLD CRAFTS DIED OUT AND MUCH COUNTRY LORE, HANDED DOWN FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION, WAS LOST.
The post-war arcadia of my childhood was about to undergo dramatic changes; during the fifties, sixties and seventies the government policies of agricultural intensification created a chain reaction of loss across the spectrum of wildlife. Vast quantities of habitat were destroyed in parts of Britain, as hedgerows were bulldozed out, old pasture, heath and downland ploughed and marshes drained under devastating Ministry of Agriculture reclamation schemes. Herbicides and pesticides killed the food source of many small birds, reptiles and mammals; this in turn impacted on the larger species that depended on them. At the same time, the Forestry Commission embarked on a massive programme of planting quick-growing Sitka spruce conifers. Huge tracts of land were planted, much of it in areas of outstanding natural beauty which are totally unsuited to growing trees, the Highlands of Scotland, for example, or the moorlands of Wales and England – Kielder Forest alone sprawls over 250 square kilometres of the Northumbrian hills. Rural communities disappeared; acres of ancient natural woodlands were engulfed, and in a matter of twentyyears these plantings had grown into vast blocks of sterile woodland.
As machinery increasingly replaced manpower, 50 per cent of the agricultural workforce left the land to find alternative employment in towns. The self-supporting infrastructure of villages became eroded, many of the old crafts died out and much country lore, handed down from generation to generation, was lost. As agricultural reclamations destroyed the hedgerows and small broadleaved woodlands, they took with them the urban tradition of picking nuts and berries every autumn. Gradually, the much-vaunted urban-rural divide became established.
There were great changes afoot in my own life. After I left school I travelled in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, working my way around as a stockman on a vast sheep station in Western Australia, as a cook and miner in an iron-ore mine, a jackaroo on a sheep and cattle ranch, a lumberjack, a non-union docker all the usual odd jobs that people of my age did to earn enough to travel on to the next place on the atlas. When I arrived home, not only was the countryside I knew undergoing enormous changes, but the family farms had gone, and with them my assumption that I would, one day, take over the running of the farms in Northumberland. Uncertain of my next career move, I was persuaded to try the City, a way of life to which I was totally unsuited and unable to settle into. The call of the hills and wide open spaces drew me back to the north, and after a year studying hill and upland sheep, and beef management at the Northumberland College of Agriculture, I found a partnership in a hill farm on the Lammermuirs. These heather-clad hills in southern Scotland were to be my home for the next twenty-five-years, and would be the place where I brought up my children.
Hill farming fascinates me; it is archaic and, despite advances in veterinary science, has remained virtually unchanged since the Cistercian monks established their great flocks on the hills in the eleventh century. The sheep are practically wild animals, and to farm them at all on the open, unfenced hills, a shepherd needs to be as much a naturalist as a stockman. I love the broad perspective, the chuckle of grouse, the comings and goings of the migratory nesting birds – the snipe, curlew, oystercatchers, plovers, redshanks and skylarks who break the long silence of winter with their exuberant birdsong in the spring. Modernity made its brutal impact even on this pastoral paradise: farm prices fell and hill communities halved as one shepherd, supplied with an all-terrain quad bike, now had to do the same-job that two had previously done.
One of the strangest aspects of farming in Britain since the War has been a complete turnaround in agricultural policy. I have witnessed the farming community being paid huge subsidies in order to inflict great damage to the surface of the landscape, and in a matter of a few decades those same farmers have been paid even larger sums to put it back again. The countryside will never be quite what it was in my childhood, but then, nothing stands still, however much one may want it to. What is important now is that the nation is aware of the fragility of what we have left of our natural heritage and that it must be cherished. The countryside is now seen as a force for good, and the communities that live there, their customs and traditions, worth supporting. Technology has enabled more and more people with urban-based employment to live in rural areas and to reap the benefits of the countryside for themselves and their children. What seems so sad to me is that many of the people who seek the pastoral idyll feel alien in the midst of their natural heritage. A combination of bureaucracy, ill-advised agricultural policies and a lack of understanding have gone a long way to hide the precious secrets of our sceptred isle. It is all still there, though – the romance, antiquity and beauty – just waiting to be found.
And Nature, the old nurse, Took The child upon her knee, Saying, ‘Here is a story book Thy Father has written for thee.’ HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (1807–82)
CHAPTER ONE FARMING AND THE LANDSCAPE
The British landscape is an extraordinary creation;
