URBAN AND RURAL AMENITIES
The endless growth of great cities which led to the settlement movement as one reaction, led at about the same time or a little earlier to another reaction, in defence of urban and rural amenities. "When I first began to work," Octavia Hill remarked to her sister, "people would say, 'I'll give you money for necessaries for the poor, but I don't see what they want with recreation'; then after a few years they said, 'I can understand poor people wanting amusement, but what good will open spaces do them?' and now everybody recognizes the importance of open spaces."' This observation, reported by the biographer of Octavia shows how voluntary action may confer public benefits which would not have come otherwise. [Life of Octavia Hill, by E. Moberly Bell (Constable, 1938)]
In the eighteen-sixties the spreading of London outwards began to raise acutely the question of the commons on its borders; more and more land was needed for building; each lord of a manor on the outskirts of London saw that this need could be met with personal gain to himself, if he were able to enclose the common and use it in part at least as a building estate.
To resist such measures, in the same year, 1865, in which Octavia Hill began her housing management in the heart of London, there was set up the Commons Society, now the Commons Open Spaces and Foot-paths Preservation Society. Its first chairman was G. J. Shaw Lefevre, afterwards Lord Eversley, who later wrote the history of the society. Among other original members were John Stuart Mill, T. H. Huxley, James Bryce, T. Fowell Buxton, Leslie Stephen, Octavia Hill and Robert Hunter. This society was instrumental in saving, among other open spaces, Hampstead Heath, Berkhamstead Common, Plumstead Common, Wandsworth Common, and Epping Forest - an achievement of Voluntary Action for Londoners which very few of them realize sufficiently.
London owes its lungs to Voluntary Action.
A fuller account of the Commons Society and of other voluntary organizations which have followed it, in defence of urban and rural amenities of various kinds, is given in the Supplementary Volume.
They include, among others, the following:
The Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings, founded in 1877 by William Morris to stop vandal restorations, and continuing to give technical advice on problems of restoration and preservation;
The Scapa Society (1893) for Checking Abuses of Public Advertising;
The National Trust for Preservation of Places of Historic Interest and Natural Beauty, with Octavia Hill, Robert Hunter and Canon Rawnsley as its moving spirits, incorporated as a company in 1895 and now with statutory powers for acquiring and preserving land and buildings for the benefit of the nation;
The Council for Preservation of Rural England (1926), concerned, as its title suggests, with rural amenities.
The Central Council of Civic Societies (1939), concerned to stimulate public interest in urban amenities, and having affiliated to it about sixty local societies.
The Georgian Group (1937), concerned specially to defend buildings erected in the Georgian style.
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In addition to these societies, national in scope, there are societies concerned with particular localities - Oxford, Cambridge, Coventry, the Peak District, the Lake District, and so on. And there are societies whose purposes - of rambling, camping, natural history, architecture - lead them to defence of country amenities of one kind or another. Most of these specialized societies are affiliated to the Council for the Preservation of Rural England.
It is noteworthy that several of these agencies are of recent origin. Some, indeed, have come into being after the damage of industrialization, which may prove to be irretrievable as well as needless, has been done. This is sadly true of the Oxford Preservation Trust; as a place where the minds of the young may be moulded by beauty and calm, the "home of lost causes" has become an all but lost cause itself.' The price of preservation of amenities is eternal vigilance, to-day even more than in the past. Defence of urban and rural amenities has always been the work of far-sighted individuals, advancing continually into new fields where public opinion was not for some time ready to follow them. The preservation of commons from the landlord without public spirit; the preservation of buildings from destructive restoration; the preservation of scenery in trust for the nation; the control of unsightly advertisement; the preservation of special and at the time unfashionable classes of building; the ideas of regional planning and of national parks all these germinated in the minds of individuals, were fought for by voluntary groups, and at length were accepted by the public and the State.
1 The needless destruction of amenities in Oxford is a classic example of unintentional vandalism. The turning of the incomparable High Street - in which old pictures show dons holding their academic discussions off the pavement - into a torrent channel for thundering motors with drifting foam of bicycles-is not the result of through traffic; the normal congestion disappears largely once a week on early closing day in Oxford and will be practically unrelieved at other times by the laboriously constructed by-passes. The normal state of the High Street is due to the new industrial city of Cowley having been built on the east of Oxford, while the railway is on the west and the shopping and entertainment centres for the new population have been allowed to develop in the west-centre. Nothing like the present disaster would have happened if the Nuffield Works had been placed in empty ground west of the station, as rational town-planning would have placed them. Granted their present situation, the palliative is not by-passes for through traffic but deliberate development of a new civic centre - town hall, shops, cinemas, etc., in Cowley, prohibition of any such development west of Magdalen Bridge, removal of much that has come there, and some new railway connection. The academic centre of Oxford might then be closed practically to motor traffic. Such a programme would not deprive the University in any way of its new advantage of contact with an industrial community. It would show that industry can be reconciled with amenity and with respect for irreplaceable beauty.
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