HENGE-TALK 2
Newsletter of the Friends of thornborough, 9.7.04
SUPPORT THE
CONSERVATION PLAN
The beautiful, historic and distinctive landscape around the
Thornborough Henges is under threat of destruction from ongoing,
imminent, and long-term open-cast quarrying of aggregates. Tarmac
Northern has applied to extend Nosterfield Quarry eastwards on to
Ladybridge Farm. Within that application, the company expresses its
intention to progressively mine all the commercially viable deposits
from the farmland on Thornborough Moor, at Upsland and north of the Ings
Goit. Thus, Sutton Howgrave, Kirklington, Carthorpe, Burneston, Well and
Snape are in danger of suffering the same fate as the village of
Nosterfield, which has had 70% of its hinterland destroyed by quarrying.
With landowners happy to pocket the mining company’s quick bucks, NIMBY-type
objections from the “little people” will carry no weight at a County
Hall bedazzled by Tarmac’s promise to “improve this low-grade landscape”
by turning our open farmland into an alien imitation of the Norfolk
Broads over the next 50 years. For the county council to stop the
quarrying, it needs to be convinced by a vision of a better long-term
strategy for the area. Fortunately, the work of Newcastle University
archaeologist Dr Jan Harding has offered us an alternative to quarrying
by demonstrating that we are the inheritors of something of much more
long-term value than sand and gravel.
Because the threatened landscape contains ancient monuments and buried
archaeology left by our ancestors, English Heritage is having a
Conservation Plan drawn up by consultants overseen by the Thornborough
Henges Conservation & Working Group. The latter is made up of
representatives of the county, district and parish councils, the
Campaign to Protect Rural England, the Friends of Thornborough, Dr
Harding, English Nature, and English Heritage itself.
The consultants will be required to undertake an in-depth study of the
designated landscape’s history and cultural significance, taking into
account what it means to local residents, and to produce a plan for the
future that is acceptable to local people. This democratic, consultative
approach is the complete opposite of the way in which just one option ~
open-cast quarrying succeeded by water-filled pits for bird-watchers,
fishermen and boating enthusiasts ~ has been imposed upon the area to
date. Supporting the Conservation Plan is your best chance of stopping
further quarrying.
To supplement the Conservation Plan, English Heritage and the Friends of
Thornborough will be encouraging local people to contribute ideas and
inputs to an ABC ~ a compendium of the characteristics that make this a
unique and important place.
This is a deceptively simple tool that will enable you to express what
is important to you about your community and that can be used as
supplementary local planning information for combatting unsuitable
development. It prompts us to look at our environment with fresh eyes
and to creatively record what makes us care about it in a way that will
make other people care too.
Participation will be open to anyone who cares for the future of their
landscape ~ individuals, families, groups of friends, schools, churches,
organisations of all kinds, etc. Early this Autumn, English Heritage
will be arranging meetings in the area to explain the Conservation Plan
and to seek support for the ABC.
Stop the quarrying!
Your Heritage
If you live anywhere in the broad tract of countryside between Scorton
in the north and the Devil’s Arrows at Boroughbridge, then your home is
situated in a landscape that was sacred to our prehistoric ancestors.
It contains the remains of dozens of monuments that, taken together,
constitute an archaeological record dating back to the dawn of
agriculture 5,500 years ago and now recognised as being of international
importance. The centrepiece of this impressive array is formed by three
massive earth henges, each 240 metres in diameter, uniquely laid out in
a straight line near the village of Thornborough and mirroring the
celestial alignment of Orion’s Belt. They attest to an exceptional level
of planning and a mobilisation of labour on a par with the construction
of the pyramids.
Unlike the World Heritage Sites of Stonehenge, Avebury and Orkney, these
Yorkshire monuments are located on private land and remain virtually
unknown to the wider public. This is because they have the misfortune to
be located on sand and gravel deposits that can be excavated cheaply by
huge land dredgers and provide landowners with a more lucrative income
than can be gained from farming.
Does Nature Conservation Justify Quarrying?
It is only by studying in detail the landscape in which henges are set,
as is being done at Stonehenge, that archaeologists can gain an
understanding of why these prehistoric “cathedrals” were built and how
the early Britons used them. Yet more than 50% of the setting of the
Thornborough Henges has already been lost to open-cast quarrying and the
remainder is under threat of similar destruction. The Friends of
Thornborough are dedicated to stopping this wanton despoliation of our
beautiful landscape’s heritage, but are confronted by powerful vested
interests.
The mining companies, in partnership with the Environment Agency,
English Nature and the county council, are promoting the “Washlands”
concept for the gravel-bearing areas of the lower Swale and Ure valleys.
This strategy is based on the model of the post-quarrying Nosterfield
Nature Reserve and involves restoring future redundant quarries, not to
agriculture, but to water-filled pits with reedbeds, wet grassland and
trees that need damp conditions. Separate areas will be set aside for
fishing, sailing and nature conservancy, creating a totally different
landscape described portentously as “Yorkshire’s own Norfolk Broads”.
The latter is attractive to environmentalists because it follows the
guidelines outlined in the local Biodiversity Action Plan, which is
designed to increase the number of plant and animal species. But that
tunnel-vision plan was designed by a trust funded by the mining
companies specifically to promote quarry “restoration” on the cheap, and
will result in the loss forever of vast tracts of farmland with its
buried archaeology and the rural way of life that shaped our landscape
over many centuries.
The Norfolk Broads are a wonderful resource ~ but they represent several
hundred years of naturally regenerated flooded peat diggings originally
excavated in the Middle Ages close to the sea. The creation of a
machine-made modern equivalent in Yorkshire far from the coast would be
a social and ecological disaster. The Friends of Thornborough, along
with English Heritage and the CPRE, believe that implementation of the
Biodiversity Action Plan should not be used as the justification for
quarrying in areas where permission would otherwise have been denied.
A Better Alternative
The Friends have their own vision of a better future for our landscape
and want to share it with you. This is to protect our beautiful and
historic landscape, with its ancient monuments and archaeological
remains, from unsuitable and damaging “development” for the long-term
benefit of its inhabitants and the nation. We want to preserve our
gentle, rural way of life and to promote it sensitively in order to make
its historic value more attractive to caring visitors and new small
businesses. We would encourage the type of nature conservation that, by
not damaging the existing land surface, complements the protection of
delicate archaeological sites.
This objective can be achieved by promoting the significance of the
area, incorporating our vision in the new Conservation Plan (see
overleaf), and working with other organisations to ensure that the
planning authority puts our heritage before the mining companies’
profits.
Help us to help you by supporting the
Conservation Plan, attending parish council meetings, adding your name
to our petition, and joining our letter-writing campaign (see
friendsofthornborough.org.uk).
If you do not have access to the web, send a stamped addressed
envelope for printed material to Dick Lonsdale, Kiln Farm, Nosterfield,
Bedale, DL8 2QX.
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