Stanage and Iconography

I don’t think I’ve used the word ‘iconic’ to describe Blacka Moor on this blog, mainly because the word itself tends to make me nervous. In a letter to the Sheffield Telegraph last week Terry Howard of the Ramblers does use the word iconic more than once to describe Stanage and the North Lees Estate. The word always makes me think of Russian Orthodox priests and their icons. But then………….

Leaving aside the word it’s worth saying that Terry and the Ramblers do a good job in fighting for access rights across the region. They are also right to worry about the policy of hiving off public land and assets to outside groups who might have designs on the land that don’t always correspond with our values.

My perspective is not so much access pure and simple – being allowed to get onto the land unrestricted, important though that is – as what it is that we’re getting access to. The place has to be worth getting to and has to be memorable. If I’m told I can have unlimited access to a field of cabbages I might, in common with Miles Davis, say “So what?”. ( In the interests of inclusiveness I should say I do really like cabbage by the way) But a field full of sheep or cattle that have chewed and nibbled everything has limited appeal to people beyond those who see profit in it; and that goes for grazed moorland too.

North Lees is quite likely to be sold off by the owners, the National Park to whoever makes the best bid. The estate sits below Stanage Edge and few local places can have a more promising setting because the natural looking and imposing rocky edge forms a backdrop to an area where human influence has come from those who occupied the land and therefore looked after it fairly well. And that tradition continues to this day. In that it differs from the featureless moors on the other side of the edge which was owned by those who didn’t live there simply coming up for the grouse shooting season – the worst kind of exploitation, giving rise to the most depressing kind of landscape. Most of North Lees is farm land with some attractive residences, historic associations and a fortunate aspect. One of its biggest advantages is being quiet and self-contained and mainly away from busy roads. It is one of the areas targeted by the Sheffield Moors Partnership for their Master Plan.

Why PDNPA feel they have to sell it off I don’t understand. In hive-off situations there’s usually someone making an argument that the public authority have not made a particularly good job of managing an asset like this, although in this case I don’t know. Bureaucracies can be strangled by regulations at times but if that’s the issue which are the regulations that any incoming manager would be allowed to ignore? This could be the point – that organisations that are not public bodies can be more dynamic and more flexible because they don’t have to conform to rules and procedures that have been devised to safeguard the public. So what exactly are we going to lose? And will those in authority within the public body be frank and open in explaining that? What exactly can another organisation do that the public authority can’t? Because the only precedent here is Sheffield Wildlife Trust and that’s hardly a reason for being enthusiastic about hiving off. Remember that the argument made for that hive-off was the access to funding wildlife trusts had. That proved to be wrong. And the funds that SWT have obtained have not been used for the things that local people would have prioritised