Читать книгу Walks in the South Downs National Park онлайн

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Over the following two or three centuries the population grew, communities expanded, market towns were established and sheep grazing dominated the Downs, while cornfields spread along their base. Reaching a peak in the 18th century, it is estimated that some 400,000 ewes grazed the Sussex Downs, their fleeces being worked into cloth by Wealden woolmasters, or sold across the Channel to merchants in Flanders.

Although the Downs escaped the ravages of the industrial revolution, food shortages and high prices during the Napoleonic Wars spurred local sheep farmers to return to the plough. When food prices fell, much of the land was restored to pasture, until the First World War once again called for greater food production. With higher yields resulting from improved fertilisers there was no going back, and in the Second World War the extent of this cultivation increased even more.

It was this destruction of traditional downland that effectively blocked the 1947 proposal by Sir Arthur Hobhouse for the South Downs to become one of England’s first National Parks. While several other areas included in his report gained National Park status, in 1956 the South Downs was rejected on the grounds that its recreational value had been ‘considerably reduced by extensive cultivation’. Instead, two Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty were established: the Sussex Downs and East Hampshire AONBs.