Smithy Wood can be traced back to the 11th century. Long-eared and soprano pipistrelle bats fly among its oaks. Marsh tits, badgers and dingy skipper butterflies make their home in this ancient woodland, on green belt surrounding the famously tree-rich city of Sheffield.
Twenty acres of this unique wood will be bulldozed to build a pleasantly leafy service station by junction 35 of the M1, if the city council approves a move that could undermine the status of ancient woodland across Britain. Extra Motorway Services has enlisted Forbes-Laird Arboricultural Consultancy (Flac) to help its application. It claims to “secure ‘impossible’ planning permissions, including in ancient woodland and historic landscapes”. This isn’t an idle boast. Ancient woodland – places proven to have been forested since 1600, with uniquely rich, pesticide-free soils – is under siege. Flac succeeded with a housing application imperilling part of the ancient Bluebell Woods in Kent, and is involved in others.
With Smithy Wood, as elsewhere, developers speak soothingly of planting new woods in “mitigation”, utterly failing to acknowledge that ancient woodland is irreplaceable. You cannot “offset” an ancient wood.
Just 17% of ancient woodland is protected as a site of special scientific interest, and the Woodland Trust fears that developers are increasingly exploiting national planning policies that allow for the bulldozing of ancient woods if the benefits of development “clearly outweigh the loss”.
This planning guidance does not tell councillors how to calculate the relative merit of ancient trees and irreplaceable soil versus Dunkin’ Donuts and two-folding-chairs-for-a-tenner. In the case of Smithy, tThe Smithy developers even claim the service station will save lives. It would be less spurious to argue that deaths will be avoided if the services aren’t built and so no diesel particulates waft from engines in the new car park.
Hundreds of people joined a protest march against the destruction of street trees in Sheffield on Saturday so the council should understand that its citizens appreciate the fact that trees make urban areas healthier, as well as richer in spirit and in pocket.
Keswick trumps Hollywood
Last Friday 400 people flocked to Bridport literary festival to listen to a hill farmer from Cumbria. James Rebanks’ The Shepherd’s Life has been the surprise literary success this year. His prose is eloquent and evocative, and possesses that priceless commodity: authenticity.
Can it survive superstardom? So far, Rebanks is navigating the expansion of his brand with the surefootedness of his Herdwicks on a fell. His publisher has rushed out a Christmas book. Hollywood is also knocking. But the first to dramatise The Shepherd’s Life – next spring – will be the Theatre by the Lake, in Keswick, just 12 miles from Rebanks’ farm. The production will feature local amateur actors playing shepherds and sheep, and walk-on parts for Alfred Wainwright and William Wordsworth, as Rebanks challenges romanticised notions of Lake District life. Rebanks probably can’t stop Hollywood schmaltz, but that’s OK: his success is undeniably romantic, and all the better for it.
A bedtime horror story
When recently asked for my books of 2015, I realised I’ve not read a single novel all year. But I have enjoyed scores of picture books with my children, including the entire backlist of the Lennon and McCartney of children’s literature, Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler.
The Gruffalo is their megahit, The Snail and the Whale second. But their mid-to-late period is excellent, peaking with the postmodern Tiddler. Late Julia and Axel disappoints – especially Superworm – but their latest, The Scarecrow’s Wedding, is a return to form. Only one problem: my daughters are terrified of the cigar-smoking, scene-stealing Reginald Rake.
