An Environmental History of the UK Defence Estate, 1945 to the Present 9781474211222, 9781441113573

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For friends and family – indispensable distractions, the lot of you.

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List of Illustrations

Figure 2.1 Figure 4.1

‘Your Britain – fight for it now’, Second World War poster

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The Green Pack and its Seven of Hearts, the fairy shrimp

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Figure 4.2

Boundary fencing around the graveyard at Imber

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Figure 4.3

Past and present use collide in this picture of a farmhouse at Imber

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Anti-military messages stand out among troop graffiti on Imber walls

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Figure 5.1

Surfers Against Sewage poster

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Figure 6.1

Welsh mountain sheep to the foreground, and the FIBUA village in the background, of the training landscape at SENTA. Patches of blanket forestation provide troop cover during training exercises

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Figure 4.4

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Acknowledgements

The AHRC, for providing the funding that supported this work, and the larger project – ‘Militarized Landscapes in the Twentieth Century: France, Britain and the US’ – of which it was a part. Staff and colleagues at Bristol University Department of Historical Studies. Guy Hagg and Richard Osgood at Defence Estates, and Chris Sernberg and Eddie Mahoney at SENTA, for answering my many questions and enabling numerous site visits. My colleagues on the Militarized Landscape project, Chris Pearson, Peter Coates and Tim Cole, for your excellent company (and knowledge of where to find a decent pub lunch) on our many site visits together. Special thanks to my supervisors, Peter Coates and Tim Cole, who provided a perfect balance of intellectual rigour, ruthless editing and good humour, washed down by a constant supply of green tea and organic biscuits. And to the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (Munich), for their warm welcome and generous support during the later stages of the journey from thesis to book.

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List of Abbreviations

AFV – Armoured Fighting Vehicle AHRC – Arts and Humanities Research Council AONB – Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty BMC – British Mountaineering Council CCW – Countryside Council for Wales CDWC – Committee for the Defence of Welsh Culture CPRB – Council for the Protection of Rural Britain CPRE – Council for the Protection of Rural England CPRW – Council for the Protection of Rural Wales DNPC – Dartmoor National Park Committee DOD – Department of Defense (US) DPA – Dartmoor Preservation Association DTA – Dartmoor Training Area DTE – Defence Training Estate FIBUA – Fighting in a Built-Up Area FoT – Friends of Tyneham FWS – Fish and Wildlife Service (US) GLCM – Ground Launch Missile ILMP – Integrated Land Management Plan LIFE – L’Instrument Financier pour l’Environnement MOD – Ministry of Defence NA – The National Archive NFU – National Farmer’s Union NIMBY – Not In My Back Yard NPAC – National Parks and Access to the Countryside (Act, 1949) RAF – Royal Air Force RSPB – Royal Society for the Protection of Birds SAC – Special Area of Conservation SAS – Surfers Against Sewage SENTA – Sennybridge Training Area SPTA – Salisbury Plain Training Area SSSI – Site of Special Scientific Interest TAG – Tyneham Action Group TAVR – Territorial Army Volunteer Reserve TVA – Tennessee Valley Authority WAAF – Women’s Auxiliary Air Force

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Chapter 1

Introduction

Before a bullet or shell hits a target in a war zone, hundreds have been fired into the turf of a British training area. Before soldiers report for duty in the extreme heat and cold of Afghanistan, they have been tested in the rain, frost, wind and mud of the British countryside. Before negotiating enemy tactics and terrain, they are trained in warfare in some of the most beautiful landscapes in Britain. The trenches of the First World War, the diverse terrestrial and maritime battlefronts of the Second, the raging oil fires of the Gulf War and the impassable mountains of Afghanistan all speak of the inherent role of the environment in war. But the actions that occur in these war zones had their origins in military training areas, which in Britain include familiar places such as the expanses of Salisbury Plain and Dartmoor, holiday spots like Pembrokeshire, Welsh mountains at Sennybridge and the Dorset coastal village of Tyneham, nestled between valley and bay. These five sites, and other training areas in the United Kingdom, may be less well known than the theatres of war themselves, but they are vital in training and preparation for conflict elsewhere. Although the effects of war on the environment, and the environment on war, are carefully observed and extensively studied, preparation for war and the mobilization of militaries on home soils remains under-researched. This book seeks to rectify this neglect by analysing the emergence, management and meanings of military training areas in southwest England and Wales. It centres around a paradox in the war–environment relationship: how sites of training can become reservoirs of biodiversity, unexpected refuges for plants and wildlife that are consciously managed with conservation in mind. The development and implementation of environmental values – the greening1 of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) – through legislation, conservation policies, land management and response to opposition, is studied on a site-by-site basis through the aforementioned five varied military training areas. Each has its own particular habitats, diverse histories and areas of controversy, but all are linked by the general shift from

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Environmental History of the UK Defence Estate

inadvertent ‘conservation by serendipity’ in the immediate post-war years, to a gradually adopted cohesive and conscious environmental policy.2 The publication of the Nugent Report in 1973 is a key date for the military greening, marking it as a subject of military and government policy, and in view of its important role as a catalyst for change it is explored at length and in depth. In addition, the coordination of conservation groups, cooperation with civilian environmental bodies and the public presentation of military environmental credentials via its in-house conservation magazine, Sanctuary, are addressed to establish the emergence and meaning of military-environmentalism as a discourse and practice. The sites in question all have a pre-military history, however, and the arrival of the military in the landscape forced out existing inhabitants. The so-called ghost villages of Imber (Salisbury Plain), Tyneham (Lulworth, Dorset) and Mynydd Epynt (Sennybridge, Wales) are monuments to a loss of community and civilian life replaced by the military. The emptying of the landscapes of human inhabitants is set against the rise of the environmental narrative, and the celebration of non-human inhabitants such as the fairy shrimp of Salisbury Plain. A delicate invertebrate barely visible to the naked eye, it has been championed by environmentalists as an example of a rare species thriving in a military environment, and has become a symbol of military-environmentalism. Also on Salisbury Plain, however, lies Imber, now empty and decayed, and largely inaccessible to the public. I confront the argument that the military deploys an environmental discourse to ‘greenwash’ more contentious histories of its lands.3 I look at ways in which attempts to memorialize those who came before the military have variously been addressed, implemented and denied, and chart the process by which landscapes are militarized. This work is first and foremost an environmental history that takes as its primary subject and source the landscape and its inhabitants – human and non-human. An instrumental role (which some refer to as agency) is given to natural processes, plants and wildlife.4 But this should not detract from the complex human histories that have occurred on these sites, and I strive to tell such stories, within the context of the events and lands in which they unfold. As Ellen Stroud explains: Environmental history is not simply another subfield of history, taking its place alongside political, social and economic history. Rather it is a tool for telling better histories in each of these fields, and others. Likewise, the field offers not merely another axis for analyzing relationships of power, but new sites and sources for uncovering those relationships.

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Introduction

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Environmental history is sometimes about power, sometimes about place, occasionally about space, and more rarely about all three, but it is always about nature.5

War and the environment Interaction between the military and the environment is as old as war itself. One could suggest, not unreasonably, that an environmental history of warfare extends as far back as the first stone thrown. Recent studies of the military use of land take us back to the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome, and beyond, and their careful manipulation of the landscape at times of conflict.6 The ancient protagonists of war understood the power of the landscape and physical elements around them, fortune and victory turning on, at times, a fold of land or the direction of the wind. The technological and temporal leap to modern warfare has altered many aspects of how we wage, suffer and document war, but has not diminished the role the natural environment plays. Military historians have long been attuned to the role of the environment in the theatre of war, but as environmental historians have noticed, while they typically include geographic analysis and graphic descriptions of war’s destructive nature, an appreciation of nature’s agency – what Lisa Brady refers to as ‘nature as material object and intellectual idea taking an active role’ – is largely missing from traditional studies of warfare and the military.7 The environment is something purely acted upon. Military historians ‘preoccupied with combat on specific landscapes almost do environmental history’, and readers ‘may deduce from conventional texts ecological aspects of warfare’, but the military and environmental histories of war ‘remain parallel; that is, they do not intersect’.8 In recent years, several historians have taken steps to bring together these two parallel but non-intersecting fields of history. Prominent among them is Edmund Russell, whose War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring (2001) explicitly identifies the distinct concepts of ‘war’ and ‘nature’ and questions why we have failed to (fully) see war in nature, or nature in war.9 Russell explores the similarities and links in the concurrent wars against human and insect enemies in three areas: ideologically, in terms of borrowing imagery and metaphors from each other; materially, encouraging production and application of knowledge from one sphere to another; and commercially, linking business and profits to the state and military. In doing so, he widens our understanding of ‘war’ and ‘nature’ and points to new ways of looking at familiar topics.

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William Cronon introduced the idea of a military site as the ‘nation’s most ironic nature park’ in Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature.10 In War and Nature Russell expands upon the idea, offering a broader notion of a military site than that of a place where warfare takes place.11 It marks a transition in thinking of places of war as battlefields to military sites that include places of preparation for war. The bringing together of two normally separate and even antagonistic (if not contradictory) concepts – that of the military with its destructive connotations, and the nature reserve with its protective connotations – is a notion central to my research. In using the phrase, Russell carefully chose his words, noting how we use words like ‘irony’ and ‘paradox’ when the world doesn’t work the way we think it should.12 The military with its connections to death and destruction does not align easily with notions of nature reserves and environmental protection. But, as Russell suggests, by looking beyond well-known assumptions of both military and nature, threads of commonality can be found. Nature reserves protect the environment by keeping other damaging (human) presences out. The military, too, is keen to keep others out of its lands, for altogether different reasons (of secrecy and safety). But the end result can be remarkably similar as habitats have time and space to flourish, and environmental bodies and military play a protective, custodial role. Russell heralded a new interest among environmental historians in the environmental histories of conflicts and militaries. As well as issuing a call for new research, Russell suggested that environmental history has thus far failed to address the relationship between military and environment in the places we don’t expect to find it, that is, away from the battlefield and in peacetime. I have responded to Russell’s call by exploring the environmental history of a national military establishment on home soil, and the particular issues this raises. Before investigating an environmental history in these lesser-frequented intellectual and physical areas, it is important to grasp the extent of environmental history’s predilection for war and destruction. The main and most enduring interest among environmental historians in military activities and their environmental impact has been nuclear testing and fallout, and the toxic legacies of war.13 This reflects the longstanding integration between environmental history, and the environmental movement itself. As interest in our environment and the human place within it grew, environmentalists developed a historical perspective to chart the myriad ways in which humans can shape, and damage, the world around them. Books like Carson’s Silent Spring repositioned academia and activism, galvanizing popular concern about the effects of chemicals and technology

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Introduction

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on environmental and human health, and calling for critical assessments of human activities and their impacts in the present, the past and, perhaps most importantly for environmentalists, the future. Environmental history as an academic field itself has a history of involvement in environmental activism, providing background and theory to longstanding problems, documenting developments and highlighting injustice. This legacy contributes to the sustained interest in war and nuclear technology as part of a commitment to critiquing damaging environmental practices.14 War, and the military record of presenting environmental damage as a necessary side effect, remains an area in which environmental historians continue to research, to effect change as well as write history. Although environmental histories of war have emerged from the field of environmental history relatively recently and in small numbers, they cover great spans of time and large expanses of place. They also cover a great range of subjects within the umbrella terms ‘environment’ and ‘nature’, from the Nazi war machine (Brüggemeier et al.), to urban sanitation (Lahtinen and Vuorisalo) and the dissemination of anthrax (Szasz).15 Collectively, however, they have succeeded in reconsidering the role of war in reshaping landscapes and relationships between humans and nonhuman entities in times of conflict. Both Brady and Pearson, for example, present the landscape as an active agent in war. According to Brady, the reduction of Confederate land to ‘barren waste’ (and the subsequent effect on Southern morale) became a weapon, not a consequence, of war.16 For Pearson, the reorganization of forests by the Vichy regime and later reclamation by the Resistance movement gave French forests in wartime an ideological as well as productive and combative role.17 For both, the environment has multiple roles in the history of conflict, as site, resource, victim and weapon. The effects of war on the environment have captured the attention of academics beyond the field of history. Geographers in particular have studied the consequences of conflict on the physical world, and what this means in matters of national and global security. Mainly concentrating on resource security, and political strategy for managing contested environments, many do not cross over into environmental history, or demonstrate compatible approaches.18 However, an emerging field of geographers researching environments influenced by different kinds of military use was brought together by GeoJournal in a special edition on ‘Military Natures: Militarism and the Environment ’.19 Unlike environmental historians, who have largely under-researched non-conflict military areas, the collection of works by GeoJournal establishes geographers as the group who have

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pioneered academic exploration of ex-military sites, and military training zones. This collection brought together a current and enquiring literature exploring the natures, constructions and meanings of military environments in diverse locations.20 The contributors, in particular David Havlick and Jeffrey Sasha Davis, offer international perspectives of militarized landscapes, with notions and arguments that provide points of reference, and contrast, for the case studies undertaken here. Their ideas and approaches to militarized landscapes will be discussed here, and throughout the book.

Military-environmentalism or ‘khaki conservation’ Introducing the special edition of GeoJournal , Davis states a conviction that a number of historians working on militaries and nature share in common: that military activities do not just destroy nature, they also actively produce it.21 He adds that ‘militarized landscapes extend far beyond combat zones’, providing an encouraging precedent for this study, which shares his view. In his discussion of the recent praise former militarized areas have received from environmentalists, tourists, wildlife managers and travel writers as ‘pristine’ and ‘natural’, Davis offers a thought-provoking theory of the military presence in the landscape, that seems to me to be of particular relevance for the sites I have researched, that contain traces of former civilian communities. He proposes that ‘the labelling of any environment as natural necessarily involves the erasure of the social history of the landscape’.22 In the case of many militarized landscapes, he continues, there is in fact a double erasure. First, there is an erasure of the social life that existed in the place prior to the military takeover, and secondly an erasure of the history of the military’s use.23 At places such as Imber, the village at the heart of Salisbury Plain whose inhabitants were evicted by the military, Tyneham, the requisitioned village in Dorset, and the hill farming community of Mynydd Epynt (now Sennybridge Training Area (SENTA)), such erasure was a literal and abrupt end to community life, followed by a longer process of material decay and limited access.24 The nature of the military requisitions, and the perceived failure of the military to acknowledge sufficiently the pre-military existence of civilian histories and memories, has made these sites controversial, and central to understanding the meanings of military landscapes. Consequently, the histories of the former civilian inhabitants of these landscapes are intricately and unavoidably connected to their environmental histories.

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Introduction

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The contrast between the often-neglected human histories of the sites, and the rise of an environmental narrative in the public portrayal of military training areas, invites consideration of Davis’s double erasure model of thought, particularly in those chapters dealing with ghost-villages and evictions (Chapters 4, 5 and 6). His conviction that not only are military landscapes worthy of study, but that they require examination of how militaries produce ‘natural’ environments, alter social practices in the landscape and alter how people interpret the naturalness of the resulting landscape has been inspirational for my research. Writing alongside Davis in GeoJournal, David Havlick looks at the trend in the United States of America to convert military bases and weapons manufacturing plants to wildlife refuges.25 He takes as his starting point the broad discourse of ecological militarization that frames military practices as compatible with, and contributing to, environmental protection, and working with one case study – Rocky Mountain Arsenal, Colorado, United States of America – identifies logics behind the military-to-wildlife (M2W) conversions. According to Havlick, Biodiversity, Brownfields and Serendipity are all used as concepts to emphasize the win–win outcome of military-to-wildlife conversions, ‘as good for local economies, good for the environment, or good for a Department of Defense (DoD) looking to offload lands and good for a Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) looking to acquire them.’26 Havlick and Davis demonstrate an awareness of military-environmentalism as an active discourse, in operation on military (and continuing at former military) lands. Havlick does not repeat the widespread assumptions that military use degenerates the ecological health of a site. At his case study site, the evidence points convincingly to the opposite: ‘a visitor to Rocky Mountain Arsenal today is hard pressed not to encounter mule deer, a variety of waterfowl and raptors, prairie dogs, and vegetation characteristic of the shortgrass prairie that once dominated the western Great Plains of North America.’27 But he examines critically the use of the environmental narrative by the military, demanding that ‘before accepting M2W conversions as desirable we should also work to understand as fully as we can how questions of authority, control, contamination and justice are being resolved in these places.’28 He remains hesitant to accept the shift towards environmental protection by the US military due to the potential political and moral ramifications. Sharing the outlook of fellow geographer Rachel Woodward, discussed further below, Havlick argues that: if we accept the view that military activities are compatible with conservation or that militarized spaces are suitable for recreation and educational

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Environmental History of the UK Defence Estate purposes consonant with the US National Wildlife Refuge System, we may find that we fail to recognize an array of practises and processes that retain a critical presence in these lands.29

My work takes heed of Havlick’s and Woodward’s reluctance to accept the environmental benefits of military training and the appropriation of land for other military purposes such as armaments manufacture. However, as found at all five sites, real environmental benefits at UK training areas are visible and recorded by ecologists and scientists, who were often the first to speak in favour (in environmental terms) of a military presence in the landscape. While remaining alert to attempts to overemphasize environmental benefits, in particular for good public relations (see Chapter 6, where coverage of environmental successes at Epynt is translated by MoD into the equivalent advertising pounds), I am equally receptive to the painstaking studies done by conservation groups that record the number of fungi on patches of earth and shrimp in puddles and ditches, and the annual organized bird counts, which together construct a picture of flora and fauna of the military sites from the ground up. To counter Havlick’s concerns, I argue that critical and sustained studies of militarized landscapes can only contribute to the public dispersal of information about the environmental health (or otherwise) of said sites, and the more they are researched, the less likely militaries may engage in dodging remedial measures. Despite obvious differences – the American context, and focus on former military sites contaminated by weapons production, rather than existing training areas – Havlick’s work has much to offer a historian of British military-environmentalism. His identification of serendipity as a key logic of military-environmentalism is one repeated by the British MoD, as Chapter 3 explains. The argument that military use of land results, in a happy coincidence, with thriving natural habitats, is found on both sides of the Atlantic. It not only positions the military themselves as benefactors of nature (as opposed to agents of nature’s destruction), but, as Havlick states, ‘Serendipity [as an explanation] can also prove highly potent: to argue against it is tantamount to going against nature itself.’30 At Havlick’s case study site the agency of the change from military to wildlife refuge is largely attributed to natural organisms or processes by DoD, although the human role is noted. Furthermore, nature, he argues, ‘is invoked to suggest that environmental remediation at former military bases is a project to return the place to the historical condition it ought to have.’31 At the British military sites’ studies here, I find an alternative narrative adapted to the continuing use of the sites, but with its roots in similar

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Introduction

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sentiments. ‘Wilderness’, the quality that first attracted the military to many of its training areas (see Chapters 2 and 6), had been preserved by the military, at first by serendipity, and in more recent years by military-environmentalism. By keeping out other agents of change (agriculture, industry, urban development and a civilian presence) the military is preserving the enduring landscape quality and safeguarding remaining ‘wildernesses’. Keeping people out is one aspect of this ‘protective’ role. Public access to UK sites is often denied on safety grounds, due to unexploded ordnance and live firing, although increasingly environmental protection is a factor. In Havlick’s example, access is severely limited simply because the bases remain toxic and contaminated. Literature from the United States tends to focus on clean-up and the toxic legacies of military bases. Britain does not share to the same extent the number of remediated sites (although undoubtedly it houses its own toxic sites, such as Porton Down, and the tellingly named ‘Anthrax Island’).32 With space on a crowded island at a premium, the military is keen to retain its existing training spaces. The deployment of a military-environmentalist narrative that privileges and promotes the benefits to the landscape of a military presence, in order to reinforce ongoing training capacities, is a feature of military-environmentalism that one geographer in particular has investigated and, in doing so, has opened up British military landscapes as a field of study. Rachel Woodward has written extensively on military geographies still in use in the United Kingdom, and their political, social, economic and environmental impacts. A geographer working from a background in rural and feminist studies, she is concerned with issues of gender and power in the military, the politics of land use and military-environmentalist discourses.33 Woodward argues that the army constructs a specific portrayal of the countryside that it uses to maintain control over its territory. She holds that discourses of conservation and landscape are employed by the military to justify (sometimes quite destructive) training practices in areas of high ecological and landscape value, legitimizing their activities and feeding into discourses of militarism and national security that sustain the occupation of vast areas. Woodward’s attention focuses on military activity in peacetime and on home territory. Her argument that the military’s use of land has changed over time and that it has altered the portrayal of its activities and the land it owns to suit its needs introduces the main theme of this book – the ‘greening’ of the military – and encourages a critical approach to discursive strategies deployed by the military. As a cultural geographer, Woodward is concerned with current structures of power and their physical applications (on the landscape) and

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implications (for civilians). Providing a sense of historical development is not her primary concern. Like Russell, she calls for more research, and certainly there is a need for a sustained historical perspective on military land use. And, while Woodward is interested in the conflict between military activity and recreational use of national parks, and the tendency for military needs to take priority over environmental concerns, she does not describe or analyse specific environments found under military use, focussing on discussing the range of discourses at work in the military’s portrayal of the land. When she addresses military landscapes directly, it involves the ways soldiers are conditioned to read them and how the military represents them as a strategic act.34 Woodward’s key concept from my standpoint is that of ‘khaki conservation’, in other words how the British MoD portrays the environmental impact of its activities on the land.35 In her critical examination of military-environmentalist discourses in operation on British military lands, Woodward argues that ‘khaki conservation’ portrays environmental defence ‘as part and parcel of national defence, and appropriate activity for the Army’. Woodward takes a more overtly oppositional stance against khaki conservation, the presentation ‘of military training and environmental protection as conceptually equal’ on the grounds that: it implies that weighing up military activity and conservation is possible on the same set of scales, that the two originate from the same set of objectives. The possibility that environmental protection and preparations for war might reside in fundamentally opposed moral orders is denied, removed from debate.36 I take a more neutral position on khaki conservation, recognizing its environmental benefits as well as its capacity to manipulate and overshadow other stories occurring on military lands. Indeed, a history of the greening of the military is incontrovertibly also a history of khaki conservation, and how it came to be a central feature of military land management and publicity releases. Woodward’s conceptualization of ‘khaki conservation’ as a constructed dialogue, responding to the training needs of the military over time, receives sustained examination here. Woodward’s stance as a civilian and academic outsider to the military areas and discourses she studies is also in contrast to my own research experiences. She attended the public inquiry into military training in Northumberland National Park as an observer, and opens her book Military Geographies with a recollection of looking at a military base through the

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Introduction

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perimeter fence, in turn watched by a suspicious military. Her research experiences as an outsider inform her criticism of the closed nature of military archives, difficulties of gaining access and the hierarchical and paternalistic structure of the military. While this can be criticized for focusing too intently on negative impacts of a military presence – warning of the need to cultivate a wider perspective – it also encourages others to constantly question and challenge received ideas.

Researching military landscapes Working on a project that has the military’s Defence Estate (DE) as its project partner has given me research experiences that I am aware are unusual. I discuss them briefly here in response to suggestions by colleagues that other researchers of military, and other, landscapes, may find them useful. A running concern through the ‘Militarized Landscapes’ project, too, has been the gradual immersion of those involved in all things military, and the extent to which our interest in militarized landscapes may have, in turn, militarized us. Careful thought has been given to the impact of the support that the DE has provided the project, and its status as project partner. Reflection on this, and my own positionality as an academic researching active military training areas, seems appropriate to include. The role of DE as one of two ‘project partners’ to the Militarized Landscapes project (the other was Icon, an independent film production company based in Bristol) had been secured before I joined the team as the doctoral student. As I researched British training areas, however, contact between myself and the DE team based at Tilshead, Salisbury Plain Training Area (SPTA), became frequent. The DE manages the Military Estate, which is made up of three areas: the Built Estate of barracks, naval bases, depots and aircraft hangars; the Housing Estate, which provides homes for service families; and the Defence Training Estate (DTE). The branch of DE that became my first point of contact was the central office of the Environment and Conservation team for DE. Here, land management, conservation and archaeological work across the regions were coordinated, and records collected. I was given access to the DE archives, housed at Tilshead within the military training area, and so not publicly accessible. Here, site dossiers for all training areas are collected and stored. It is an archive that details – albeit haphazardly, locally and in a multitude of formats – the growth of military-environmentalism, and the effects of its practical application on the ground at training areas across the land. Access to this archive was a crucial resource.

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DE also arranged visits to training areas, which I have detailed in an Appendix. As I have described, experiencing militarized landscapes became a central methodology that was achieved by establishing a productive dialogue and working relationship with people within DE and the MoD. It was understood from the outset that the Militarized Landscapes researchers would visit SPTA and the DE offices there. Safety briefings were required, and so in the rather drab prefab offices at Tilshead we began the gradual accustomization to military language, behaviour and surroundings deemed necessary by MoD in order to explore the training area, via an MoD slide show. Dangers duly noted, we were officially upgraded to ‘Category 2’ civilians, free to roam SPTA unaccompanied when firing was not taking place. Visits to other training areas, and their conservation group meetings, however, were the result of pursuing contacts with individual camp commandants and DE personnel. Where dialogue could not be established, I was unable to enter the training areas unless on permitted open access days, like any civilian. Experiencing access privileges heightened my awareness of the extent of access limitations. Exploring the areas beyond the barbed wire acted as a counterpoint to the texts – academic, civilian, protest and historical – that view the militarized landscape from its periphery, and are informed by exclusion and restriction. It allowed me to observe both sides of the fence. As a researcher interested in the histories of the training areas, in which access restriction has played an important role both for the environment and the humans within, and excluded from, it, this was an important perspective to achieve. It is important, too, to note that such a position is admittedly atypical in these kinds of landscapes. Once granted the ability to move freely on SPTA, all four of the project researchers did so. We consciously decided to visit, as a group, all five of the British training areas under investigation, even though the project had a comparative international scope. Over the course of three years, we almost kept our self-made promise: we visited all bases but Dartmoor Training Area, which we viewed from a distance (with military Chinooks hovering overhead) on walks taken over the course of a writing weekend on the moor, where we co-authored an article reflecting upon our research of militarized landscapes. Our visits to training areas varied in structure, providing a range of experiences. On one trip to SENTA we were accompanied by then-Commandant Lt Col Sernberg, who drove us around the base in his Landrover, and provided us with (military-issue) Landmarc packed lunches as well as immeasurable local knowledge. By contrast, our

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visit to Castlemartin was structured around a sit-down meeting with the Commandant and his team of DE employees, after which we were shown the base. We observed troops in training on another visit to SENTA, and on our trip to Tyneham met no military personnel at all. The variety of the visits broadened the research potential of the visits, generating discussions of contrasts and continuities between the bases and their histories. Our walks generated much conversation on the meaning of militarized landscapes, but the more we explored military training areas, the more we all became aware that this wandering at will in a restricted landscape was contributing to a militarization of our selves. As we negotiated the landscape via military-issue maps, read signs, stepped over countless bullet casings and stopped flinching at the sound of distant shelling, we agreed that by exploring the militarized landscapes we were fast becoming accustomed to places and activities and objects that at first had felt alien. I remain alert to accusations of ‘going native’ and experiencing military landscapes from a vantage point too far. I concede that I have become familiar with military landscapes, but argue that for me it was necessary to visit and experience them in order to understand their histories, and write about them. Experiencing militarized landscapes does not require a complete militarization of the self, as a bitterly cold December day observing troops on the Epynt confirmed: I was not, nor ever would be, cut out for military life. However, a familiarity with the traces and symbols of militarization is fundamentally useful for observing its impact on a landscape. As a researcher interested in maintaining a neutral standpoint with regard to the debate over the military’s need to train, concerned instead with the history of military training areas and the role of that debate in their development, I gave this ‘militarization’ serious and continued thought. As my experience of militarized places grew, and my knowledge of the military and its use of land increased, it seemed to me (as it still does) that the two were vitally connected. I could not truly immerse myself in the history of military training areas without experiencing those places that had been so altered by the military presence. Cooperation with the MoD and DE enabled this, and never with any compromise required on my part as an academic. My work – and any interpretations and errors within it – remains my own, certainly deeply informed by my experiences of militarized landscapes, and absolutely unrestricted as to the conclusions I drew from them. Companions on all trips to military training areas were the military maps given to me by DE. Drawn to a bigger scale than the Ordnance Survey maps, they depict in detail key land features, topography, scheduled

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monuments and ruined buildings where the OS maps have, for secrecy and security’s sake, blank spaces etched red and marked ‘DANGER AREA’. Fascinating in their own right, and illustrating cartographically the history of the training areas, their requisitioned buildings, access restrictions, impact zones and environmentally and archaeologically sensitive features, I would dearly have liked to have included them in this book. However, it was made clear from the outset that these maps were not to be reproduced in any form. Training areas are places of national security, and their perception as potential ‘targets’ has increased in a post-9/11 age of anti-terrorist hypersensitivity to potential threat. Unable to use the maps on which I had relied, and which truly depicted what the training areas contained, I decided not to include mapping of the areas that would necessarily have been less detailed, less accurate and less true to the landscapes. It also signifies the constraints that accompany working on actively used military training areas. In addition to site visits, the DE archives at Tilshead provided a rich depository of the individual site dossiers, which collated all the data collected by conservation groups, military personnel and independent scientists, to form detailed pictures of the sites post-1973. These resources greatly augmented publicly available literature, as did the complete run of Sanctuary magazine, stumbled upon in filing cabinets at the DE offices. The individual site dossiers provided a counterpoint to the national scope of the key legislation, such as the Dower and Nugent Reports, which shaped the running of military landholdings, just as local libraries and museums complemented the resources of the National Archives and the British Library. I am grateful for the help and hospitality of those military personnel who were interested in this project and assisted my research efforts, opening up military archives and thus placing previously unseen documents at my disposal. I also experienced enough dead ends, fruitless requests and unreplied emails to confirm that when it wants to be, the military can still seem a closed institution to a civilian researcher, a good reason, in my view, to encourage future research that pursues the possibilities of opening access to military records and further engages MoD and the DE as research partners. The parameters of my research were set by the larger requirements of the project to which it belongs: to pursue an environmental history of the rise of environmental awareness within the military, and its consequences for the lands on which they train, and the people and wildlife that live on or near them. Geographical restraints contained the potentially daunting task of offering local foci with which to generate specific questions and

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research while maintaining a wider perspective of historical change and national impact. However, no restraints were placed on the expectations of what histories might be found on these military landscapes, as distant and varied as they are. The longstanding military presence on Salisbury Plain has left so many traces of multiple developments, from changes in weaponry to environmental protection, to public protests and public military displays, that it calls for a broadly encompassing historical perspective that embraces William Wordsworth’s impressions of the place in the 1790s and the detailed recent observations of the miniscule fairy shrimp by conservationists, that which has happened in between and that which may, if anything does, link the two. By contrast, a site like Sennybridge – less well known and documented – has been defined in recent history by a single momentous event: the arrival of the military and removal of longstanding non-military inhabitants. This event has informed all that has followed, from the adoption of environmentally aware training practices, to the restriction of access, and lately the encouragement of visitors. Chapter 5, ‘SENTA’, describes the arrival of the military during the Second World War and the reactions of a politicized opposition movement, and makes links between this difficult legacy and the adoption of pro-environmental practices, which, it argues, serve to redirect critical glances away from the controversial history of the military arrival towards more positive consequences of the military presence. It is hoped that this has not resulted in an uneven history, but rather produced the intended outcome, a history that makes room for the nuances of these landscapes and of the wildlife and the people they contain. I have followed Woodward’s lead in questioning khaki conservation, and considering ‘greenwash’ as a discourse in operation. My work acknowledges environmental historians who have critiqued damaging practices and presences, and applauds efforts to draw attention to environmentally damaging activities. Above all, I set out to fill the gap in scholarship of military lands in peacetime. It shifts the focus from the theatres of war to home territories, where the training of military forces takes place. In doing so, I have found that well-established assumptions about militaries and the environment, particularly narratives that stress the destructive effects on the natural world, are challenged by the day-to-day presence of the military in landscapes that are prized and recognized as environmentally important. It confirms that the military have been agents of change in the landscapes they occupy, but reveals that they possess the capacity to protect as well as destroy. In keeping out other forces of change in the landscape, such as agro-business and urban sprawl, the military presence plays an inadvertent

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and passive role in the protection of the countryside. But, this does not do justice to the proactive environmentalism that is in operation on many military training areas that actively works to secure their environmental health, and which this book argues, has had genuine and long-term benefits for large swathes of national territory. The greening of the MoD has become embedded in military land management, to the extent that computer software integrates conservation needs into training schedules, and troops are deployed on conservation projects and ‘species watch’ as part of their training.37 As Peter Coates, Principal Investigator on the Militarized Landscapes project, put it, ‘military establishments have added defence of nature to defence of nation’.38 By studying the landscapes affected by military greening, I push beyond discussion of overarching discourses to reach new ground concerning the environmental history of the British military, and the environmental affects of a military presence in the landscape. Although there is a gap in scholarship for an environmental history of military lands in Britain, John Childs has written a history of the DE.39 Taking a historical perspective (as opposed to Woodward’s geopolitical focus), Childs’ coverage extends back to the Greeks and Romans, providing the most comprehensive account of its kind to date. Though this is a detailed account of what land the military uses, how and where, he asks no real questions of military land use, and the environment is not a primary concern. While a useful source, it is necessary to look elsewhere for works that address the research questions discussed here. Some have looked at the environmental history of other non-militarized areas of the United Kingdom. But while works such as Smout’s and Clapp’s encourage an environmental perspective on British history, neither mentions the military lands that constitute 1 per cent of British territory.40 More useful are a number of works charting the rise of the conservation and environmental movements, which touch upon the development of some of the debates raised in relation to military lands, such as the establishment and role of national parks, and access rights.41 Even these, however, only mention military lands briefly, making the imperative for a historical study of military landscapes in Britain clear. The academic silence surrounding military landscapes is not echoed by the military itself. Indicative of the ‘greening’ process of the military is the publication of its own nature conservation magazine Sanctuary since 1976. Publicizing the conservation work done on military land by the military and partner conservation groups, Sanctuary constitutes an important source and will be analysed and discussed at length.42 Why the MoD devotes considerable money and effort to produce such a glossy wildlife magazine forms one of this project’s central research questions. The environmental

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outlook as presented by those who write for Sanctuary is, naturally, bright. However, it has found support in independent studies of military environments and has raised awareness of the military’s environmental role. Doxford’s and Hill’s assessment of land use for military training in the United Kingdom includes a conservation aspect alongside economic, technological and political considerations.43 While Cohn’s report of the US military’s conservation efforts, and Woinarski’s and Ash’s ecological survey of Australian habitats, both military and non-military, do not comment on the British situation, the common conclusions drawn suggest a rising acceptance in some quarters that military activity is no longer contradictory to wildlife protection.44 This book does not defend militaries from criticism, but neither does it take a stance against them. It proposes a dispassionate middle ground, where the subject of militarized landscapes and military-environmentalism receives the considered academic attention it deserves. It views military training areas as complex sites where multiple layers of history, land use and memory coexist, and demand inquiry. It argues against those that dismiss military activity as inherently destructive and calls for a more nuanced approach that is responsive to site-specific circumstances. Here, fairy shrimp, feather mosses and fungi offer new perspectives on familiar subjects.45 All inhabitants of militarized landscapes, they respond to machinery, artillery and troops in ways that often surprise, and in doing so, encourage fresh approaches to the understanding of military places, military practices and the military relationship with the non-military world in which they exist, both natural and human.

The military–civilian divide (and its bridges) The noise and activity of military training does not endear it to civilian residents. The roar of low-flying aircraft and pounding of exploding shells are rude punctuations to the relative peace of daily life for most, and generate unwanted attention and complaints against the military. The positioning of training areas in sparsely populated places like Dartmoor, Salisbury Plain and Sennybridge was not haphazard. The intentional isolation of military training areas in Britain was intended to minimize both disturbance to civilians, and interest in the training itself. Empty expanses of land provided not only the space required for moving tanks and firing shells, but acted as a physical disincentive for civilian visits and observations (and protests). The very same qualities of emptiness and the absence

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of development, urban encroachment and intensive agriculture that come with a sustained and significant human presence have contributed to the unintentional protection of the same sites as nature ‘reserves’, the military presence effectively keeping what appears, from an environmental perspective, other, more destructive forces, at bay. The routine explosions and troop movements seem not to affect wildlife and habitats in the ways we expect, with nature responding far more robustly than often accredited for (see Chapter 4), even flourishing in these, the most unexpected – and ostensibly least peaceful – of havens. The same qualities that marked out many training areas as suitable for military use – their space, open and empty landscapes, lack of use and population – have, over the course of the twentieth century, become increasingly valued as landscape qualities, as the limited land area of the British Isles has become more intensively built upon, farmed and transformed by the networks of modern life, transport, energy and industry all leaving their marks on the landscape. As Chapter 2 details, movements to encourage access and enjoyment of the countryside that grew in the early decades of the twentieth century were gratified by government legislation during and immediately after the Second World War, which presented the British countryside to the people as the prize they had been fighting for, and duly protected from foreign invasion. National parks formally protected the most prized landscapes for future generations, and along with the expansion of rights of way, opened up the nation’s most beautiful and inspirational landscapes for all to enjoy. The post-war recovery saw increasing leisure time and means with which to travel around the country for ordinary folk, and the network of youth hostels that accompanied the national parks and dotted the British Isles further encouraged all, and especially young, people to explore ‘natural’ Britain. However, the National Parks Commission were drawn to landscapes already familiar to the military, and for many of the same reasons. Sparse populations equalled minimal landscape alteration, and upland spaces like the Peak District, the Lake District, Dartmoor and the Brecon Beacons could ‘serve’ nearby urban populations, providing the greatest possible number of people with the chance to enjoy the countryside while simultaneously protecting these places from further encroachment. Some sites established for National Parks were already in use by the military, which would not relinquish such valuable training space. Thus an uneasy coexistence at Dartmoor, Castlemartin and Otterburn training areas and the surrounding national parks ensued, with the conflicting ideas and uses of the land explored in depth in the following chapters, in particular Chapter 2.

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The recognition by the new national parks that military training areas occupied some of the least altered and best preserved natural landscapes in Britain, recognized the protective role of the military in an indirect way. However, there was no direct reference to the role of the military in the countryside, nor any suggestion of any conservation capacity, with all reference to the military presence being notably absent from national parks authority literature. The realization that military training sites were alive with nature, rather than shelled to death, came instead from the observations of civilian groups and individuals interested in nature conservation and environmental work. By persistent requests to access military lands and collect valuable environmental data, such groups raised the military’s awareness of the ecological value of their own lands. Furthermore, statutory government conservation bodies such as the Nature Conservancy (established by Royal Charter in 1949, later to become the Nature Conservancy Council in 1971, and after 1991, split into the Countryside Commissions for England, Wales and Scotland and Natural England) were the first to speak in favour of the military presence in the landscape, against other preservationist and recreational organizations. Although training estates are commonly thought to be exclusive and closed sites, a long-running tradition of civilian–military cooperation has been found to have been in operation, and is closely linked to the emergence of military-environmentalism. While mindful of the limitations of general public access to military sites, it is important to credit the occasions when non-military entities contributed to the greening of the organization. Often focused on the health of specific habitats and the wildlife within them, rather than the wider issues, conservationists and researchers were able to look beyond commonly held assumptions of the military and their use of land and judge them in non-ideological fashion on the merits of the environmental work alone. Inquiries such as those held by the Nugent and Sharp committees (1971–73 and 1975–76) provided forums in which these arguments were first heard. As the MoD subsequently greened at the policy level (appointing a Conservation Officer, and implementing the recommendations of the Nugent Report), the foundation of conservation groups that reinforced military–civilian cooperation in environmental matters became an important part of the management of military landholdings, and these are studied in depth in Chapter 5, ‘Tyneham’. The tensions between nature conservation groups and other types of preservationist and recreational bodies have been played out on the contested site of Dartmoor, as documented in Chapter 2. The role of civilian experts in Sanctuary magazine

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and the propagation of the military-environmentalist discourse forms the focus of Chapter 3. The relationship between the military and civilians, be it antagonistic or cooperative, has shaped the protection and use of the landscapes under question, and is a continuing thread of commonality between all the sites covered here. At the places and times where it determined change – the steady protests of the Dartmoor Preservation Association, for example, or the coalition of formerly opposed groups in the Lulworth conservation group at Tyneham – the details and effects of the military–civilian relationship are teased out, to develop understanding of the evolution of military landscapes, and place the greening of the MoD as not an isolated process but one connected with the world around it. The role of civilians in helping shape military-environmentalism is surprising for sites that put so much effort into the boundaries that seclude them from the surrounding land. Other aspects of the military presence in the countryside have caught popular imagination and become the focus of movements to remove the military from certain sites, or oppose training full stop. These elements have largely shaped civilian perceptions of the military in the countryside as out-of-place, destructive and oppressive. The forcible eviction of people from military training areas during the Second World War accompanied by promises to return, which were never kept, ignited several impassioned movements to reinstate the land to its rightful (previous) inhabitants. Numerous arguments were employed against the military, that drew attention to the infringement of access rights, damage through high-impact training, the use of national parks as training areas, even the very need for a military establishment, in addition to the removal of people. Requisition of land for military training during the Second World War was framed by an argument of wartime sacrifice. Those relinquishing homes and livelihoods on the Epynt and at Tyneham and Imber were doing their bit, the War Office reassured them. The national defence priority was clear: at a time of war, the military need for land on which to train was paramount. However, as the geopolitical landscape shifted in the post-war settlement, operational requirements for training lands became less clear. Calls for the restitution of requisitioned lands and villages to former inhabitants grew to become protest movements that questioned the continuing need for extensive training estates. The advent of a new age of Cold War provided the military with a new prerogative to retain a varied training landscape. Fighting in Built-Up Areas (FIBUA) villages were constructed on SPTA and SENTA in the style of East German dörfer, vernacular architectural style belying

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the predicted possible battlefronts of a new world order. As international obligations changed, FIBUA have adopted the fascias of different cultures, appropriate to the conflict of the time. The FIBUA on SPTA currently recreates – down to the details of Pashto graffiti scrawled on the walls, washing hanging on lines across streets, and imported desert palms – an Afghani village. An entire population recruited from the Anglo-Afghani community in Birmingham is sometimes brought in by the MoD to add extra authenticity. As Britain’s role on the international diplomatic stage continued through the Cold War, its need for a well-trained army was ensured. When the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 signalled the end of the Cold War, the strategic reorganization of military priorities led to a contraction of UK defence expenditure. However, involvement in the Gulf War (August 1990–February 1991) revealed a new arena of conflict. The downsizing of the British military presence in Germany, and subsequent return of large numbers of troops to UK barracks, was matched by new commitments to active – and increasingly technological – warfare. An imperative for military training remained. To continue training, with more troops and less budget, the MoD maintained the use of nearly the entire UK DE through the end of the twentieth century. At the start of the twenty-first century, up to the present day, British military involvement in several conflicts (the second Gulf War, the Iraq War, Afghanistan) sees the present state, and near future, of the sites studied here as remaining military training landscapes.

Evictions and protests The evictions of people from military training areas must not be overlooked, not only out of respect for those moved from their homes, but for the ways in which the manner of evictions and the subsequent antimilitary movements they inspired shaped the history of the DE in the postwar period. Of the five sites studied, three contain villages or communities that have been evicted to make way for the military. Occurring in the midst of the Second World War, the evictions were presented as admirable sacrifices made by the communities for the benefit of the nation at war. As peace settled, calls by the former residents to return to their homes were unsuccessful, as the military retained the sites for training. Angry reactions, insensitive military responses and media attention established these places as contested sites in the national consciousness, and the names ‘Imber’, ‘Tyneham’ and ‘Mynydd Epynt’ continue to evoke recollections

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of the lost communities and impassioned campaigns for their return. The places themselves, used by the military for training troops in built-up environments (originally replicating the villages of northern France during the Second World War, then later German villages during the Cold War), and target practice for tanks and shells, became known as ‘ghost-villages’, as signs of daily use and civilian life faded, to be replaced by the detritus of military use, and strict restrictions on access. These ‘ghost villages’ – Tyneham in Dorset; the Sennybridge Training Area near Brecon, Wales; and Imber, in the heart of the Salisbury Plain Training Area – stand empty today after the local communities were ‘forcibly relocated’ by the Armed Forces during the Second World War. Despite ‘Churchill’s pledge’ of restitution to their communities after the conflict, the villages remain under military control, with restricted public access. The empty shells of houses and churches contrast starkly with the rich ecology of the sites, and alert us to the layers of histories and stories to be found there. Tim Cole dissects the layering of competing memories on one landscape (the Budapest Ghetto), suggesting that the historian’s concern with the temporal is important in situating a landscape study historically.46 ‘Environment is site and source, not excluding human histories but anchoring them firmly in place and time’ – Cole brought this approach to the ‘Militarized Landscapes’ project. In his role as co-investigator he has explored the ‘ghost villages’ and their location within military training areas. Initially exploring the absence of human inhabitants (the removed peoples of military landscapes), repeated site visits prompted Cole to consider the many presences in what are often considered to be ‘empty’ landscapes and ‘ghost villages’. He responds, in ‘Military presences, Civilian absences: Battling Nature at the Sennybridge Training Area, 1940–2008’, to military claims that military land-use has prevented more environmentally damaging practices. Working with Davis’s concepts of absence/presence in military zones, and Woodward’s notions of ‘khaki conservation’ and military ‘greenwash’, Cole compares claims and counterclaims to emerge with what he sees as two broad narratives in operation on the military landscape of the Epynt. The first emphasizes presence, and focuses on the direct environmental benefits of military land use and management. The second, ‘which emphasizes absence, is less concerned with what the military does, than with what others (farmers, foresters, residential developers) cannot, and do not, do in landscapes like the Epynt precisely because it has been occupied by the military’.47 Cole presents SENTA as a layered landscape, drawing out multiple uses and discourses – military, cultural, environmental – in operation at the

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one site. Cole remains wary of the military claims of the environmental benefits of training, pointing to frequent admissions of localized damage and compromises in conservation activity.48 However, he argues that such accountability and openness from the military regarding their use of the landscape points to a ‘less monolithic story of the military presence in the landscape as wholly environmentally positive’ than argued by Woodward, and that the discourses promoted by the military (at Epynt) are more complex, as befits the landscape there. For Cole, military landscapes are ‘hybrid’ landscapes, where interconnections between presence and absence of military and civilians, and the environment, refute the perception of such places as empty, destroyed or wild.49 As a colleague on the ‘Militarized Landscapes’ project, and companion on project visits to Epynt and the other four military training areas, Cole’s approach, in addition to his responses to the landscapes, have been influential to my own approaches to experiencing and researching military training areas. As a historian trained also as a geographer, Cole’s insistence on the importance of experiencing place has had a lasting influence on my own research. His interest in the displaced peoples of military lands also reinforced my intention to incorporate their histories into the environmental history of military training areas, and to view military lands as complex sites, layered with memory and activity. A broader literature of memory and landscapes of loss has also informed my research of military sites. The concept of layers of memory is discussed by Simon Schama in his genre-breaking Landscape and Memory.50 Examining the role of landscape in Western culture, Schama delves into collectively inherited landscape myths to reveal how they shape our perception of the land around us – and, just as importantly, how they shape us. For Schama, ‘landscape is a work of the mind. Its scenery is built up as much from strata of memory as from layers of rock’. 51 Peeling back the layers and years of history of, for example, the ancient forests of Eastern Europe, Schama demonstrates the interplay between environmental and cultural history.52 He ties the human bond to landscape with ideas of national identity, arguing that enduring landscape myths enable a particular landscape to be ‘mapped topographically, elaborated and enriched as a homeland’. 53 That a landscape is as much cultural as physical, and as much urban as rural, is a theme explored by Dolores Hayden in her study of Little Tokyo in Los Angeles as a landscape of loss and remembrance. 54 Looking at the experiences of the Japanese American community, their forced relocation to camps during the Second World War and ways of remembering their experiences, Hayden examines how a cultural landscape history can be

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read in the urban environment, in particular through memorials and exhibitions. She uses these to frame connections between places, people and their memories. By taking a community as her focus, Hayden looks at the connection between individual and community-based spatial histories and their role in the process of collective remembrance. 55 Like Schama and Cole, Hayden finds layers of history in a single landscape. Furthermore, she stresses the importance of ‘place attachment’, the transformation through the routines of daily life within a community from a ‘space’ to a ‘place’.56 Through this process, people ‘make connections to places that are critical to their well-being or distress . . . place attachment has been described as a psychological bonding process analogous to an infant’s attachment to parental figures.’57 Given the hard-fought battles by the communities of Mynydd Epynt, Tyneham and Imber to remain in, and later return to, their homes, Hayden’s insights encourage a sensitive approach to exploring the effects of militarization of these communities’ landscapes, given the depth of place attachment and trauma that forced relocation may have wrought. She also encourages the reading of the landscape and acts of memorialization by the removed as an appropriate way of accessing the history of such sites. My approach also employs memoirs and personal accounts of displacement and loss as sources for the contested military landscapes. 58 As Hayden suggests, however, equally important in my attempts to gain insight and understanding of disputed sites have been the places themselves. The eerie quiet of Imber, for example, reinforced the protests by those evicted against their subsequent total exclusion from the site, which lies at the heart of the United Kingdom’s largest military training area. Access rights to the village are only granted for one weekend per year, and although the shells of farm cottages remain, the village lives up to its reputation as a ‘ghost village’. To walk around it reinforces the divide between what it once was (a living community) and what it has become (dead, in the normal definitions of a village, but a space still frequented and used by troops who leave their traces) (see Chapter 4). It helps make the connections between the memories of former inhabitants, and the claims the military has made of the site in its residency. The memorable experience of walking through the abandoned settlements found on military landscapes – Imber, Tyneham, Sennybridge – has affected the direction of my research. Just as it is impossible to erase the human presence in the landscape, it is wrong to ignore it as a historian. The villages may be empty of people, but not of the detritus that once

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made daily life – the fireplaces, drainage systems, garden gates and church bells. The bare shells of former homes register a presence in the landscape, but simultaneously mark an absence. The stories of how communities were physically removed from the land have been told, by the evictees, campaigners on their behalf and journalists, and memories of the sites live on strong in the minds of former occupants and visitors.59 At some of the sites, these stories are, in places, particularly visible and direct. Tyneham, the ‘ghost village’ that lies within the Lulworth Range on the Dorset coast, after being the focus of a protest to remove the military that requisitioned it, became a showcase for military heritage. Here, the stories of former inhabitants have been resurrected for public viewing via information boards displayed in the ruins of the village. Although the surrounding landscape is still used for tank training, the military treat Tyneham village as the tourist attraction it has become, complete with guided walks, public toilets and a simulation of the village school room, chalk fresh on the board. The fate of Tyneham village was investigated by Patrick Wright in his book The Village that Died for England, the success of which has, in a somewhat ironic twist, contributed to the village’s ongoing status as a heritage attraction. The Village that Died continued themes that Wright had explored in On Living in an Old Country: The National Past in Contemporary Britain (1985), which viewed the rise of the heritage industry as politically powerful, used to reinforce social hierarchies and fundamentally opposed to the welfare state. The Village that Died placed what Wright saw as the struggle between ‘organic English tradition raised up against the reforming welfare State’, in a picturesque corner of the country, a dead village that nonetheless ‘lurked in the national imagination [as] a symbol of a vanished England’.60 My exploration of Tyneham was influenced, inescapably, by Wright’s work. It is a rich history, starting at post-war Tyneham but, like Schama, finding overlapping layers of history that took Wright back to the late eighteenth century to explain the strength of the Dorset pastoral narrative. For Wright, Tyneham is a historic landscape, in which wider changes were distilled amongst local idiosyncrasies. An array of protagonists attempted to fulfil their visions of an English rural idyll upon a landscape soon to be deployed in the name of national defence. Wright discusses at length the campaigns against the military at Tyneham, and charts its transformation into a site of heritage and conservation. In an interview, Wright describes heritage as ‘a symbolic function

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that becomes a way of condemning the present’.61 He doesn’t condemn the military development of the site, but does conclude that: Tyneham has lost much of its post-war charisma. The ‘methods used to convert it into a tourist attraction have demythologized the place’, reducing it to ‘an evocative visual aid’ in which can be found ‘propagandist’ statements of the military’s benevolent custody.62 The military use of Tyneham is integral to The Village that Died , framing events before and since its requisition, but it is not a work about the military per se, military-environmentalism beyond Tyneham, nor other military landscapes. Wright’s story of Tyneham is concerned with ‘opposed expressions of patriotism, the fear and appreciation of military power, the tensions between traditional ideas of English life and the transformations brought about by the modernizing state.’63 Tyneham the place is, to paraphrase Stroud, the axis around which these relationships of politics, ideas and power are hinged. I have carefully avoided retreading the ground covered by Wright, but have taken his key concept to heart – that inaccessible and forgotten corners of the British Isles are repositories of people, places and events that reflect local history but also wider historical change. Wright starts with a symbolic landscape, and, from there, finds the human stories that gave the place its resonance. An exploration of military landscapes cannot – indeed, must not – overlook such stories, which remain written in the landscape long after their protagonists have moved on. Other histories of the military use of land have no time for civilians who may have also inhabited it, or the memories it holds; literature dealing with memory, loss and the movement of peoples have neglected to include the military landscapes of Britain as the settings for their histories. This history of the DE will not follow suit. I see the absence and presence of humans in the landscape as a pivotal research area. I will return to it at every site, asking how and why communities were removed, and how and why people are kept out to this day. How have the communities made their mark on the landscape and the way it is used? How have the military treated the sites? As memorials to sacrifices made for the sake of national defence? Or as assets to the training habitat portfolio? I explore the ways in which loss has been marked upon the landscape, and how memory is expressed on it. How the military and public respond to these issues is ground for further reflection on the use of military land. My interest in the eviction of human populations from the landscape does not detract from the central environmental emphasis of this study.

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Rather, it accentuates it, bringing to the fore questions of whether wildlife conservation and environmentalism have become such central discourses to the management of military land that they have, in fact, overridden responsibilities to heritage and human inhabitants, past and present. Imber stands empty and inaccessible to the public, while significant time and resources are devoted to reintroducing species like the Great Bustard back onto the Plain. By asking why this is, multiple issues – the management of land by the military, public access, wider political discourses such as the justification of military presence on the land – will be investigated and brought together with a focus on the sites in question. Whether or not there is enough room for civilian communities, training soldiers and precious wildlife in a single shared, hybrid landscape, there is certainly room for consideration of all these in this study. The strange experience of standing among the derelict buildings on the military sites is a further reminder that to visit, explore and experience those discussed in this project is a crucial part of researching their history. This follows Schama’s enthusiasm for using the ‘archive of the feet’ to gain a ‘sense of place’,64 an understanding that a site, its environment and its history, are more ably understood with an intuitive approach. In terms of environmental history, engagement with the sites prevents an over-reliance on ‘theoretical frameworks . . . [which] include features hard to square with the rhythms and patterns of nature’.65 Visits to the five military sites covered here form a continuous attempt to interact with the sites, their changeability through seasons and different levels of military usage, revealing new angles for research. As this history argues, landscapes are, however, much more than ‘sites’. Sverker Sörlin argues that they are the result of ‘processes of articulation of territory’, a concept especially relevant to militarized landscapes with their clearly demarcated boundaries, access restrictions and safety procedures.66 Environmental history serves as the tool with which we can tell the histories of such sites. These sites, in turn, provide places where we can reply to Stroud’s caution that ‘topic is not enough. A work is not environmental history merely because it is concerned with something green. Rather, we need to remain focused on environment as subject and environment as source.’67 The environments of the five military training areas, how they have been at times protected, used, how they have developed with and without human and military intervention, and how they have generated and absorbed change, discourse, narrative and history, remain throughout the central concern and frame of reference for this environmental history of the UK DE.

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The five sites chosen for study all lie in the southwest of England and Wales. They are but five of many military sites in the region, and across the nation as a whole. Consideration was given as to the benefits – and potential pitfalls – of conducting a site-based history, and the reasoning behind it. All five sites are relatively large (Salisbury Plain the largest training area in the United Kingdom, Dartmoor the second and SENTA the third), making them a significant presence in the countryside. To enable regular site visits, a contained geographical area – accessible from the University of Bristol – was decided upon. Yet the size and the longevity of use by the military of training areas such as Salisbury Plain and Dartmoor would have necessitated their inclusion in any comprehensive study. Furthermore, issues that emerged in initial investigations – the problems of access, evictions and protests and an emerging environmental narrative – were also visible across the sites. The village of Tyneham, in the Lulworth training area in Dorset, invited parallels with Imber on Salisbury Plain and the former community of Mynydd Epynt at SENTA. Dartmoor National Park surrounds Dartmoor Training Area (DTA), as Pembrokeshire National Park encloses Castlemartin. Themes emerged to draw a network of interlinking issues that suggest not only strong connections between the five sites but also that the changes taking place at these sites during the twentieth century was such that an environmental history of the defence estates, and the greening of the military, could be written through a site-based study of these five places. The appeal of a site-based approach was the potential to access the military, an organization of national scale (and international relevance), via the very places in which it conducts its activities. It was hoped that a localized focus would bring out individual, site-specific issues, without sacrificing the wider perspective of the military and its environmental development. Historians have been debating for some time over the use of geographical scales such as ‘nation’ which, in our increasingly globalized society, hold less and less meaning.68 For a historian researching aspects of a national organization, it was a necessary consideration. It has been particularly relevant for environmental historians, for whom traditional categories are often transgressed by the fact that ‘nature’ observes no such boundaries. Some historians see this as a prompt for the writing of histories on a global scale, with categories such as ‘atmosphere’, ‘hydrosphere’ and ‘biosphere’ replacing more conventional divisions of space and time.69 In ‘Place: An Argument for Bioregional History’, Dan Flores tackles issues of scale head-on, arguing that political boundaries are meaningless in understanding nature. The diversity of ecologies and human cultures across time and

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space demand a different, more dynamic scale, and Flores (following on from anthropologists and geographers) finds it in bioregions. Flores is quite specific, suggesting we adopt a precise spatial adaptation of Fernand Braudel’s longue durée: We ought to aim for the ‘big view’ not so much though wide geographic generalizations in shallow time, but through analyzing deep time in a single place . . . bioregional histories, then, should properly commence with geology and landform, then take up climate history.70 Flores’s main point, that nature rather than politics should define a place to be studied, has had an important influence on the pursuit of environmental history and has given me pause for thought over the selection of the military sites studied here. Although the argument that ‘nation’ as a category is increasingly arbitrary and irrelevant does not apply so readily to island Britain, the consideration of scale by environmental historians encourages, in my mind, if not a global environmental history then certainly a site-based one. By literally grounding research in the landscapes and environments that are the subjects of study you are prevented from making untenable generalizations and assumptions. While the sites chosen as military landscapes have been defined politically as ‘military’ sites, they were also chosen by the military due to their topographical features. Salisbury Plain is one of the last remaining open chalk grasslands in Britain, the low vegetation and open spaces that characterize it rendered it suitable for the training of artillery and heavy machinery. The changeable weather conditions and variety of cover on Dartmoor determined its use for the training of troops in ground warfare. In many respects, it was the geography of these sites and the emptiness of these places that defined them before the military did. But while global and local perspectives are fashionable – and, more importantly, useful – there is still a place for the national perspective. My work focuses on the MoD, which is essentially a national entity, existing to defend a nation, governed on a national scale. Regionality and locality are important factors in the identities of the sites, but it is also the contrast between local concerns and interests and national policy that has created some of the most contentious issues I am investigating. I use the national as a contrast to the local, in particular with an assessment of key developments in national policy and politics with regard to military landscapes between 1945 and the present, in order to establish a context from which to explore individual sites.

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The first case study is DTA. Located on 12,006 hectares of unenclosed moorland in Devon, the site is used for dry tactical training and live firing. Dartmoor has the longest military presence of the five sites, with training initiated during the Napoleonic Wars and continuing through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The lack of shelter, difficult terrain and notoriously harsh weather of the moor was thought then, as now, ideal for testing the mettle of troops and hardening them to life on campaign. Dartmoor is the primary training ground of the Royal Marines, and is strategically close to several Royal Navy and Royal Air Force bases including the naval base at Devonport, HMS Raleigh (the navy’s main shore training base) at Torpoint, the naval college at Dartmouth, and air stations at Culdrose and Yelverton. DTA was incorporated into Dartmoor National Park when it was established in 1951, an event that was to have a lasting impact for military and civilians wishing to use this highly valued, and now formally protected, expanse of land. Chapter 2 sets the designation of national park status at Dartmoor in its post-war context, and examines the struggles between the military desire to train, the national park authority’s wish to protect and the public’s wish to enjoy this upland landscape. It introduces the Defence Lands Committee (also known as the Nugent Committee, after its chairman Lord Nugent of Guildford), called on by the government from 1971 to 1973 to assess the state of UK Defence land holdings, and make recommendations for their future. The Committee’s report, and its recommendations to introduce organized and integrated environmental practices across the DE, was a pivotal point in the greening of the MoD. It also looks at access, an issue that continues to generate controversy at military sites as recreation bodies press for greater use of landscapes such as DTA, which are increasingly rare in their lack of development, and continually compelling for all number of enthusiasts, from rock-climbers to wild swimmers. Access as a theme is further explored in Chapter 3, which focuses on Castlemartin. Like Dartmoor, Castlemartin Training Area (the largest single part of DTE: Pembrokeshire) lies within a national park. The 2,390 hectares of the training area, perched on the cliff tops on a promontory of land to the southwest of Pembroke Dock, form the only break in the national park’s coastal access. However, the MoD’s website claims that ‘the use of Castlemartin as a training area has preserved a spectacular coastal landscape’.71 This points to the close relationship between access (or rather, lack of it) and military-environmentalism, that is explored in this chapter, as well as Chapters 2 and 5. I suggest that from 1945 until the publication of the Nugent Report in 1973, lack of access resulted in the proliferation of

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species and flourishing habitats, occasional troop movements and artillery firing seemingly not as damaging as a sustained human presence on the landscape and its flora and fauna. But, post-1973, as military-environmentalism took off, the environmental health of training areas was used by the military as further reason to restrict public access on grounds of conservation, as well as public safety. Castlemartin has been the site of publicized spats between recreational groups (rock climbers and surfers) who demand a right to access the area, and the military who wish to keep them out. Some civilian groups with different interests have been welcomed, however. Conservationists and wildlife experts have cooperated with the military, conducting wildlife studies and reports that have contributed not only to the internal site dossiers that detail the topography, ecologies and points of environmental and archaeological interest for each training area but also to Sanctuary magazine. The role of Sanctuary in military-environmentalism, as the public presentation of conservation on military lands, is investigated, with Castlemartin as the case study. SPTA is home of the DE environment team, and the United Kingdom’s largest training area. SPTA measures 25 miles by 10 miles, and covers 38,000 hectares – about one-ninth of the county of Wiltshire, in which it sits. Like DTA, the military presence on SPTA predates the Second World War, with land first purchased in 1897. The training area includes habitats and archaeological remains that are prized outside the military boundaries. The archaeological landscape holds some 2,300 sites dating back to 4,000 BC, with dense concentrations of ancient long and round barrows. The ecological landscape is equally significant, containing the largest area of chalk grassland in northwest Europe, and 40 per cent of the remaining such habitat in the United Kingdom, that has been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and Special Area of Conservation (SAC).72 Where Chapter 3 suggests how military-environmentalism is transferred from on-site groundwork to public discourse via Sanctuary, Chapter 4 looks at the development of military-environmentalism at the site itself. It takes as an example the fairy shrimp, surprising icon of military-environmentalism on the Plain, and charts its rise from field surveys to press releases. It highlights the use of iconic species as figureheads for military-environmentalism, but also questions the extent to which other histories of the site have been ‘greenwashed’, notably those of the ghost village of Imber and its former inhabitants. While charting the rise of military-environmentalism at SPTA, I suggest that, at this site, a military-environmentalist discourse has been privileged above the more difficult human histories that challenge the military presence.

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The removal of people from a place requisitioned for military use also occurred at Tyneham, a village in Dorset that now lies within Lulworth Range. Land was first purchased at Lulworth in 1917, but the range was added to considerably with the requisition of the village and surrounding lands in 1943, to provide a wartime training area simulating the villages of northern France. At 3,035 hectares Lulworth range is not a very large training ground, but it is one of the better-known military training areas due in part to the vocal and sustained anti-military protest movement that emerged in response to the evictions. It gained further fame when Patrick Wright used Tyneham as the setting for his book The Village that Died for England: The Strange Story of Tyneham , the village and its environs serving as a crucible for all manner of politics, notions of Englishness and nationalism, and rural idyll.73 Rather than retread ground Wright has so eruditely discussed at length, I choose to focus in Chapter 5 on how conservation and heritage concerns have been used by both the military and its opponents to defend or decry the military presence, and how dismissals of the site as ‘dead’ and ‘destroyed’ – a ‘ghost village’ – relate to its celebration as an environmental haven. Having looked in detail at Sanctuary and site dossiers, Chapter 5 provides an opportunity to study the role of conservation groups in the greening of the MoD. SENTA is the fi fth site. At 12,000 hectares of MoD freehold land, and 2,600 hectares leased from Forest Enterprise, it is the third largest of the UK training areas. It lies mainly on Mynydd Epynt, a high plateau of Welsh upland to the north of the Brecon Beacons that, until 1940, sustained a dispersed but close-knit community of Welsh-speaking hill farmers. The history of SENTA (also referred to as the Epynt) invites parallels with similarly requisitioned sites, and became the focus of anti-military protest as did Imber and Tyneham. But it retained a unique Welsh identity that drove the protest against the evictions, making the history of the arriving military necessarily a Welsh story that draws upon aspects of Welsh nationalism, mobilized in defence of the community against the English ‘incomers’. Epynt remains a site unique in other respects, too. Here, military- environmentalism was pursued with enthusiasm by several commandants, resulting in numerous conservation initiatives and a military view of the site in which its environmental importance is embedded. Given the controversy over the arrival of the military, Chapter 6 returns to notions of greenwash to ask whether environmental success stories have been used to make the military presence more palatable. It explores the concept of ‘re-wilding’ of the site by the military, and charts attempts to

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open up public access by the introduction of the Epynt Way, a walkway and bridle path circumnavigating the training area. I introduce each site individually, but their treatment does not remain separate. SPTA, SENTA, Castlemartin Training Area, Lulworth training estate and DTA collectively build a picture of the development of environmental sensibilities within the military from the Second World War to the present. This puts the greening of the MoD in the context of wider social changes such as the post-war welfare state, the establishment of national parks, public recreation, a growing popular environmentalism and popular activism and anti-military protest. Government legislation and policy concerning military landholdings is explored at length, with a view to ascertaining the extent to which policy change altered attitudes and actions on the ground. At each training ground, particular issues prescient to the site are teased out and used to explore further the meanings of military-environmentalism and the shifting networks between the military, the environments it occupies and utilizes, the inhabitants of those environments and civilians. In this way, sites rich in local history, cultural meaning and natural biodiversity are kept to the fore, imparting a deep and satisfying sense of place to an environmental history of the greening of the DE since 1945.

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Chapter 2

Dartmoor

My Dear Holmes, – My previous letters and telegrams have kept you pretty well up-to-date as to all that has occurred in this most God-forsaken corner of the world. The longer one stays here the more does the spirit of the moor sink into one’s soul, its vastness, and also its grim charm. (Dr Watson, Baskerville Hall, Dartmoor, October 13) 1

Defending Dartmoor: Military training in a national park Chapter 2 introduces the first of the five military sites. Dartmoor is a high plateau of moorland in Devon, south west England. Dartmoor National Park extends over 95,311 hectares of the moor. Of this, 12,006 hectares are used by the Armed Forces for training purposes, which is about 12.5 per cent of the total national park area and 25 per cent of Dartmoor’s open country.2 DTA shares with the Epynt the testing weather conditions common to upland areas, with high winds often rampaging over open stretches of moor and rains lashing boggy ground. Like SPTA, its open grassland is dotted with remains of prehistoric settlements, burial mounds and stone formations. As with Castlemartin, DTA lies within a national park. Not only do these shared landscape features and training conditions connect Dartmoor to the other military sites, but its history as a training area and as a site of military ‘greening’ establishes patterns of change that, when added to the other sites, become familiar. The transformation from inadvertent landscape conservation to the inclusion of active environmentalism as a training priority and landholding concern was effected here, as elsewhere. The impact of the Nugent report in coalescing previously unconnected and uncoordinated military environmental activities, likewise, was felt on the ground at Dartmoor. Chapter 2 introduces these events and examines their impact on the site. The Nugent Committee, whose inquiry and recommendations were to have a formative and lasting impact on military-environmentalism, and the other four training areas, is presented here in detail.

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However, despite its common connections with other military training areas, Dartmoor retains a strong and distinctive identity, rooted in its landscape. Native Dartmoor ponies roam the common land. Huge granite boulders, piled on top of each other at the highest points of the moor form the ‘Tors’, which dot the moorlands of the south-western peninsula. Their balance, seemingly precarious, has stood firm for thousands of years. Their silhouettes crown a view of the moor from many angles, lending the landscape a singular quality. And, as a military site, Dartmoor felt the effects of policy – governmental, military and national parks – to a degree that sets it apart from other sites in this respect, too. This chapter focuses on public policies affecting military training and the relationship between the military and its training environments. While the Nugent Report marks the policy change that binds all five sites, the Nugent Committee registered Dartmoor’s exceptionality, receiving more written evidence for this site than for any other one it reviewed.3 The issues here were deemed worthy of further examination, and in 1975 Lady Sharp headed an inquiry into the continued use of Dartmoor for military training. Her subsequent report attempted to reconcile conflicting interests at the site, stemming largely from the location of training entirely within a national park. The formation and stated purposes of the national parks were themselves the product of government policy conceived in the run-up to the Second World War and implemented in the post-war recovery. The development of national park ideals, the introduction of conservation and recreation aspects in government policy and its failure, at this formative stage, to adequately address the incorporation of military training in national parks, provides the context in which widespread opposition to military training developed and to which military-environmentalism responded. As such, these formative national park policies are given space alongside military reports, national park reports and government inquiries, to analyse the ways in which policy shaped military training in Dartmoor, and the ‘greening’ of the MOD across the UK DE.4 Chapter 2 commences such themes that are developed throughout the book. In particular, it establishes the propensity of the military to train in environmentally precious and nationally protected landscapes, like Castlemartin (also in a national park) and Tyneham (on the UNESCO-protected Jurassic Coast). Furthermore, it raises the issue of access as a formative force in the shaping of military-environmentalism, and military landscapes. External pressures to increase public access to military training areas, and the military defence of their right to train uninterrupted, have conflicted at all five sites; at Dartmoor especially, the sustained intent of civilians to experience

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the moorland landscape has impacted on the history of military training at the site. There has been a military presence on Dartmoor since the early 1800s. Volunteer soldiers drafted for the campaigns against Napoleon Bonaparte and the War of 1812 against the United States of America were trained on the moor.5 Soldiers guarded prisoners of war held at Dartmoor prison, built between 1806 and 1809. The prison still holds a reputation as escapeproof, its isolation in the midst of the moor as great a barrier to escape as its thick granite walls. A training camp was established in 1853 between Hay Tor and Saddle Tor to accommodate troops who were to embark for the Crimean War (1854–86). Artillery training began on Dartmoor in 1875, on the Duchy of Cornwall’s land south of Okehampton, followed 20 years later by a permanent camp. The extent of the military use of the moor fluctuated according to involvement in conflict (during the Second World War, for example, nearly all of Dartmoor’s open country was used intensively for tactical training6) but the moor as a suitable site for training was well established by 1945. Arrangements for land use were made with individual landowners, including the Duchy of Cornwall, with recompense for use of Common lands given to grazers. The designation of Dartmoor National Park in 1951 altered the training landscape, however. Land rights remained with private landholders or under common rights, and pre- existing land usages were permitted to continue, having contributed to the creation of the existing landscape. From this point onwards, however, the meaning, significance and purpose of Dartmoor as a landscape was reconfigured in new terms and secured in legislation that, for the first time, gave weight to the landscape quality and natural beauty of the area. The reconfiguration of Dartmoor as primarily a protected natural landscape was to have lasting consequences for military training. National parks were decreed by the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act of 1949, as areas protected by law, with two purposes: for the preservation and enhancement of natural beauty in England and Wales; and, for encouraging the provision or improvement, for persons resorting to national parks, of facilities for the enjoyment thereof, and for the enjoyment of the opportunities for open air recreation and the study of nature.7 The Act sealed in law the recommendations made in 1945 by John Dower in his Report on National Parks in England and Wales, to set aside areas of

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the English and Welsh countryside for landscape preservation, nature conservation and recreational use.8 Both followed the 1942 Report of the Committee on Land Utilisation in Rural Areas (Scott Report) that included national parks provisions in its plans for the future, and joined the Town and Country Planning Act (1947) as policies addressing issues of development, land use and prosperity in the countryside.9 This outburst of policymaking marks the post-war years as pivotal not only in establishing national parks and other protected landscapes in Britain but also the politics, language and discourses with which they were discussed and governed. Collectively, these land use policies marked the post-war culmination of a movement to protect the British countryside that had started decades ago. A movement calling for general rights of access to uncultivated mountains and moorlands can be traced back to 1884, when the first legislative attempt was made by James (later Lord) Bryce who introduced to the House of Commons the Access to Mountains Bill.10 It was dropped and never debated, but was followed by the Mountains, Rivers and Pathways (Wales) Bill introduced by Thomas Ellis, also dropped after short debate. Further attempts to pass the bill were made in 1908 and 1927 by Sir Charles Trevelyan. Meanwhile, inspiration for National Parks had come from overseas, most notably from North America. In 1925, Lord Bedisloe, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture, made a private visit to Jasper and Banff national parks in Canada, and Yellowstone, United States of America and reported his experience to the Prime Minister in glowing terms.11 Shortly after, the Council for the Protection of Rural England (est. 1926) submitted a memorandum to the Prime Minister calling for national parks in Britain. Preservationist societies such as the National Trust took up the cause, as did numerous individuals who supported greater opportunities for outdoor recreation. In 1930 the Youth Hostels Association was formed, followed in 1935 by the Rambler’s Association, representative of an emergent ‘landscape culture of mass rally and action’ that, in the quest for freedom to roam, came up against private property.12 The best known example of rambler militancy came at Kinder Scout in April 1932, where the first Mass Trespass responded to denied access with mass mobilization of politicized walkers.13 Such political walking ‘troubled preservationists and “respectable” rambling leaders’, but indicates a strong public will to access, experience and, for some, reclaim for the people the best of the British countryside.14 The recession of the early 1930s delayed progress on the matter, but in 1939 – 55 years after its introduction by Bryce – the Parliament passed the Access to Mountains Bill. It was the first piece of

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government legislation dealing specifically with access to open county and furthering outdoor recreation. Although never implemented due to the outbreak of war, it nonetheless set a valuable precedent for those concerned with the countryside, and raised the profile of recreation and conservation as future land usages. The interruption of war to the national parks movement altered the political and physical landscapes covered by the debate. The Armed Forces requisitioned extensive new spaces for training and weapons testing (Imber, Tyneham and the Epynt among them), extending the military presence in the countryside.15 The intensification of agriculture, and the need for grains and staples such as potatoes, meant that despite the decline in land mass due to requisition, arable acreage increased substantially from 8.9 million to 14.5 million acres as farmers met the needs of a wartime population. The ‘Plough-up Campaign’, as it became popularly known, ‘was perhaps the most visible effect of the war upon the rural landscape’, as land that had lain under grass for generations was turned to crops.16 The war effort caused the reassessment of the potential productivity of other previously uncultivated land areas too, as gardens, public parks, college quadrangles and village greens were given over to food production. While the immediate needs of the war focused efforts and attentions to matters of security and food provision, the national parks campaign had not been forgotten. Furthermore, the war and subsequent recovery provided the terms of reference needed to push through national parks legislation after years of delay. A 1943 British Ecological Society Report on Nature Conservation and Nature Reserves asked the pertinent question: ‘What is there left to preserve?’ The ‘plough-up’ and militarization of the countryside during the war years followed an unprecedented period of rapid urban development in the interwar period in which an additional 2 per cent of England was built on, and in which ‘more land changed hands than at any other time since the Dissolution of the Monasteries’.17 While urban spread and intensified agriculture were changing the countryside, images of idyllic rural England had been exploited during the war to boost civilian morale and bolster troops (Figure 2.1).18 In the wake of this saturation of rural imagery and its placement at the heart of the British collective identity, popular feeling was behind a move to protect areas for public enjoyment. In his 1945 Report on National Parks in England and Wales, which set out where national parks should be and how they should be run, John Dower was explicit in his insistence that such a

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Figure 2.1 ‘Your Britain – fight for it now’, Second World War poster. Photo: Frank Newbould (1942).

move should be to the benefit of any and all who wish to enjoy them. It was ‘a requirement’ of his definition of a national park that they: should be in a true and full sense national , if they are to be worthy of their name and purpose . . . that their holiday and recreational use should be for people – and especially young people – of every class and kind and from every part of the country, indeed of the world.19 Dower’s definition places the provision of national parks as not simply an act of environmental protection, nor even as a deserving reward for the British people after the hardships of war. It positions them within the postwar formation of the Welfare State, in which the right to a healthy existence was a state responsibility. National parks, for Dower, were: not for any privileged or otherwise restricted section of the population but for all who care to refresh their minds and spirits and to exercise their bodies in a peaceful setting of natural beauty. Few national purposes are more vital or more rich in promise of health and happiness than the provision, first, of general and generous opportunities for holidays (by the ‘holidays with pay’ system and otherwise) and, second, of large, open and beautiful tracts of land of country in which holidays can be freely and inexpensively enjoyed.20 More than a reflection of general political sympathies towards the welfare system, Dower saw the national parks scheme as instrumental in

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complementing other social policies designed to improve quality of life. They were to perform a specific and important function of improving the well-being of the people, in addition to preserving landscapes that belonged to the nation. In his report, Dower drew on a speech by G. M. Trevelyan to the Annual Conference of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) in 1937, in which he said: it is not a question of physical exercise only; it is also a question of spiritual exercise and enjoyment. It is a question of spiritual values. Without vision the people perish, and without sight of the beauty of nature the spiritual power of the British people will be atrophied. Dower saw the national parks as sites on which the full potentialities of a successful democratic state could be expressed. Their designation could act to preserve not only the physical landscapes prized most by the nation, but would secure spaces in which the physical, and spiritual, needs of the post-war people could be met. With this rounded vision of the functions of national parks in mind, Dower went on to argue that: ‘if National parks are provided for the nation they should clearly [be provided] by the nation. Their distinct cost should be met from national funds.’ Spiritual, physical and aesthetic values notwithstanding, in the post-war reconstruction the economic means of implementing policy (and recovery) was imperative. While the high ideals of the national parks movement, articulated by Dower and Trevelyan among others, spoke to many of the soundness of the scheme, they were tempered by the challenging economic conditions of the time. As well as protecting areas for preservation and public enjoyment, the overriding discourse addressing the countryside at this time focused on how the needs of the expanding population – and its continuing need for food, housing and energy – could be met. The Scott Report had foreseen the potential difficulties of resolving the aims of the National Parks with encouraging progress in rural areas. Published in 1942, it too spoke at some length of the importance landscape played in English identity and spirit, drawing on H. G. Wells and Trevelyan.21 It proclaims that ‘it is this countryside which we hope our children . . . will enjoy and which it is our duty to preserve for them . . . But we do not want a countryside which behind smiling faces hides human poverty and misery.’22 While in passing the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act in 1949 the government enacted a policy to protect the countryside and provide open spaces for conservation and recreation,

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it ran alongside the pertinent need to support agriculture, forestry and other industries that could sustain a healthy rural economy and future. The roots of the conflicts between national parks and military training are to be found here, at the policymaking stage, where pre-existing land uses and future needs were incompletely aligned with the stated purposes of national parks. The Dower Report acknowledged the pre-existence of military training at Dartmoor and other proposed national parks sites (Pembrokeshire, Northumberland). The report included ‘military occupation, especially in permanent artillery, tank and bombing ranges’ alongside other ‘misuses and disfigurements that threaten the integrity of national park areas’, among them quarrying and mining, hydroelectric installations, electricity pylons, large-scale afforestation and artificial reservoirs.23 Dower’s position was clear. It was not a question of prohibiting such uses of land ‘anywhere and everywhere’, he contended, but: it matters enormously where and how. In national park areas the less of them the better . . . If continuance of uses and works already established must usually be accepted, any new exploitation . . . should be permitted only on clear proof that it is required in the national interest and that no satisfactory alternative site, not in a national park area, can be found.24 Such cases, he stated optimistically, ‘should be rare’. In reality, the demands for potentially ‘disfiguring’ land use on or near national parks were many, and not limited to the military. At Milford Haven, planning approvals were given for an oil discharge installation, just within Pembrokeshire National Park, and an oil refinery to the north, two-thirds of which would lie within the park boundaries, in the national interest of energy production and job provision.25 Other developments alien to the original national park ideals – a nuclear power station in Snowdonia, and a Ballistic Early Warning Missile Station in the North York Moors – were approved by the government.26 ‘Exploitation’ of sites such as Dartmoor during the war years by the military for training purposes had been uncontroversially approved, given the exceptional wartime circumstances. However, rather than a wholesale reduction of training areas in peacetime, the revival of the Territorial Services in late 1946 and the descent into an era of Cold War in the late 1940s upheld an argument for retaining large training areas. Dartmoor, its open spaces and, in particular, its proximity to the naval port of Plymouth, was viewed by the military as essential for the training of infantry, especially Marines. A public inquiry in 1947 cut the size of training areas to

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32,800 acres, less than half what had been in use at the end of the war.27 However, another inquiry in 1950 added a further 800 acres at Roborough Down and 4,500 acres on Ringmoor Down to the training areas. By 1952, the Armed Forces had secured permission to train on Dartmoor on an area that remained little changed until the Sharp Inquiry.28 Only the year before, 1951, it had been officially designated as a national park, by an Act from which the words ‘military training’ were completely, and conspicuously, absent.29 The Scott and Dower reports had acknowledged multiple land uses at sites set aside for protection, but had not been able to introduce ideas for how national park policy should proceed if these alternative uses remained. The military had been noted as a ‘damaging’ presence, but the same postwar context that had birthed the national parks maintained a need for continued military training. Having reached an impasse, the national parks legislation chose to avoid the difficulties of the issue completely by failing to acknowledge a military presence on national park land at Dartmoor. The words ‘military’, ‘training’, ‘defence’ and ‘war’ are absent from the 1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside (NPAC) Act, and with them any discussion – let alone resolution – of the conflict of interests training on park land presented. Not all other land uses were so overlooked. The Act decreed that it was ‘the duty of the [Nature] Conservancy and local authorities in the exercise of their functions under the Act to have regard to the needs of agriculture and forestry.’30 It is important to note here that although the National Park Act protected large areas by law, the National Park Commission (the governing body of the parks) did not own the land it oversaw, unlike its counterpart in the United States of America. Existing landowners were expected to respect the new regulations in place to preserve the character and beauty of the landscape, but the National Parks Commission was not in a position to evict existing landowners or discontinue existing land uses (which had often contributed to the landscape qualities they were hoping to protect). The military held leasing arrangements with a number of private landowners on Dartmoor, the largest being the Duchy of Cornwall. The designation of national park status was not, in itself, able to override these leases. The inclusion of forestry and agriculture as land uses of nature reserves and national parks would be an ongoing feature of national park areas, and meant that their governing bodies were charged with protecting their interests too. By not including the military, the park authorities were not bound by the Act to have due care for their interests, but nor was it able to dictate training practises. The Act separated military training and the

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running of the national parks, leaving a policy void that struggled to reconcile differences, and a few reference points for those unconvinced by the need for training within a national park. In 1957 the Dartmoor National Park Committee (DNPC), the park’s governing body, produced the first official guide book for a national park.31 A practical guide for the visitor, it provided information on the natural features and geography of the park as well as instructions on how to get there, accommodation, fishing, bathing, riding and walking within the park. It also provides a reflection of the priorities of the park authority in these formative years. Without the guidance of any clear policy with regard to military training given the absence of any reference in national park legislation, the inclusion of military activity within the guide offers a glimpse of how military training, and the running of Dartmoor as a national park, were coexisting at this time. In its introduction, the guide reiterated that the primary purpose of DNPC was ‘to preserve the natural beauty of the district and give opportunities for open air recreation,’ but – unlike the NPAC Act itself – it speaks directly of issues of access and disfigurement relating to military training, as well as mineral extraction, electricity wires and forestry. The Committee sought ‘to reconcile utilitarian considerations with the maintenance of the Moor in its unspoiled state. The rights of farmers, owners of land, and commoners, have also to be considered.’32 Acting without any firm policy to guide them, the tone of the Committee in their discussion of the military at this stage is accommodating. The final section of the guide, ‘Service Training Areas,’ describes the areas and informs visitors of the flying of red flags to signal danger areas.33 It does not ignore the problems posed by the military presence, saying that: there is local and national resentment against so large an area being excluded on so many days from use and from enjoyment by the public, and the Park Committee finds itself from time to time concerned by this conflict of national needs; but it is glad to acknowledge the co-operative way in which the Service Authorities try to meet its wishes.34 The resulting conclusion is that relations between the Park Committee and the military, at this stage, were friendly, and that training, while inconveniencing the visitors on occasion, was not seen to be conflicting directly with the national park purposes. The northern area from Okehampton down to the Merrivale–Postbridge main road was considered ‘dangerous when the red flags are flying’, but the use of the southern area (for non-firing/dry training) ‘whilst it can be a nuisance, access to it is otherwise not impeded.’

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Information on the posting of firing notices in post offices in villages on the moor and in local papers, was given, and suggests an assumption that while the public remain informed about training, its incursions on their enjoyment of the park were limited. But, despite indications of a relatively amicable coexistence on Dartmoor in its early years as a national park, there were still no attempts to directly address the existence of military training within an area designated for the purposes of ‘the preservation and enhancement of natural beauty’ and ‘for the enjoyment of the opportunities for open-air recreation and the study of nature’.35 The military presence over a substantial swathe of parkland was visible (with no requirements that it should be otherwise). Permanent and temporary installations such as shelters, metalled roads and vedette points dotted the moor. Artillery shells and other debris lay on the ground. Red flags flew from high points signalling danger areas. Live firing and sudden roars of low-flying aircraft intermittently punctured the soundscape. These features are common to military areas across the country and are often pinpointed as the aspects of a military presence that make civilians feel uncomfortable.36 At Dartmoor National Park, residents and visitors objected to the visible military presence that was seen to be at odds with both the openness of the surrounding landscape, and its function as a national park. A groundswell of popular opinion opposed to military training on Dartmoor grew up in the years following its establishment as a protected landscape, separate from the National Park Authority but centring on the principles of the national parks as key tenets for an increasingly organized campaign to end military training on the moor. Access and conservation, the two pillars of national parks ideology, became the issues that moved people to protest the military presence, which was seen to impede both. The failure of national parks legislation to convincingly align these two issues – whose coexistence was and is problematic – was not debated. Rather, the military, seen as the out-of-place ‘intruder’ in the park, presented an outright threat to both to those used to walking the moor. A movement to protest the military use of the moor for training employed the issues of access and conservation and, using the context of national park status, raised the debate over military training on the moor to its most contested point in the long history of the military on Dartmoor. Misuse of a National Park: Military Training on Dartmoor (1963), published by the Dartmoor Preservation Association (DPA), introduced an anti-military movement and their mission to a wider public. The pamphlet gathered evidence and anecdotes to support the central conviction that military training was incompatible with national park status. While it gives some background

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to the military presence on the moor (looking back to, but not beyond, the establishment of the first camp at Okehampton in 1875), objections to the military at Dartmoor could not rest on the arguments employed at sites such as Sennybridge, where the recent requisition of land by the military was viewed as destructive not only in terms of landscape quality, but also agriculture and productivity, the local community and survival of (Welsh) upland culture. Where, at Sennybridge and Tyneham, for example, it could be argued that as an incoming force the military was not a component of the traditional landscape, the long military presence at Dartmoor predated notions of preserving the area’s character. Instead, the main thrust of the anti-military argument on Dartmoor, as expressed by the DPA, rested on the perception of the military as out of place in the national park landscape, a presence that disturbed the peace, interrupted the views, limited access and altogether threatened the beauty of the moor. ‘What had once been a magnificently wild and beautiful area of moorland,’ argued the Association, ‘now began [since military use] to have the tracks and roads constructed upon it by the War Department which today have developed into a network of roads extending far into the heart of Dartmoor, robbing it of its true nature of remoteness and challenge.’37 DPA had been formed in 1883 as a reaction to a surge in interest, particularly by the Duchy, in developing the moor and increasing its productivity. The lease of land by the Duchy to the military, and the subsequent establishment of a permanent camp and artillery training in the 1870s, was part of efforts (along with farm enclosures and forestation) to reinvigorate what had come to be seen by the Duchy as an underused resource. It meant, however, that access to those stretches of the moor by inhabitants to exercise their common rights of grazing and peat extraction were impeded. Tenant farms were also encouraged to enclose their land, particularly on the fringes of the moor, adding to the erosion of common rights. The DPA was established as a means to challenge in court the erosion of common right on the moor. In a letter to the Western Antiquary, Mr Fearnley Tanner of Buckfastleigh drew attention to the attempts to improve the productivity of the moor: which, if persisted in, threatens to alienate all right from Venville owners, and from all those with right to pasturage, blackwood, peat etc. It therefore behoves everyone who has an interest in these moor-rights to aid in abating the ill-effects of this policy in the past, and to oppose it by all lawful means in the future . . . It is therefore proposed to form

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an Association called ‘The Dartmoor Preservation Association’ with the sole object of narrowly watching the moor, protesting against anything which we may think an invasion, and, if need be, taking action.38 The three stated objects of the DPA were: z z

z

to preserve rights of way, pasturage and blackwood on the Forest and the contiguous Commons, as by ancient usage and custom-prescribed. to prevent enclosure of open ground by local landowners as against the rights of Venville owners and Commoners. To protest and (if need be) take action against proposed enclosures of Common and portion of the Forest, and against recent enclosures overriding any rights of Venville owners or Commoners. to protect and, as far as possible, preserve the existing Cromlechs, Circles, Kistvaens, Tors and landmarks of historic interest, and to prevent the removal of granite from the foot of tors.

The protection of common rights and access were at the core of the Association, but even at the formative stage the group’s intention to act to preserve and protect the archaeological and scenic features of the moor were stated. As the organization developed, this was to increase in importance, guiding opposition to a wide range of schemes affecting the moor. The extension of the military training area by the Military Manoeuvres Bill of 1900 was opposed by the DPA on the grounds that it was ‘undesirable and an interference with public and private rights’, but thereafter a shift in focus to protecting the history and landscape of the moor occurred.39 In July 1908, a proposed Light Railway to connect Merrivale Quarry to Princetown was fought on the grounds of damage to antiquities. ‘Encroachment’ by developments on the moor was repeatedly opposed. In 1910, encroachment by a railway wall on Walkhampton Common was reported, and in 1915 encroachment by China Clay Corporation at Huntington Warren was opposed. This recurring theme of the fear of encroachment by outside organizations was a reaction to increasing industrial and urban growth, inextricable from the period itself. The sense of threat and loss of common rights to the moor remained pronounced throughout the early development of the DPA, however. The fight for common rights was a way to protect the individual’s claim to the moor against those by large and powerful groups – Duchy, military and industrial. While common rights as a cause faded as the twentieth century progressed, the individual’s right to access the moor became the central campaign of the DPA.

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The DPA’s pledge to ‘narrowly watch the moor’ highlights its resolutely local scope. Conservative by its nature, the group could claim political links as the Liberal Democrat Life Peer Baron John Foot was a lifelong patron of the DPA, while, of the 1970 General Election, the DPA newsletter wrote: at the time of writing the dust is just settling and the Conservatives are in. Whether the vital but neglected issue of environmental conservation will be given more weight by the new government than by the last we do not yet know; it could hardly be given less. But some good friends of Dartmoor of all three parties are back in the House – and for this we must be grateful.40 But the DPA harboured no ambitions beyond the preservation of Dartmoor. It was allied with the national Commons Preservation Society, but retained its narrow focus on Dartmoor issues alone. Founded by concerned members of the Dartmoor gentry, including the archaeologist and photographer Robert Burnard, by the post-Second World War period DPA members included the odd title (Lord, later Baron, Foot, Vice Admiral and Lady Sayer41) but were still all mainly residents of the moor. Of the 1970 committee, for example, all 12 members lived in Devon, in towns and villages skirting the moor.42 Support for the organization by regular visitors to the moor led to the establishment of a satellite London branch of the DPA in 1970.43 The DPA became an unofficial watchdog for Dartmoor, alert to all changes and development that could alter the character and quality of the moor. Their commitment to preservation led to re-erecting fallen ancient granite crosses and restoring clapper bridges, but did not extend to an active interest in wildlife protection or conservation.44 While the preservation of the Dartmoor landscape and the scenic qualities of the moor were central to the DPA, they were not an environmental organization. The military on Dartmoor were an unwelcome presence continuously observed and objected to by the DPA throughout its history (it continues to fight for the release of training lands). To the DPA it represented a manipulation of the moor, a mercenary use of lands that had special, historic qualities: ‘What had seemed a vast wilderness had suddenly become compact and under threat’, wrote John Bainbridge, Honorary Secretary and Chief Executive of the DPA. ‘I hated the presence of the army on the northern moor and on Rippon Tor. I had camped outside the range boundaries when the artillery were night-firing, the shells rushing through the

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blackness like out-of-control locomotives. It seemed a basic abuse of the ethos of this area of land.’45 The military on the moor was as unwelcome to its opponents as heavy industry or urban development. Its use of machines and artillery and creation of noise was seen to disturb not only the peace and scenery but also the tradition of Dartmoor as empty and wild, imbued with history. Objections to the military as ‘out-of-place’ were amplified when Dartmoor was granted national park status. Use of national park land by the military was seen to be ‘misuse’ by its opponents, who found no justification for its inclusion in national park policy, from which it was absent. The provision of national parks for the use of the people was staunchly defended by groups and individuals who regularly used the moor for walking, riding, birdwatching and other outdoor activities against infringements on public access. In Misuse, examples of complaints made to the DPA, which had become the spearhead of the campaign against the military, of occasions when training prevented rambling or tainted holiday memories, are quoted. A visitor from Cheshire complained: During my stay at Tavistock I was hampered not only by the rain but by the firing, as there was considerable activity on both the Willsworthy and Merrivale Ranges . . . as a result of these various misfortunes I was again unable to visit some of the places which have eluded me for years.46 A doctor and his wife from Lincolnshire, trying to plan short walks on a Dartmoor holiday reported: We think it is abominable that the Army have been allowed to put Tavy Cleave in their firing area. We checked the Okehampton firing, but found the flags changed since three years ago to the south of the Cleave, so I went up the Cleave like a scalded cat expected to be shot at any moment.47 Access, a familiar feature of campaigns against military training in contested landscapes, was also a focus of the protest at Dartmoor among those who felt unrestricted access was a fundamental right in a national park. In addition to the argument that military training disrupted the peace of the park and restricted public enjoyment of its features, the DPA picked up another core mission of the national park as further evidence of a

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conflict of interest. The association invoked a sense that military training was corrupting the purity of the landscape. The visibility of the military in an otherwise ‘empty’ landscape – or, a landscape prized for its open spaces and long views – was one component of this argument, but the anti-military movement focused more specifically on the construction of roads on the moor by the military to move troops and machinery and access training grounds. In this argument, ‘beauty and wildness are in flight before the invading motor car, and unless action is taken to prevent it, by 1970 Northern Dartmoor will have become a network of crawling vehicles, civilian and military.’48 The DPA’s reaction to increased mobility and mass tourism bore out the fears of earlier preservationists. W. G. Hoskins had, years earlier, decried the ‘new Englishness’ of the modern age: England of the arterial by-pass, treeless and stinking of diesel oil, murderous with lorries; England of the bombing-range wherever there was once silence . . . England of high explosive falling upon the prehistoric monuments of Dartmoor. Barbaric England of the scientists, the military men and the politicians: let us turn away and contemplate the past before all is lost to the vandals.49 An influx of machinery and transportation to rural England for Hoskins was as ‘murderous’ as the bombing ranges. The presence of modernity, as much as the military, was a misuse of the countryside, corrupting its history and vandalizing its beauty. For the Dartmoor preservationists, too, the improved access for vehicles threatened the integrity of the prehistoric landscape, and became a focus of the campaign to oust the military from the moor. Paradoxically given the parallel argument for greater access, the military was being squarely blamed for improving access to the moor, to a level that threatened its remote character. For the DPA, in no uncertain terms, ‘the War Department’s road-making operation, more than any of the Services’ other activities, threaten the greatest harm to Dartmoor’s future value as a national park.’50 Such encroachment by the military was opposed, as were the civilian activities it enabled, such as motorbike scrambling and the running of commercial minibus tours by an Okehampton company along military roads.51 This recoil by the DPA from the prospect of greater numbers of tourists and day trippers to the Park brought by cars to remoter parts of the moor is suffused by an unspoken but tangible distaste for mass tourism. Although the DPA purported to defend Dartmoor as a national park, embracing its ideals, it was attempting to shield it from ‘mis-use’ by the military and

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the masses. John Dower had envisioned national parks as democratic landscapes (very much along American lines), protected for, and accessible by, all. The DPA held a much more exclusive view, in which too many people threatened the landscape as much as military training did, and in a more troubling sense as their numbers were greater and unpredictable. Their stance can be interpreted as a reaction to modernity and the mass motorcar ownership it brought about. Additionally, one can find subtle class undertones within it. When the DPA argued for better access, it was for a particular type of user – those engaged in healthy, outdoor pursuits, for which strenuous effort the reward should be the beautiful isolation in the moor. The majority of the group lived on or near Dartmoor, and while the defence of common rights (the original purpose of the DPA) had dwindled, its members still claimed a right to the moor rooted in their residencies nearby, and their time spent on the moor. Regular visitors to the moor were encouraged to join the DPA, as investing time on the moor validated their understanding of the issues at stake. Hiking holidays and rambling trips treated the moor in a manner that members of the DPA and residents of the moor recognized and of which they approved as they felt it gave the moor the time and respect it deserved. In contrast, driving across the moor by day trippers and the like ‘cheated’ such efforts with an immediate reward of moorland experience. It made the moor too accessible, ‘robbing it of its true nature and challenge’. Casual tourism failed to revere the landscape, as did training. An anonymous Okehampton resident is quoted as saying: I do feel strongly about the way the Army is driving about the Moor for what looks like sheer fun . . . they act like small children with a new toy when they are on their Annual Camp and get hold of these cross-country type of vehicle.52 Dartmoor National Park, ‘the last extensive area of wild open country in Southern England,’ was seen by the DPA as a site in need of protection, from overuse and ignorance.53 The emphasis was firmly on ‘preservation’. And while the thrust of the argument against misuse by the DPA finds the military to be the repeat offenders, when they argued that ‘would they [who use the moor as a training area] stage a rugger match in the National Gallery, and then be surprised if paintings got damaged?’, the implications are that any who should use or view the national park with anything less than the reverence afforded a museum undermined the high ideals of the national parks.54

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In this respect, however, the DPA stance should be seen to some extent as reflective of the inherent conflict, not between the military and the national parks, as stressed by campaigners, but within national park ideology itself. The first ten national parks – Peak District, Lake District, Dartmoor, Snowdonia, Pembrokeshire Coast, North York Moors, Yorkshire Dales, Exmoor, Northumberland and Brecon Beacons – with the exception of the Pembrokeshire Coast, are all upland, moor and mountain areas. In the formative policies of the national parks, the concern was ‘broadly confined to relatively wild country for, generally speaking, it is only in such territory that the public at large either desires or can satisfactorily be given a wide measure of recreational access.’ Perhaps more importantly to the national parks movement, the difficulties of farming and subsisting on these high, rocky and weathered terrains had limited the extent of development and settlements within them, naturally preserving areas that were ‘sufficiently wild, beautiful, extensive and free from inconsistent uses’ – qualities that also lent themselves to military training.55 The definition of what and where national parks were crystallized what was most valued in the heavily farmed and densely inhabited British landscape: open spaces that retained ‘wild’ qualities. The formal protection of such areas by national parks legislation validated the assumptions and landscapes ideals of those in the national parks and preservationist movements, tracing a line back to the Romantic reverence for visually breathtaking landscapes on a grand scale.56 The American example of a national park service, and its sense of ‘wilderness’, informed the earliest moves to protect landscapes in the British national interest. But, as the environmental historian T. C. Smout points out, ‘it is a well-known and well-grounded generalization that there are fundamental differences in attitudes to nature in America and Europe’. 57 To understand the uses and protection of Dartmoor and other ‘wild’ places that are also military sites, a clarification of what is understood by ‘wilderness’, and what it has meant at Dartmoor and other, British, military sites and conservation sites, is needed. The traditional American view defines ‘wilderness’ as ‘uncultivated and otherwise undeveloped land. The absence of men and presence of wild animals is assumed.’58 Large spaces were a prerequisite: (American) wilderness retains a grand scale, embodied by the comparatively large national parks that often encompass officially designated ‘wilderness areas’.59 The American understanding of ‘wilderness’ was enshrined in the 1964 Wilderness Act. There is no such statutory definition of wilderness in the United Kingdom. But, elements of that view were invested in the British idea of ‘wilderness’ that led to the designation of Dartmoor and the

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other national parks. The upland areas of Dartmoor, the Lakes, the Peak District, Northumberland and Snowdonia, for example, all contain open expanses of uninterrupted countryside, that, compared to the historically heavily cultivated and populated landscape of much of Britain (with the exception of northern Scotland), constitute ‘wild’ places. However, none can claim an absence of humans, and the presence of people was a presumed feature of UK national parks from the outset, as the Dower and Scott reports indicated. This supports Smout’s case for fundamental differences in the understandings of ‘wilderness’ that exist between the United States and the United Kingdom. In the United States, a history of imperial expansion, colonial encounters with natives and native reactions to European intrusion have informed a ‘common view that true nature is undisturbed wilderness, and conservation at its most ambitious is about “re-wilding”, about returning to primeval woodland before man spoiled it.’60 In Europe, by contrast, he suggests that: nature is not seen apart from human impact. Since classical times the most admired landscapes bear the imprint of man’s hand in patterned fields, tended crops and managed woodland. Conservationists in Europe, when they try and restore biodiversity losses, [do so] by what may be described as ‘re-gardening’, returning land to some previous state where human intervention seemed to have been more ecologically benign.61 Nash is often cited as a proponent of the traditional American view of ‘wilderness’, and other environmental historians have since worked to redefine the term along lines more critical of the tendency to view man as divorced from nature, and vice versa .62 However, Nash’s definition of wilderness offers recognition of a dual meaning of the term that echoes the founding principles of the British national parks. He talks of ‘wilderness’ as a ‘sanctuary in which those in need of consolation can find respite from the pressures of civilization’.63 This connects Dower’s belief in the national parks’ role as a provider of natural relief for the British people. It also resonates with Robert Macfarlane’s pursuit of the wild places of Britain. Despite the ‘abolition of remoteness’ thanks to cars and roads, and defiant of declarations that wilderness in Britain is dead, Macfarlane ‘did not, believe, or did not want to believe, the obituaries for the wild’ and set out to experience some remaining ‘wild’ places.64 Nonetheless, is there a distinction between ‘wilderness’ and ‘wild’ places? For Macfarlane, wild places included not just the ‘high hills and

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remote coasts of Scotland and Wales’, places that ‘conformed most purely to [his] private vision of wildness’ (and the US conception).65 He also ventured into urban England, where ‘the wild places seemed most at risk, most elusive and most foreign to me.’ Finding ‘wilderness’ in those places, too, illustrated for Macfarlane that looking for ‘wilderness’ in Britain was a quest for places just beyond the mundanities and localities of everyday existence, and even within well-known landscapes like the Peak District and the Lakes, localized pockets of ‘wilderness’ remained. In Macfarlane’s conception, ‘wildness’ could be a quality found as easily as climbing a tree and swaying in the wind.66 Macfarlane’s idea of wilderness has as its reference contemporary Britain rather than nineteenth- and twentieth-century America. His ‘wild places’ are familiar landscapes that occasionally incorporate military usage.67 The scale of MoD landholdings, and of national parks, is large by British standards, encouraging conservationists and land users to employ terms such as ‘wilderness’. But, though emptied of permanent residents, training landscapes are still inhabited landscapes. Likewise, national parks are managed and lived-in landscapes. They inspire descriptions of ‘wilderness’, yet the understanding of that quality is fluid and subjective. For some, the military presence does not hinder an appreciation of wild landscape and wildlife. For others, such as the DPA, it undermines the integrity of the landscape as a ‘wild’ place. Wilderness has localized meanings, too. At Dartmoor, the emphasis has been on the scenic beauty of the landscape. At Epynt, the debate over the military presence has been framed in the past in terms of the absence of people, the ‘blasting’ of the land into a ‘wilderness’, as a more desolate place, with negative connotations. More recently, the rebuilt Visitor Centre has recast ‘wilderness’ as a positive quality. Soldier interaction with the Epynt landscape is presented as integral to the training process, as they become ‘warriors in the wilderness’. At Tyneham, by contrast, the descent into wilderness that came as a result of military neglect preserved an idyllic historical landscape. ‘Wilderness’ is closely tied to the military presence in the countryside. A complex term, it is used to define what the military claims to protect, and what it is accused of ruining. While national parks policy promised to protect such landscapes, it also validated the move by doing so for the people that they may experience and use such spaces for recreation. Ultimately, a conflict between preservation and use existed at the heart of the national parks purpose. While the Scott and Dower Reports sided firmly with use (as their discussions of the provision of accommodation and facilities for visitors attest68), the

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DPA and its supporters fought for the preservation of Dartmoor above all else. The period from 1951 to 1973 saw an uneasy coexistence between the military and DNPC, in which both pursued their own agendas within the national park boundaries, unguided by the lack of concrete policy addressing the mutual use of a protected landscape. As the civilian campaign against the military grew more organized and vociferous, relations between the National Park Authority and the military deteriorated further. The DPA succeeded in destabilizing military training in the area, as its consistent opposition to training in a national park found increasing sympathy within the National Park Authority. Although in 1957 the DNPC had spoken cordially about the military presence in the park, by the time that the Nugent Committee sat in 1973 it firmly opposed training within the park. The uncompromising stance of the DPA in 1963, that ‘we do not accept the Service Departments’ contention that no alternative training areas, or means of sharing training areas, can possibly be found in these islands or overseas’ became a point of view shared by the National Parks Commission, which, by the 1970s, had adopted a similar position, calling for the removal of military activity for the interests of the national parks. Not only did the anti-military campaign influence national park policy on Dartmoor, the sustained and well-publicized criticism of military training stirred the government to set up the Nugent Committee to reassess training requirements in Britain. The Dartmoor opposition joined other campaigns against military training, notably the (likewise organized and well-publicized) Tyneham campaign. The Dartmoor campaign was exceptional however in posing a very real threat to the military’s ability to train on Dartmoor, as the MOD continued to lease its lands there, mainly from the Duchy of Cornwall. If public feeling was strongly behind it, and enough evidence supported it, a decision not to re-lease lands to the military was envisionable, and would limit thereafter any further use of the national park for training purposes.

The Defence Lands Committee (Nugent Committee) 1971–73 The convening of the Nugent Committee and its detailed study of military landholdings was a strategic move made to calm public animosity by convincing the public at large, and especially the conservation and recreation groups with interests in training areas, that the MoD took its

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responsibilities towards its landholdings seriously. As well as the protests against the military presence on Dartmoor, organized campaigns against the military use of land at Tyneham in Dorset, and the requisition of Imber village on Salisbury Plain, were generating strong public resentment. The committee was called to make recommendations: taking account of the long term needs of the Armed Forces and their operational efficiency, and of the cost and other relevant considerations . . . as to what changes should be made in these holdings and in improved access for the public, having regard to recreation, amenity or other uses which might be made of the land.69 The Nugent Report made several recommendations for the future management of training areas, to put MoD land management on a ‘firmer, less haphazard footing commensurate with the value of the national assets involved.’70 Although ‘generally, good relations are maintained between the Defence Services and the local people’, Nugent noted that the majority of representations against the military at controversial sites ‘came from groups and organizations speaking for visitors who, in increasing numbers, wish to enjoy the amenities of those areas’.71 Two of the recommendations were made to appease such groups and improve relations: the first was ‘the appointment of a Conservation Officer within the Ministry of Defence, to establish and maintain close contact with civilian amenity and conservation organisations and within Government Departments concerned with environmental planning.’ The second was the ‘adoption of policies to combat environmental pollution by noise, in the interests of both the civilian population and of the good relations of Services units within them.’72 Countering protestations against the military presence was information provided by wildlife and archaeological bodies of the (surprising) extent of flora, fauna and archaeological remains found on military sites, tempered by frustration at being unable to access them freely. The Nugent Committee was ‘impressed’ by the weight of this evidence, and could: appreciate the wishes of bodies like the Nature Conservancy Council or the Council of British Archeology to study them. We believe it is right that information about these features should be available and recommend that, even on sites where security or safety considerations apply, statutory authorities concerned with such matters, bodies nominated by them and other responsible organizations who seek to establish and record the

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scientific and historical importance of a site should be allowed to do so wherever possible.73 Over the course of the two-year investigation, speaking to military and nonmilitary personnel, visiting military sites and hearing arguments put forward at public inquiries, the Defence Lands Committee acquired a picture of military landscapes that recognized that the concept of protecting the nation extended beyond the displays of military might to include quieter, longer processes of responsible environmental management. The committee admitted that they ‘found an acute awareness of the value of land both as a commodity, since in the crowded islands it is in ever-increasing demand, and also as the roots and foundation of our national heritage’ and foresaw the tensions that continued inconsiderate attitudes to land ownership would create, ultimately endangering the right of the military to train. However, in a move that was to guide future military land policies and attitudes, the report stated: It gives us pleasure to record that there is an active realization that land must be husbanded and safeguarded, not least among representatives of the Services. . . . There are therefore no doubts in our mind about the obligation to use Defence Land effectively and economically.74 At Dartmoor, military, national parks and local government representatives were joined by members of the public and organizations such as the Youth Hostels Association, Ramblers Association and the DPA in presenting their views on military training in the national park.75 Although the Committee could only make recommendations for future military practices rather than enforce change, the intention was that the Committee could identify problem areas and resolve the contested issues. At Dartmoor, with objectors demanding immediate military withdrawal, the Committee faced at best a difficult task. The official position of the DNPC represented to the Nugent Committee was that ‘Service use of Dartmoor is incompatible with the aims of a national park’, and they urged a ‘phased reduction in activities to be started without delay and a positive date be fi xed for complete withdrawal.’ The DNPC cited the restriction of access, disturbance to the natural environment, intrusions on the landscape made by military structures, noise from low-flying aircraft and damage to archaeological features as aspects of the military presence that rendered it ‘entirely incompatible with the spirit and purpose of a national park’.76 In comparison to all four of the other military sites looked at in this thesis, conservation consequences of

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military training were not extensively discussed. Environmental considerations were broadly referred to by both objectors and supporters – objectors claiming ‘damage and disturbance’ to the environment, supporters pointing out the existence of two SSSI sites and National Nature reserve within the military zone.77 However, presentations by conservation experts were absent, and a detailed discourse of environmental impact of training was absent from the debate. The focus was firmly on the status of the area as a national park, and the impact of training on broad notions such as landscape quality and general natural beauty, the ‘wild and remote quality of the moor’, rather than specific wildlife and habitat concerns. The preoccupation with nonconservation-driven issues of landscape and nature meant that at Dartmoor the impact on the ground of the military presence was relatively overlooked. The national park debate was dominant, both in terms of evidence given and recommendations made. As a result, some consequences of training at Dartmoor that spoke of a military engagement with the environment received little attention. This was indicative that the MoD had not yet formed a comprehensive realization of the potential its environmental activities on the moor offered, nor had it yet developed a confident voice with which to articulate them publicly. A major and lasting consequence of the Nugent report for the military as a whole was the introduction of environmentalism as a military concern, and the means with which to incorporate it into day-to-day training, and its public identity. On the ground, DTA was exceptionally active. The Nugent committee heard that by 1973, the military at Dartmoor had introduced a series of two-day courses for personnel, run by the University of Exeter, on the history of Dartmoor and the recognition of archaeologically important features.78 A ring road around the Okehampton ranges was constructed so that vehicles did not pass through the moor, and a general policy of no tracked vehicles on the moor was in place. Troops were briefed before exercises to specifically avoid environmental and archaeological damage. It was also claimed that any missiles that had failed to explode during firing practice were located and made safe immediately after practice ceased, to enable the whole extent of the firing ranges to be opened to the public when firing was not underway.79 In comparison to the warnings given to the public at both Castlemartin and Tyneham – that unexploded artillery posed too great a risk to allow any public access or footpaths on the ranges whatsoever – the DTA had independently initiated a level of awareness of environmental consequences of training, and public reactions to training. For much of the military across Britain, these considerations became standard practice after Nugent’s recommendations. At Dartmoor, the

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continuing debate over training in a national park had hastened a sensitivity within the military as to their place in the wider landscape. However, as a discourse with which to defend the military presence, such environmentally driven initiatives had not been employed, and they were overshadowed by the national parks debate at the inquiry. For those opposed to the military training on the moor, the very presence of the military – irrespective of day-to-day training practices – was in itself the offence. No quantity of evidence of offsetting training with environmental awareness could placate the opposition while training remained. With neither the DNPC nor the DPA politically opposed to the need for military training, both were outwardly concerned with other examples of military training in national parks areas. As far as their literature and arguments presented to the Nugent Committee show, an element of Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY)-ism existed within their determination to rid the moor of the military. The DPA made clear its position as a firmly ‘nonpolitical organization, in no sense whatever “against the Services”, or lacking in a full understanding of the need for an effective national defence.’80 The protests against the military on Dartmoor did not draw to any great extent on wider issues, in the manner of the anti-military and anti-English narratives informing the protest at Sennybridge. Nor did they look to matters of heritage and history as a basis for disapproval, as had protesters at Imber and Tyneham. In many respects, the argument at Dartmoor was simpler: that military training was out of place in a national park, and should be relocated to a more suitable (less valued, less visited) location. That the solution, too, should be as simple was of no doubt in the minds of the protestors, in whose view the removal of the military would immediately solve the major problem afflicting the national park. For the Nugent Committee that was called on to assess the situation, however, the task of resolving the conflict of interests at this most contested of UK military training sites, was a difficult one. The strength of feeling against the military on Dartmoor was particularly strong. In their consideration of other military training areas, the Nugent committee found that, while walking groups, residents associations, outdoors and recreation groups all united in protest at a military presence in their area, one interest group repeatedly spoke in favour of army training on the land. Conservationists, Nugent said: tended to support the retention of land by the Services, on the general arguments that MOD land holdings are, for the most part, shielded from commercial development and public use, thus allowing the incidental

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protection of flora and fauna and physical features from destructive agents.81 But at the same time, ‘it was generally represented that the almost inadvertent conservation resulting from Defence custodianship of particular tracts of land or coastline should be put on firmer, less haphazard footing commensurate with the value of the national assets involved.’82 Nugent foresaw that, if the army was to continue to use land for training, it would have to justify its presence by recognizing and meeting its duty as a landholder of some of the richest lands in the country in terms of wildlife, heritage and natural beauty. To this end, the committee recommended: the creation of a post in the Ministry of Defence of an officer to co-ordinate Service conservation activities and act as a link between the Services and civilian bodies concerned. Such an officer would, in particular, obtain from appropriate civilian bodies their views on how the interests of conservation can best be served on Service sites, and set up liaison arrangements between civilian and Service authorities.83 Nugent believed that an important aspect of the officer’s work was to ‘explain to civilian organisations how the Services can contribute to conservation; and within the Services, to foster an interest in the subject.’84 The fi rst MoD Conservation officer, Lt Col Norman Clayden, was duly appointed, marking the beginning of an active environmental awareness within the military. Clayden’s role was, in part, to bring together the disparate interests and conservation efforts already found on military land, from the birdwatchers and wildlife enthusiasts who heretofore risked trespassing to get close to the sites of interest, to the soldiers whose interest in the land on which they were training, beyond immediate training concerns, had no outlet for expression within the military. Conservation groups were encouraged as a way to bring together disparate groups of people and interests. With combined soldier/civilian membership, it was hoped that these groups would foster better relationships between the military and civilian communities. They offered a meeting point for different interest areas that did not focus on military activity, specifi cally the negative impact of training on an area. By encouraging interest in the land itself, a more positive appreciation of the military presence was generated, albeit one dependent on military approval for its very existence.

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The Nugent committee’s recommendations shaped the greening of the MoD from 1973 onwards. The introduction of a conservation officer, Sanctuary magazine and conservation groups were intended to coordinate environmental efforts across the DE. However, individual training areas retained a level of autonomy in the management of their estates. A good example of this is the establishment of the conservation groups. Although adopted as a general policy after Nugent’s recommendation in 1973, the establishment of conservation groups at training areas differed greatly, reflecting multiple affecting factors from the enthusiasm of the commandant to the activity of local conservationists. While Lulworth and SPTA had groups up and running by 1977, Dartmoor’s conservation group started in 1981. The Welsh sites followed suit even later, Castlemartin in 1983 and SENTA in 1984. At Dartmoor, the environmental impact of training was, at the time of the Nugent committee’s hearing, secondary to the debates of access and recreation on the site. At Dartmoor the Nugent Committee considered the evidence presented to them, which focused on the national parks issue and addressed directly the request made by the National Parks Committee that training be relocated. The training requirements of the Commando Forces Royal Marines, the main users of the Dartmoor training areas, relied on the ability for amphibious ships, helicopter squadrons and Commando units to ‘live, work and train closely together’, which Dartmoor’s proximity to Plymouth met.85 The investigations of the Committee found only the Rosyth Area in Scotland offered similar prospects as it was already a naval base. The DPA were behind this suggestion, having complained in I963 that ‘Scotland had never taken anything like its full share of military training areas’,86 but the Nugent Committee contended that such a move would require the removal of the existing Polaris submarine refitting complex to make space for the amphibious forces, with far-reaching consequences for the local economies of Plymouth and Rosyth, and ultimately a ‘severe and entirely unacceptable disruption of the Naval programme’.87 A relocation of Commando training to Scotland would also mean that the bulk of Royal Marines would be stationed in Scotland while only about 15 per cent of all Commandos came from, or had connections in, Scotland. A considerable number owned homes in the Plymouth area, and ‘family separation would increase with a consequent adverse effect on retention and re-engagement rate in the Royal marines’.88 While the arguments against military training centred on arguments of recreation, access and landscape, in considering a move the Nugent Committee was required to not only consider the environmental

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consequences of providing training facilities for the armed forces but also the well-being of a living force of soldiers and their families. The Committee concluded that the training of Commando Forces could not be moved from Dartmoor to Scotland, or anywhere else in the United Kingdom, and so then concentrated its recommendations on reducing live firing. The suggestion of redirecting much of the live-firing activity via SENTA and SPTA was countered by the existing heavy usages and individual land use issues at those sites. The use of Dartmoor by elite forces, and the extent and quality of the training area, left the Nugent Committee with very few viable alternatives to consider. That they did consider them shows a level of agreement with the consensus against the military that found the present arrangement between the military and the national park at the one site was limiting for both. In the absence of other options, however, the Committee was left with little to offer beyond greater access for the public (for 210 out of 365 days) on Okehampton, to ensure that a significant area of the moor (Okehampton and Merrivale) would be open every weekend of the year as well as during the summer holiday period.89 Along with the release of some land at Okehampton and the Rippon Tor rifle range, the Committee explained that ‘we think that this represents the best possible compromise between the Army’s training requirements and the national park’s amenity requirements and that it should go far to meet the needs of the general public in the years ahead.’90 A self-professed compromise, rather than outright solution, the Nugent Committee was unable to resolve the conflict of interests on Dartmoor, nor appease objectors to the military. With training set to continue, the debates and opposition to the military in the national park was perpetuated. A turning point in military policy that affected all the sites examined here, the Nugent Report instigated change and helped implement new approaches to military landholdings. Its contribution was vital to the greening of the military, from nationwide policy down to land use at individual sites, over the course of the following years. In Dartmoor terms, however, it was another government intervention that failed to redress the many conflicting uses, interests, expectations and ideals projected onto a relatively small geographic area. As the Report noted, Dartmoor ‘is one of our smallest national parks and there are many pressures upon it’.91 It did not connect training activities with environmental benefits, as it had successfully done at other sites. The debate on both sides focused on issues that circled around notions of natural beauty, landscape quality, wilderness and

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habitat preservation, in terms of public access and recreation, but it never centred specifically on environmental practices and conservation schemes. Although the military at Dartmoor had taken the environmental initiative compared to its counterparts at other training areas, it was the national parks issue that did, and continues, to dominate discussion of military training on the moor. Having failed to resolve the conflicts between military training and national park objectives, the Nugent Report was shortly followed by another attempt to introduce some resolution to the ongoing contestation of the site.

The Sharp Inquiry 1975–76 Lady Evelyn Sharp was invited to chair an inquiry set up jointly by the Secretaries of State for the Environment and Defence in 1975, to consider ‘whether and to what extent the training needs of the Army and Royal Marines which are at present being met in the Dartmoor National Park could, without unacceptable loss of efficiency, be met elsewhere’, and in the light of this ‘what changes, if any, should be made in defence land holdings on Dartmoor and in the extent and nature of their use.’92 The stated terms of reference in which the inquiry would be conducted were (a) the purposes for which the national park was designated; (b) the economic constraints set out by the Defence Lands Committee [Nugent Report]; (c) the need for the Armed Forces and Royal Marines units based in the south west to retain their present bases and to have training facilities in the area; and (d) public and local opinion on Dartmoor and at possible alternative locations.93 In effect, Lady Sharp was charged with the unenviable task of trying to work through the issues generated by military training in Dartmoor national park that had defeated the Nugent Committee only two years previously and that stemmed from the introduction of national parks policy that ignored the military presence. While Nugent had assessed military landholdings nationwide, Sharp looked solely at Dartmoor, visited the moor twice, saw the military zone by foot and by air and conducted the inquiry at Devon County Hall (Exeter). Sharp’s inquiry ‘fulfils the promise of a review’ made by the Nugent Committee (somewhat overwhelmed by the quantity of evidence and strength of feeling at the single site in their task to assess military landholdings nationwide). Examining the case of training on Dartmoor, Sharp considered in greater depth the possibilities of meeting training requirements elsewhere in the south west. Many of the same groups and

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individuals that had represented to the Nugent Committee did so again to the Sharp inquiry, and expressed ‘great indignation’ that the inquiry was limited to the south west region in any search for alternative sites.94 Having rested their argument in front of the Nugent Committee that training be relocated to Scotland, the military insistence on retaining a presence in the south west removed a significant portion of the opposition’s argument. However, the more specific scope also permitted Sharp to study in greater detail the real issues, impacts and possibilities for training on Dartmoor. She recognized the frustrations of those committed to removing the military from the national park, but defended the limitations of the inquiry against its critics: I do not, however, believe that because the inquiry was limited to the south-west it was therefore useless. Nor do I believe that another inquiry in a few years time – which was what some of the objectors said would be necessary – could add anything. That would be really useless. This inquiry has achieved the only things that any public inquiry into the Dartmoor dispute can achieve. It has enabled those who object to the indefinite continuance in the national park of military training, other than adventure training, to make their case publicly, to challenge those who do not agree with them and to question the military case for staying put. It has also provided an opportunity for seeing how far it might be possible to reduce the damage done to the national park by the training, if indefinite continuance has to be accepted.95 The inquiry heard that the size and quality of land available at Dartmoor could not be replicated at other suggested sites.96 But the alternatives lacked the space and the limited land use that were basic requirements for training. Sharp’s remit was to consider whether the training needs met in the National Park could be met elsewhere ‘without unacceptable loss of efficiency’. She concluded that, with 5,500 Royal Marines, 18,500 regular troops and 3,000 members of the TAVR97 all based in the south west, ‘the Ministry of Defence need all their training areas on Dartmoor . . . therefore I recommend no change in the defence land holdings on Dartmoor.’98 Subsequently, the gaze of the inquiry shifted to reviewing strategies for reducing damage to the moor caused by training. The decision that training would remain on Dartmoor brought some finality to the debate that had so far rested on the uncertainty of future training.99 It also pushed the discussion on from arguing where the military should focus to consider more closely the impact of its training on the

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landscape and environment, to discuss how the military should train. As a result, the Nature Conservancy Council and their review of the effects of military training on the environment were given more space by the inquiry. The Council’s chief scientist, Dr Ratcliffe, submitted a paper to the inquiry that examined past and present military activity in the main range areas, taking in damage by tracks, explosives and missiles, trenches, bivouacks, litter, pyrotechnics, trampling and building.100 The Conservancy’s ‘unavoidable conclusion’ was: that despite varying levels of use over the last eighty years, use for military training has not significantly damaged the importance of the land from a nature conservation point of view. Our evidence indicates that effects of most activities have been temporary only and that the natural fauna and flora quickly re-establishes itself; nor does any species of plant or animal appear to have materially suffered as a result of these military training areas.101 The Council went further, stating that the: military presence has also had indirect beneficial consequences. It has helped to maintain the traditional grazing regime on Dartmoor which is generally favourable to nature conservation. Recreational use has also been controlled and this may have prevented excessive disturbance or wear and tear in some areas.102 In addition to the conservation benefits of military training, the inquiry heard that the Nature Conservancy supported continuing training on Dartmoor: because they know that they can rely on the Armed Forces for responsible land management and for co-operation with them in monitoring what does happen and in seeking to keep damage as small as possible, they prefer the Armed Forces to any less disciplined use which in their view might well follow if the Forces withdrew.103 The environmentally conscious land management and training practices that had been mentioned but overshadowed by the national park discourse in the Nugent Report came to the fore in the Sharp Report, as the discussion moved from a stand-off between military and national park to

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an acceptance of compromise and future cooperation between the two entities at the one site. Two years after the Nugent report, ‘khaki conservation’ – the introduction of a serious and coherent environmental discourse and practice in the military – had developed enough to provide the military with the confidence in its environmental credentials to engage with environmental organizations and defend its presence on the moor in environmental terms. In doing so, it referred back to the two conflicting issues of the national park, unresolved by the park authorities and the moor’s defenders: access and conservation. In the Sharp inquiry, a firm assertion came from the Nature Conservancy Council and the MoD that proposed the military provided a solution, not a problem. It did what the national park and the DPA had found so difficult, that was to privilege conservation over access. The military limited access, and in doing so safeguarded conservation, the moor and its own position within it. ‘Incompatible’ may mean ‘incapable of existing together’ and it may mean ‘discordant, incongruous and inconsistent’, Sharp reasoned. ‘I accept that military training and a national park are discordant, incongruous and inconsistent; but I cannot accept that they are incapable of living together since it is clear that in this country national parks and military training may have to co-exist.’104 Sharp’s judgement that military training and national parks could, and indeed would have to, share the landscape shaped the future of Dartmoor and its dual role as training area and national park. It did not resolve all issues relating to military training in national parks, as Woodward’s coverage of the inquiry into training at Otterburn in Northumberland National Park in 1995 and 1997 attests.105 But it joins the Nugent Report as an example of government policy that looked closer at general assumptions made about military training in the British countryside, and challenged preconceived notions of damage, disturbance and destruction by giving alternative discourses – that proposed conservation, landscape preservation and wildlife protection as features of military training – a voice in the public sphere. As the study of the other sites of military training in this thesis will show, environmentalists and conservation groups had been aware of the potential environmental benefits of a military presence in a protected landscape as inadvertent conservation occurred during the post-war period, and came to light in official reports (Nugent, Sharp) and subsequently more environmentally aware military land management practices (the introduction of Conservation Officers, conservation groups, Sanctuary). Dartmoor as a case study further supports this thesis, with the

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gradual raising of the profile of environmentally beneficial training practices, brought about by the ongoing opposition to the position of a military training area within a national park. However, conversely, the high profile of the opposition to the military on Dartmoor meant that attempts to assess the impact of training were dominated by National Park concerns, which in themselves, were not concrete due to the lack of a coherent policy that directly addressed the military presence within the Park. Subsequently, the national parks vs. military debate must be seen as a main source for much of the negative publicity that surrounded the military presence in the countryside. Because national parks were established as the nation’s ultimate symbols of landscape value, nature conservation and public enjoyment of the environment, their opposition to a military presence within their boundaries shaped the dominant discourse of militaries in the wider countryside that emphasized their disturbing and polluting capabilities at the expense of similar attention to positive environmental aspects of training. Dartmoor as a contested military landscape has not only experienced the role of policy in greening the MoD but, in examining the perceived conflict between training and national park purposes, identifies a source of the prevailing misconception that military activity and environmentalism are incompatible – a proposition that inspired this thesis and the larger ‘Militarized Landscapes’ project it is a part of.106 Since the Sharp inquiry, military training has continued on Dartmoor. Commenting on the recent announcement that the MoD are commencing discussions to renew their licences to train on Dartmoor, Nigel Hoskin (Chairman of Dartmoor National Park Authority) released a statement that indicates a mellowing of the National Park Authority’s position with regard to training: Throughout the MOD-led Review of Military Training on Dartmoor we have sought to achieve due consideration of the environmental and public benefit issues enshrined in National Park Purposes, while recognising the current national importance of the training facility to our armed forces. Although disappointed . . . by the apparent primacy of the military imperative, we remain committed to work closely with the MOD and Duchy of Cornwall at local level to ensure that while essential military needs are met, the potential for the environment and public access improvements are met with vigour.107 With stronger evidence for the role the military has played in protecting valuable landscapes and habitats from alternative developments, thus

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reducing the conflict of interests within the national park, the licence to continue training is widely expected to be renewed without the level of controversy seen at the time of the Nugent Committee. The relationship between military and national park has become closer and more cooperative with the shared interest in the preservation of the moor at the core of their coexistence on the site. The national park protects the area in trust as a national landscape, while responsible land management and militaryenvironmentalism have become key justifications (beyond involvement in conflict) for the continuation of military training in the United Kingdom. Dartmoor has inspired some staunch defenders of its landscape. MoD, the national park and DPA, in their shifting alliances and confrontations, all oscillated around a shared central concern for the preservation of the nature and character of the moor. Controlled use, by the military and by the public, was seen (in varying degrees) by the different interests as being the key to ensuring Dartmoor’s future as a landscape looked very similar to its past. All the parties involved in the discussions of appropriate use and protection of Dartmoor were united in their wish to maintain a continuity within the landscape, a retention of landscape quality and regional character against the developments of the local areas and wider world around it. Despite this essentially introspective concern, the issues at play at Dartmoor went on to inform policy changes that impacted upon other military training areas. As a central protagonist in the debates and inquiries that have pieced together, over the course of the twentieth century, methods for protecting the moor, the military has helped drive the discourse of the appropriate uses and management of Dartmoor. The military’s insistence that use does not corrupt conservation was challenged by protestors who saw military use (as well as public use) as capable only of damage. In having to prove that military use could be compatible with national park interests, a sitespecific development of military-environmentalism took place, responding to criticism and opposition by local groups and individuals rather than national military training practices. The contestation of Dartmoor between the military and opposing organizations nonetheless played a major role in bringing about the wide-ranging discussions and policy recommendations that had a lasting impact for military training in peacetime. The recurring complaints against the military at Dartmoor, of infringements to access, noise pollution and scarring of the landscape, were heard at other sites too. At Dartmoor, the military defended their presence by drawing on the same concerns for preserving the landscape and protecting against overuse often used against them, and by demonstrating the potential capacity for

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conservation and active environmentalism within the military landscape, repositioned the military as active stewards of a protected landscape, alive to the responsibilities of training in a national park. After the recommendations of the Nugent Report, the final quarter of the twentieth century saw a gradual increase in the awareness of the impacts of military training on environment and wildlife, and a move away from inadvertent to organized and deliberate conservation. Resulting structures were put in place to limit damage and encourage environmentally beneficial land use at different levels of the military structure. The figurehead of militaryenvironmentalism was (and is) the Conservation Officer, the mouthpiece was Sanctuary magazine, the tool the Integrated Land Management Plan that fits training schedules around archaeological and environmentally sensitive areas and the foot soldiers are the volunteers of the conservation groups, the range officers and the commandants and personnel who contribute to the schemes and projects that show military-environmentalism to be more than discourse and conjecture. The military presence on Dartmoor is still found by many to be ‘discordant’ with expectations held for a national park. But, rather than giving cause for its removal, it is increasingly recognized as a contributing factor to a landscape that has maintained its essential emptiness, openness and even a certain appealing ‘grim charm’ that has drawn visitors and inspired storytellers. The landscape that struck fear in the heart of the inhabitants of Baskerville Hall in Conan-Doyle’s famous mystery is recognizable today. The unwelcoming moor that provided an atmospheric setting for a tale of a family curse, an escaped convict and a devilish hound, still draws those wishing to challenge and isolate themselves in the landscape. 2010 marked the 50th anniversary of the Ten Tors challenge, an army-run expedition in which teams of young people hike to ten tors around the moor, covering routes of up to 55 miles.108 The challenge tests its competitors by endurance, map reading and outdoor skills, the Dartmoor terrain being depended upon to provide the testing conditions. Tragically, the moor provides reminders that the descriptions of its inhospitality and grimness are more than literary conceits. In 2007, a 14-year-old girl training for the Ten Tor Challenge died as she was swept away by a rain-swollen Walla Brook, near Watern Tor.109 Dartmoor remains a challenging terrain, testing all those who spend time upon it. This quality drew the military to it, as a site that would test soldiers to their limits, and it is a quality that the military presence, in addition to its status as a national park, has helped protect. The military has resisted efforts to remove it to remain a presence in the

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landscape. A recent study of the soundscapes of Dartmoor included MoD noise as one of the noticeable sounds discernable on the moor.110 The paper considers the pervasiveness of discordant noises in a natural landscape, all the more noticeable in one with the ‘undisturbed peace and grandeur . . . age-long solitude and integrity of the moor’.111 The unexpectedness and intrusiveness of military noise is considered but is included as a component of the Dartmoor soundscape, discordant but in many ways in keeping with the challenging nature of the moor, much like the military itself.

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Chapter 3

Castlemartin

Castlemartin, sitting on the south-westernmost point of Pembrokeshire, as opposed to Dartmoor’s elevation over the rest of the Devon countryside, shares Dartmoor’s situation within a national park, a distinction among the military sites looked at in this book. This provides an important context. For Dartmoor, the legislative and protest fallout of that context has been explored. For Castlemartin, the physical implications of its national park setting come to the fore. The chapter looks at how, for the military, the surrounding national park has absorbed the impact of the area’s enduring popularity among tourists. In contrast to Dartmoor, the national park has contained – to an extent – the recreational needs of visitors to the area, keeping the training area an essentially military preserve. It also describes how, for conservationists working with the military at Castlemartin, the national park protects the site environmentally, from the impact of too many people. The national park, and its many sites of interest, diverts attention away from the ecologically significant sites on the range, allowing sustained conservation projects and close-range observations of otherwise inaccessible sites. This chapter also suggests that the Pembrokeshire tourist board finds it difficult to place the military base in the tourist landscape, despite its location in the midst of the national park. There is a significant absence of the military site in tourist literature. While conservationists and the military have increasingly publicized the conservation benefits of the site via, among other sources, Sanctuary magazine, tourist information about the ecological status of the military site, or the military training that takes places there, remains minimal. Access has been a major issue at Castlemartin, as it has been at the other MoD sites. Here, it is developed as a theme. Situated in the midst of the only coastal national park in the United Kingdom, and a popular tourist area, Castlemartin is an island of inaccessibility within a landscape criss-crossed with walks, paths, trails and teashops. Unsurprisingly, there has been pressure on the military to open up their training estate for recreational

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use, to better match its national park status. This chapter contrasts the struggles by civilian groups concerned with access and recreation opportunities on military lands with civilian involvement in conservation efforts and Sanctuary magazine. It recognizes the instrumental role civilians have played in shaping military-environmentalism, from within the organization through the military-sponsored conservation groups and magazine, to the no-less significant role of outsiders who have protested and pressured the MoD, particularly over access to military lands. I suggest that access and conservation have not been discrete issues on military lands, but are in fact closely tied. In the past, restricted access has limited the damaging aspects of a large human presence on the landscape, inadvertently protecting habitats and allowing the nature found on military lands to flourish (relatively), undisturbed. Then, as the military slowly greened and awoke to the environmental significance of their training areas, the conservation worth of the site has been used to argue against proposed increases in public access, becoming a valuable tool in maintaining the pre-existing training environment. Arguments of the environmental importance of the site were used alongside those of personal safety by the military at Castlemartin to argue against rock-climbers who wished to access the cliffs of the range. While highlighting the historical use of access as a discursive weapon between military and civilian recreational bodies, this chapter does not reduce the conservation work in place at the range to a simply exploitable tool used to protect the military’s capacity to train. I use Sanctuary magazine in an in-depth study of the relationship between civilian conservationists and the military that permits them to access and study the site. It is looked at using Woodward’s concepts of ‘crater-as-habitats’ and ‘paternalism in land management’, and analysed as the primary way of articulating military-environmentalism beyond the MoD. However, I suggest that the conservation work and its documentation in Sanctuary paints a more complex story than that of a mere military mouthpiece, with unflattering information included alongside the success stories to depict an accurate and realistic reflection of the efforts of conservationists, and the military landscape they work on. Used throughout this study, as a source of information and expression of military-environmentalism in its own right, in this chapter Castlemartin is critically examined through its presentation in the magazine. This approach allows for an extended discussion of the role Sanctuary plays in militaryenvironmentalism, but also reflects the difficulties of accessing and experiencing military landscapes. For those non-military persons excluded from

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militarized zones, it is other places, like the MoD conservation magazine, that must be turned to for information. This chapter discusses how this information is presented, and how it shapes our knowledge, understanding and experience of Castlemartin, following Woodward’s argument that discursive practices, as well as material practices, are central to military land use.1 This chapter addresses Davis’s proposition that militaries erase their activities from the landscape as well as the histories of former inhabitants, while simultaneously constructing the presence of environmental values. The absence of the military from tourist information fits Davis’s hypothesis, but Castlemartin does not fit this model entirely. As the chapter explains, the military presence remains visible at the site. This chapter expands on the role of access in the environmental history of the UK DE. It joins the rise of military-environmentalism, and the relationships between military and civilians in landscapes often defined by human eviction and loss, as a central theme in the greening of the MoD. First, however, the arrival of the military at Castlemartin, and its effects on landscape and community will be discussed. Claims that the military presence has shaped the site may not fly against the strong winds that truly mould the contours of the cliff tops. This chapter argues, however, that the military presence has indeed protected the area and kept it clear for natural forces to make their mark. Furthermore, the military management of Castlemartin shapes our knowledge, perception and experience of the site, a responsibility that has taken the MoD decades to realize, and respond, to.

Castlemartin training estate At 2,429 hectares Castlemartin is the largest of the DEs that comprise DTE Pembrokeshire.2 It is used by regular and territorial army, cadet forces and some overseas forces, but is best known for being one of the two principal armoured fighting vehicle (AFV) gunnery ranges in the United Kingdom (the other is Lulworth, Dorset). According to the MoD, Castlemartin is ‘the only UK army range normally available for armoured units for directfire live gunnery exercises and associated manoeuvres, with both on-land impact areas and a large offshore safety area’.3 This means that it is the UK’s primary tank training area. The coastline of this training area is particularly valuable for live-firing purposes. Firing into open water does not have the impact issues of the equivalent of firing into land, requires less land and does not occur as close to residential areas.

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However, the Castlemartin coastline is prized beyond its training capacities. The 16 km of coastline within the training area continues from the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park that lies on either side. Designated a national park in 1952, Pembrokeshire Coast National Park is one of three national parks in Wales (along with the Brecon Beacons and Snowdonia). National parks in the United Kingdom have two statutory purposes, as set out by the Environment Act of 1995: the first is to ‘conserve and enhance the natural beauty, wildlife and heritage of the national park’; the second, ‘to promote opportunities for public enjoyment and understanding of the special qualities of the national park’.4 Although the military area has its own aims, rules and uses, it is not excluded from the national park’s purposes, a status that has called into question the very validity of army training areas within national parks.5 Additional to its protected national park status, 25 per cent of Castlemartin range is a designated SSSI, including the whole of the coastline. Designed to ‘preserve our natural heritage for future generations’ at carefully chosen sites, by ‘supporting plants and animals that find it hard to survive in the wider countryside’, SSSI designation brings with it laws and protocols that have to be followed to ensure environmental well-being, that, again, the military is not exempt from.6 As well as stunning visual landscape features, Castlemartin hosts a variety of nationally important flora and fauna. Below the tide line lie intertidal rock communities, including rock-boring piddock (bivalve molluscs, similar to clams) communities and the nationally scarce seaweed, Gigartina pistillata.7 In the water, Atlantic grey seals and otters breed. The cliffs themselves are home to one of the largest concentration of breeding seabirds in the United Kingdom, including guillemots, razorbills and kittiwakes. It is one of the main Welsh breeding sites for the chough, which has brought the further designation of Special Protection Area. Above the cliffs lies maritime grassland, a broad belt of herb-rich, low coastal grass designated to be ‘of the highest importance in Europe.’ Greater and lesser horseshoe bats feed over the grassland, no doubt on the hairy dragonflies and scarce blue-tailed damselflies that emerge in early summer. These are just a selection of the many plants and animals thriving on the Castlemartin Range, as with other military training areas, seemingly oblivious to the movements of tanks and troops around the base. Although evidently a rich biome, it was not the abundance of wildlife at Castlemartin that attracted the military to the site but the lack of dense population and development of the area. As with sites such as Salisbury Plain, Sennybridge and Dartmoor, there is an openness to the landscape quality at Castlemartin that suits the needs of military training. Although not the

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challenging inhospitability of the Dartmoor moorland or Welsh uplands, nor the huge expanses of Salisbury Plain, the cliff tops of Castlemartin in the far south-west of Wales offered a training area suitably distant from large settlements. Prior to the military takeover, the land was worked by a community of small-scale tenant farmers, often families who had worked the same land for generations. In this part of pre-war Wales, farming methods had remained largely low-intensive. Machinery was employed, for sowing, harvesting and threshing crops, but horses were still an important part of farm life, providing muscle and transport, not yet outpaced totally by the engine.8 Unlike the communities at Imber and Epynt, there is no evidence that Castlemartin was a community in decline. While distant from major centres of commerce, farming sustained the community. At the outbreak of the Second World War, the new urgency for a productive agriculture to sustain an island at war, if anything, reassured rural areas of their significance and security. While the military was expressing interest in parts of Wales for training purposes – at Epynt (1939), and the Preseli Hills to the north of Pembrokeshire – by all accounts, the arrival of the army at Castlemartin was a shock. Reported reactions to the incoming military follow a similar pattern to other evicted communities studied here. Sightings of strangers in uniform assessing the land sparked rumours, wilfully dismissed by most; notice to quit was met with disbelief, carrying on as usual, animals bred and crops sown, as the seasonal cycles of agriculture did not hesitate to entertain notions of change of circumstance. Finally, the arrival of men and machines forced an acknowledgement of a new reality beyond change or challenge. Farm sales were duly organized, relatives called to help remove the objects of daily life, and goodbyes said, as the community was broken up and ‘relocated’. The Parish of Castlemartin lost three-quarters of its land to the military, and its population fell from 485 to 135.9 The experience was no doubt as traumatic as the upheavals at Epynt and Imber. However, unlike these places, there is not the equivalent rich local history of the military arrival to draw upon. The requisition of these sites inspired the retelling of events by those involved, in the form of local histories and memoirs that in their very being signal the desire to keep alive those communities and memories, and maintain a non-military existence of those places.10 At Castlemartin, the vicar, H. Whitby James, was compelled to record the names of the farms in the seized area, ‘in view of the fact that so many of the farms have been taken over, and are no longer the homes of parishoners.’11 In his notes James includes the line, that in September 1939

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the Parish of Castlemartin was chosen, ‘in spite of strong protest to be the headquarters of the Armoured Fighting Vehicle Range . . . ’ However, protest at the military seizure of land never reached a level of public awareness or debate as it did at Epynt or Imber. Multiple factors explain this, the outbreak of war and sense of duty not least among them. Unlike Brecon, Pembrokeshire was not a strongly Welsh nationalist area. The proposed aerodrome at Preseli to the north (a rural beauty spot, like Castlemartin) drew strong protests rooted in Welsh nationalism (Presili was a Welsh language stronghold and seen as a ‘cradle’ of pure Welsh culture) and ultimately a successful outcome when the military withdrew from the area after the Second World War. However, Castlemartin did not attract the attention of nationalists, or other antimilitary protestors. As a result, the protest literature so forceful in its wording and plentiful in quantity at Epynt and the levels of protest and media coverage at Imber have no equivalent at Castlemartin. We must conclude that the ‘strong protests’ Rev James refers to stayed within the confines of the community, riling congregations and distracting farm workers but remaining undocumented and absent from wider discourses. Castlemartin also differs somewhat from other requisitioned communities in that there did not exist the sustained belief among those evicted that they would regain their homes once war had passed. Mostly tenants of the Stackpole Estate that sold the land to the military, eviction meant moving on to other landlords in new parishes.12 The vicar’s notes act as a record for posterity of who lived where, recording the names of farms in the acceptance that they would soon be lost. As the war continued, remaining residents of the much-reduced community at Castlemartin were confident of victory. On 3 January 1944, they formed the ‘Castlemartin and Warren Welcome Home Fund’, which by organizing whist drives, dances and concerts raised at total of £250.13s.7d to distribute to returning servicemen.13 It is notable that by the end of the war the attentions of the Castlemartiners turned to the future, rather than the past. Any community organization was with the welfare of returning combatants in mind, supporting the war effort rather than reigniting conflict with the MoD itself. There were no sustained calls for properties to be restored by the military to their previous uses and tenants. The military base, established so quickly, soon became a permanent feature at Castlemartin. It remains one of the MoD’s most heavily used and highly prized bases. As with most other military landholdings, security fencing and warning notices indicate to a passers-by that a different landscape – one potentially hostile – lies beyond the well-maintained and demarcated boundaries. For

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non-military, information about the landscape that lies beyond the fences cannot easily be found at the site itself. Instead, it is to other sources we must turn, like Sanctuary. An important source for any UK DE, Castlemartin is noticeably present, contributing feature articles on aspects of its wildlife, landscape and heritage in nearly every issue. Through wildlife photography and feature articles, Sanctuary lets the reader – to some extent – inside the fence.

Sanctuary Researching the militarized landscapes of the UK DE, one resource I have turned to again and again has been Sanctuary, MoD’s nature conservation magazine. Launched in 1976 as the lasting material expression of the MoD’s newly stated commitment to conservation, and publishing regularly ever since, Sanctuary is an archive that has recorded the changing manifestations and affirmations of military-environmentalism. Sanctuary was initiated to both encourage military personnel to become active in conservation, and reach out to a potentially interested, but as yet unconnected, public. It used photographs taken by soldiers, and featured articles written by amateur conservationists within the military alongside members of external conservation and wildlife groups, both amateur and expert. The first ‘bulletin’ introduced the new conservation officer and the future prospects for conservation by the MoD. By the issue of bulletin 2 the scope of the publication had already widened to feature an article on deer and land management, a report on entomological research taking place on MoD land, a history of Ditton Park14 and an article on conservation and access. This mix of general environmental interest stories and more detailed reports became typical of Sanctuary’s content. As interest in environmental issues grew so did the size and quality of the magazine. It has evolved from a modest pamphlet into a high-gloss magazine of 96 pages,15 with impressive wildlife photography and well-written features on a range of conservation projects and wildlife stories not only in UK military sites but also from overseas bases such as Belize, Cyprus and the Chagos islands.16 An article in Sanctuary automatically raises the profile of an issue, informing not only those within the MoD who read the magazine – soldiers, officers and DE employees – but also those external to the military with an interest in conservation – experts and organizations such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), and individual birdwatchers, walkers, farmers and those living on or near military land.

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Although early issues were basic pamphlets with grainy black and white photos, the core mission of the magazine was made clear from the outset. An illustration of a door knocker in the form of a deer’s head graced the front cover. An explanation of its significance followed on the first page: This journal has as its emblem the sanctuary door knocker which took the form of an animal’s head. Rights of sanctuary date back to Old Testament times but are particularly identified with the Medieval era when debtors and other fugitives from the law could seek protection from arrest in places of worship. The right of sanctuary was abolished in 1540 because of blatant abuse. We put a new interpretation on this ancient tradition by offering sanctuary to all forms of flora and fauna on MOD property.17 To this pledge was added the intention that: all the many individuals who now take part in the work of studying and safeguarding the environments at Defence establishments up and down the country, for the most part by voluntary effort and in their own spare time, will see something of their interests and endeavours reflected in these pages. The stated purpose of Sanctuary was ‘to spread the news of conservation activities throughout the MoD and to act as a medium whereby advice can be given on a wide range of conservation and environmental matters.’18 These have remained the guiding principles of the magazine through its expansion. Sanctuary today, as in 1976, acts as a way for those in the MoD who are interested in nature and environment to explain conservation work happening on DE. It offers a chance to engage with the outside public, be it those who are already active within conservation groups on military lands, or those who are unaware of the conservation aspect of military training. By providing a place to publish findings, exchange ideas and data, Sanctuary encourages studies of military land by experts in many fields. And, naturally, it records and promotes the many environmental success stories occurring on military lands. As an expression of militaryenvironmentalism, but also an encouraging factor, Sanctuary has a dual role. As a forum for personnel to actively contribute to, and for interested public to connect with – offering times of meetings of conservation groups, contact details of environmental officers, organized walk times and so on – it is both a reflector and generator of military-environmental discourse.

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Since the core values of the magazine have remained stable, the development of Sanctuary’s content reflects the development in acceptance of environmental attitudes by the MoD. No subsequent changes in the direction of environmental policy are responsible for Sanctuary’s growth and success, nor is it down to major changes in the content or outlook of the magazine, although it has grown steadily glossier through its run. As the MoD has gradually greened, the magazine can claim more contributors and a greater interested audience. Sanctuary in this chapter will be the guide to the greening of the MoD. As with any guide, the contents are a good place to start. Castlemartin has a regular and prominent presence among training areas covered by the magazine. An article highlighting a particular aspect of its wildlife, geology or archaeology appears often in early issues, increasing to a feature in nearly every issue in the 1990s and the present decade. While every issue has its notes from ‘Around the regions’ in which bases give short conservation updates and news, every conservation feature of Castlemartin has been given, over the years, the extended exposure of a long feature. While Castlemartin occurs regularly in the Sanctuary index, Sanctuary itself provides an index of what the MoD sees as the key environmental features of the Castlemartin range. Flora and bumblebees, dragonflies and grasshoppers, the Castlemartin cliffs and sea shores, have all been written about in the magazine.19 Read them all consecutively, without the real time gap between editions, and the environmental worth of Castlemartin is almost overwhelming. It leaves the reader in no doubt of the environmental benefits of military training at this site. Rachel Woodward, in her study of military landscapes, suggests that by focusing on the close-range individual stories of protected plants and animals, the MoD directs attention away from the bigger picture of military land use that, she argues, ‘tells a more critical story about military activities and their impacts on the natural environment’.20 Sanctuary offers little analysis or comment on the place of the MoD within the wider community or area, beyond mentions of volunteers involved in conservation groups. While deemed by Woodward to be less ‘critical’, the small-scale nature stories published in Sanctuary collectively inform the reader of the effects of military training on this particular site, spanning a period of over 30 years (1976–present), for a wide variety of flora and fauna. For an environmental historian, and indeed anyone interested in the environmental consequences of military training, these stories are critical. Nonetheless, the absence of coverage within the magazine as to the relationship between the base and the world outside its fences, and the lack of any analysis of

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military-environmental practices with regard to other environmental and political questions, does highlight the specific and focused content of the magazine. But as the primary outlet for stories of military-environmentalism from the ground up (i.e., as told by those involved in, or observing, conservation projects and the general environmental conditions of the sites), Sanctuary has a key role in the formation and presentation of the military-environmentalist discourse. From those little wildlife stories, great themes can grow. Articles on Castlemartin routinely stress the uniqueness of the area. ‘Nowhere else in Britain,’ we are told, ‘are there such extensive carboniferous limestone sea cliffs like those of the Castlemartin range.’21 The unique and precious landscape qualities are linked to the military presence, protecting them from intensive land uses that would threaten the ecosystems otherwise flourishing under military protection. For example, ‘the limited agricultural use of the Range since the Second World War has ensured that reclamation has not truncated the wide and continuous zones of sea cliff vegetation.’22 The military presence has shaped the landscape. Such language has been seized on by critics of the military. For Woodward, ‘an analysis of military environmentalist discourses rests upon an unpacking of apparently innocuous or neutral-sounding statements about military activities on the defence estate, with a view to understanding their wider meaning and intent.’23 The language the MoD uses to describe the DE, and particularly the choice of words used to emphasize the military protective role (‘paternalism in land management’) and the paradox of military lands as nature reserves (‘crater-as-habitat’), indicates for Woodward an intent to reinforce a discourse that ‘naturalises the army presence in the countryside’.24 Woodward looks to Sanctuary, alongside other military publications from press releases to public information brochures, to Declarations of Intent produced in tandem with environmental bodies, for supportive evidence. She finds statements from publicity brochures in particular that support her argument that neutral military language can shield more forceful machinations that serve to reinforce the military presence in the countryside. For example, one army publicity brochure claims: ‘any disturbance to the physical fabric of the training lands impacts not only on the natural environment but also the effectiveness of training. Successful maintenance is therefore crucial to the needs of both environment and training.’ In Woodward’s analysis, this discourse ‘establishes environmental protection as a legitimate military activity, and as compatible with the requirements of military training.’25 Furthermore, it indicates that military activities and

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conservation are held in equivalent regard. For Woodward, the ‘possibility that environmental protection and preparation for war might reside in fundamentally opposed moral orders is denied, removed from debate.’26 While Woodward is concerned with the wider ramifications of such a conclusion for land use and conservation, I would like to turn back to her suggestion that Sanctuary is a key outlet for expressions of military-environmentalism that act as pretexts for intentful military discourses. As the MoD’s conservation magazine it clearly supports the notion that military training and conservation are compatible, and my readings of the entire run of the magazine have confirmed that its content remains true to its original purpose of spreading news of conservation activities. But as Woodward is right to highlight, it is more than simply a passive product of military-environmentalism. Its presentation of military conservation activities to the world beyond the training base boundaries remains the primary method in which the MoD articulates its vision of military-environmentalism. On the face of it, as a MoD publication, Sanctuary offers a vehicle for expression over which the MoD has complete control. Since it documents the (mostly) positive environmental stories coming from military lands, it is a target for those who suspect it to be a mouthpiece for military justification of land use. By its regular inclusion of ‘crater-as-habitat’ stories, it perpetuates the discourse in which military training is environmentally compatible. But in reading and analysing the many articles on Castlemartin in the magazine through its history, the purposeful presentation of the military as protectors of habitat, or overt justification of military land use, does not occur regularly or forcefully enough to justify the argument that Sanctuary is less a conservation magazine, more a military public relations (PR) vehicle. Sensitive to the potential capacity of the magazine to espouse empty sound-bites promoting the military and its environmental record, a thorough reading of the magazine nonetheless leaves one with the impression of genuine and sustained conservation work at the hands of tireless individuals, not least from the regular ‘Around the Regions’ feature that gives updates of continuing projects and wildlife population strengths. The news here is not always positive. Castlemartin Range, for example, experienced ‘mixed fortunes’ in 2007.27 The choughs fledged 41 chicks from 13 nest sites, the highest number ever recorded there, and guillemot and razorbill numbers were higher than in 2006. But, ‘on the negative side, kittiwakes and fulmar records were half those of previous years’. This same year saw badgers continue as a ‘huge problem’ for the Bulford conservation group (SPTA), with their regional report that they ‘continue to dig and destroy more of the area . . . this is disappointing for those who have

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put in so much work into the protective measures, and raises concerns for the future safety of the scheduled ancient monuments.’28 After an ‘awful’ 2006, for the owls and raptors of SPTA, ‘2007 had to be better, and in fact it was really quite good especially for the barn owls’, reported Imber conservation group.29 Reports such as these reflect the entire year’s work done by the conservation groups at each base, often highlighting what work needs to be done as much as that which has been achieved. They speak of conservation awards, successful breeding schemes and plans for the year ahead, but also of causes for concern, disappointing results and bad news, including deaths of conservation group members and range staff. While its glossy publication and appealing wildlife photography may suggest that on the surface, Sanctuary has all the hallmarks of a slick PR-led publication, its content reveals a far more detailed survey of military lands in tune with the conservation activities on the ground that is willing to discuss problems alongside the successes. The articles ‘Choughs on the Castlemartin Range’ and ‘Greater horseshoe bats and the Castlemartin Range’ are typical of Sanctuary feature articles that focus on a particular species at a specific site.30 They detail the health and characteristics of the species, and connect it with its habitat. For example: bats from the maternity roosts are attracted to the range by outstanding feeding habitat, there being extensive areas of grazed herb and invertebrate-rich cliff top grassland, heath, sand dunes, downland and rough pasture, connected with patches of scrub, hedgerows and woodland. 31 Instead of explicitly referencing military conservation efforts, the articles suggest it is down to low intensity land use and land management techniques that create the necessary habitats for species to thrive. One asks the direct question, ‘Why do choughs make their home on the Range?’, and answers it as succinctly: ‘Within Pembrokeshire, and no doubt elsewhere, Choughs may be regarded as a symbol of a pastoral, coastal landscape, where traditional management of the land is in harmony with the features that make it a very special place.’32 The place is credited with being the key factor in the choughs’ success. But, while the article does not explicitly name the MoD as being behind the ‘traditional’ land management of the area, it implies that it is the ‘special’ qualities of the army range that sets this habitat apart. In Sanctuary, the MoD is sometimes portrayed as playing a passive role in the management of landscape and habitats, but it is nonetheless presented

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as the facilitator for conservation work and habitat creation, tying in with Woodward’s idea of a tripartite division of ‘khaki conservation’. Alongside ‘crater-as-habitat’ and administrative rationalism, Woodward identifies ‘paternalism in land management’ as a feature of khaki conservation. She argues that it ‘portrays the natural environment of the DE, especially the large training areas, as a direct consequence of specific land management practices.’33 In Sanctuary, this is an accepted feature of the articles addressing UK training estates. It may be implicit, such as in ‘Choughs on the Castlemartin Range’, or overt, like the article discussing ‘A Sustainable Approach to Military Training’.34 Here, Duncan Glen, Conservation Management Coordinator for Landmarc, asserts that: military stewardship of the training estate has awarded it protection from the ravages of other forms of land use and careful management has led to the retention of habitats and species which have been lost in other parts of the country. Woodward flags statements like these as discursive tools of ‘khaki conservation’. In Sanctuary, military training areas as rich habitats are an accepted, and repeated, fact for those working in conservation on the DE. Woodward agrees, to an extent, that the role of the military in preserving landscapes from other change is: no exaggeration . . . Military use blocks other land uses. In particular, it is widely argued that by blocking intensive arable agriculture and extensive coniferous plantation, military occupation has, by default, succeeded in preserving and protecting habitats and environments now valued for their environmental and landscape quality.35 ‘Paternalism in land-management’ is deployed by the military, she argues, to turn stories of conservation by serendipity into an active land management strategy. I agree, to an extent, with Woodward’s analysis here, although I also see this change as reflective of the greening of the MoD at large, whereby real conservation-by-serendipity was gradually replaced with an evermore active and environmentally aware land management strategy, in reality and not just in stories or PR material. Sanctuary contains material to defend the ‘paternalism in land management’ argument, such as the Glen article, and to dispute it, like Haycock’s and Donovan’s description of a much

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more passive military role. This range indicates that, far from espousing one particular preconceived message, Sanctuary reflects the opinions of its contributors, who may, like Glen, subscribe to a strong military stewardship model of land management, or, like Haycock and Donovan, as conservationists working on military training areas, suggest that conservation is enabled simply by protecting and securing pre-existing habitats. The articles discussed above, ‘Choughs of the Castlemartin Range’ and ‘Greater Horseshoe Bats of the Castlemartin Range’, were written by Bob Haycock, Pembrokeshire warden for the Countryside Council for Wales (CCW), and Jack Donovan, vice-president of Dyfed Wildlife Trust. At the time of writing, both were members of the Castlemartin Range Recording and Advisory Group. This should not be overlooked. First, it shows that Sanctuary is an open forum for non-military contributors. Secondly, it shows that a Recording and Advisory group exists, whereby members of wildlife and conservation bodies – often practicing experts in their fields – contribute to the running of the range. This challenges the assumption that the management of military training areas is a rigid, top-down hierarchy. Although through experience of researching military bases I have found that the personalities of the base commandants have a direct effect on the availability of information and access (and, indeed, Castlemartin has proved most difficult to gain access and interviews), in the formation of land management plans, and attitudes towards conservation in everyday use of the ranges, there is an open exchange of ideas and skills between the military and contributing conservationists, that ultimately benefits the wildlife and habitats of the range, and is reflected in the pages of Sanctuary. Another recurring theme in the magazine is not only how abundant military lands are, and how they came to be this way (the protective military presence), but more practically, how to keep them so. At Castlemartin: Spring Squill (Scilla verna), a diminuitive coastal lily, is especially abundant forming wonderful blue carpets in late spring, and there are large populations of Green-winged orchids (Orchis morio). The maritime grassland zone and the open areas of the heath are exceptionally rich in species . . . as one moves away from the salt spray, woody plants are able to prosper, and maritime heath gives way to scrub.36 Great detail is given to the types of flora found on the many micro-habitats across the range, setting them in wider context by noting their rarity and national significance. However, the careful monitoring and maintenance

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of the area is also described. Where a rare lichen, Fulgensia fulgens , grows on Brownslade Barrows, ‘its biggest population has been marked out to prevent any disturbance by military vehicles’, and ‘constant grazing by rabbits and sheep is of great benefit to this rarity and the dunes in general’.37 ‘Colonization’ by scrub is a ‘constant threat’, but is held in check by grazing animals and the efforts of range staff, who ‘recently bulldozed and cleared most of this pernicious species’.38 This more active military role contrasts the more passive role identified by Haycock and Donovan. Here, military skills and machinery are utilized for conservation ends, although the clearance of scrub also benefits training by keeping the range clear for troop and tank movements. Restoration of a sand quarry is underway to diversify the dune stack habitats. Documenting the involvement of the military in maintaining and creating these habitats acknowledges their efforts, rather than deliberately glorifying them. At the end of the piece comes a reminder that ‘such intervention is essential if the Range’s superb cliffs and dunes are to continue to have such a diverse flower-rich hinterland.’39 The emphasis on the need for continued conservation efforts is as much a directive to DE, which coordinate the day-to-day running of the ranges, and to fellow conservationists, as a congratulatory piece on work done so far. By reporting the activities of military troops deployed on conservation duties, and DE staff whose jobs are to ensure the environmental and archaeological health of the range, Sanctuary does establish environmental protection as a legitimate military activity, and one that is compatible with military training. Woodward, concerned with the ramifications of this as a discourse, challenges the MoD’s purported environmental credentials. As an entity with violence, warfare and (environmental, and other forms of) destruction at its core, Woodward sees the military as an essentially anti-environmental organization: ‘military activities are environmentally destructive, in that virtually all military activities have an environmental impact. The difference is in the degree of damage and the possibilities of remediation.’40 This belief has influenced Woodward’s own reading of military landscapes, diverting her from a full analysis of the ‘other’ side of military-environmentalism that is far removed from the realm of discourse: the habitats and wildlife, the military environment itself. Woodward’s Military Geographies is framed by her position as an outsider.41 This in turn informs her experiences and readings of military landscapes. She is interested in how those who live and work on military landscapes view them, too. She devotes a chapter in her book to ‘Military Landscapes’, which is, she describes, ‘about the military imagination of the

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landscape’.42 It considers first how the individual soldier is trained to read the land in particular ways (field craft), and then how the collective armed forces imagine and represent the landscape. But between her own experiences, and her analyses of military imaginings of the landscape, there is no room for others like conservationists, scientists and researchers who, like the army, experience the landscape directly but who, like Woodward, are not involved in military training. These groups – who publish their findings and describe their experiences in Sanctuary – offer a different interpretation of military landscapes. With neither a military nor anti-military agenda at the fore but rather an environmental and conservation bias, they interpret the landscape in ways that have not yet been fully addressed. It is the value of the landscape itself, rather than the activities that take place upon it, and the consequences for wildlife and habitat, rather than wider sociopolitical implications, that dominate this sub-discourse. In Sanctuary, and other military publications on training and the environment, according to Woodward ‘the possibility that environmental protection and preparation for war might reside in fundamentally opposed moral orders is denied, removed from debate.’43 However, it is difficult to equate Woodward’s claim of a moral absence at the heart of military-environmentalism with the clearly abundant presence of ecosystems and diverse habitats on military lands. Military training is compatible with environmental protection, as Sanctuary documents, however surprising this may be. It is not a mouthpiece, carefully presenting ‘crater-as-habitat’ stories to purposefully sustain a discourse. Seeing it as such undermines the work of the ecologists and environmentalists whose work is published in the magazine. While in other areas there is evidence of a more political side of the MoD at work to maximize the positive publicity potential of military-environmentalism (see Chapter 5), Sanctuary remains true to its name. It is a place where experts and amateurs, joined by knowledge of and enthusiasm for their subjects, can return to the essence of their interests: discussing, informing and in turn learning about environments and their conservations – even if this does occur on military lands. Looking at Sanctuary over the course of its publication, the eagerness and commitment of those studying military lands in the late 1970s is matched by those continuing the work today. What has changed is the MoD’s abilities to support and accommodate its interests, and the MoD’s willingness to publicly publish its findings. The discourse of military lands as vital, healthy habitats (as opposed to destroyed wastelands) has been

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consistently presented by Sanctuary since its launch after Nugent’s recommendations to better align military land use with environmental, heritage and recreational needs. More than simply a reflection of the greening of the MoD, Sanctuary has also acted as an agent, bringing together the people responsible for monitoring military lands – who defended the military’s presence on them to the Nugent committee – and spreading their research to a wider audience. The general message that military training is compatible with nature conservation and environmental protection, and more specific sub-stories that highlight the ways the MoD is working in partnership with other organizations to increase access and recreational opportunities as well as conservation, has been picked up by independent media. In Pembrokeshire, local lifestyle magazines such as Pembrokeshire County Living have in recent years run feature articles on the ‘surprising nature’ of Castlemartin range.44 In ‘On the Range’, journalist Debbie James is shown around the base by Commandant Colonel Johnny Rogers. She introduces it as a heavily used area that ‘sprawls over 6,000 acres of countryside’ as ‘sixty-two tonne tanks frequently rumble across the range and soldiers are put through their paces as they prepare for the day when they will be in real combat situations.’ The military landscape as a scene for destruction and damage is explicitly set up, only to be confounded by revelations of biodiversity and environmental protection. ‘For most of us the words “military firing range” conjure up images of barbed wire fences and desolate acres with rusting hulks of metal that act as targets,’ James suggests, evoking both the reader’s imagination and the destructive militarized landscape myth. However, she reveals after her visit, ‘the truth behind the security fence at Castlemartin couldn’t be more different . . . the result [of military ownership] is a haven for wildlife and vast tracts of land that have been left for pasture.’45 In part a journalistic reflex for an appealing format for a story, James’s exposure of the surprising nature of military bases also conforms to the more scholarly presentation of the military’s paradoxical ability to protect nature while training to destroy. While this link is often found in Sanctuary, it is usually within wider discussions of particular places, spaces and species and their responses to land management and conservation efforts. In Sanctuary, nature is afforded more agency, responding robustly to essentially being left alone for years, and now more carefully monitored, understood and discussed within the military and the magazine. In articles such as ‘On the Range’ with a wide non-military readership, in which the information regarding the base is

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sourced from MoD staff working on site, a more active role for the military is presented. Colonel Rogers explains that: very rigorously every year we identify the [environmental] objectives we want to achieve. We put money towards those objectives if money is what is needed and most important of all we make certain that all the works that need to be done can be fitted in around the military firing programme.46 It is a proactive approach, which also positions the army as benefactor. Rogers’ message is clear. ‘We are really lucky in the army to be able to train here,’ he says. ‘This place is unique, extremely special, and in my view it is that way because the army is here.’ In the same article, conservation and archaeological experts who work with the MoD at Castlemartin are also quoted, and their contributions make an interesting comparison with Rogers’ views. Bob Haycock (see above) explains the value of the military presence to the environment, and echoes Rogers’ insistence that it is down to the military that the area is environmentally well off: ‘Had it not become a military range in the late 1930s’, he says, ‘then it would have gone through the agricultural revolution and been intensively managed.’ While Rogers stressed the involvement of the military in conservation on the base, Haycock suggests a different reason for the compatibility between military training and the environment. ‘There have been no chemical fertilizers used here, so it is semi-natural, it’s a brilliant area for wildlife . . . it is very difficult to find areas as large as this that have not been modified.’47In media interpretations of militaryenvironmentalism, more emphasis has been given to the active military presence on the land, than the consequence of keeping other forces – agriculture, urbanization, tourism and recreation – out. Sanctuary reminds the reader that it is –or was for many years – down to serendipity that military training benefited the lands it took place on.48 The military presence protected the landscape, simply by keeping other presences and shaping forces out. But although this may have been conservation by serendipity, it was conservation nonetheless, and was recognized as such by conservation groups observing military land. Since the MoD became aware of the beneficial publicity potential of military-environmental stories, coverage of them outside Sanctuary (which remains a source of informed and balanced appraisals of military conservation) tends towards a reliance on press releases and sound bites extolling the virtues of military land ownership,

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thus reinforcing the ‘paternalistic’ aspect of ‘khaki conservation’ in the public realm. Through the pages of Sanctuary, it is the story of the absence of others in the landscape, enforced by the military presence, which comes across most clearly as creating the conditions for nature to flourish on military lands. The role the MoD went on to play in conservation is secondary to its protective role in that, had the military not been in possession of the training areas, their wildlife and habitats would most likely have suffered the effects of agriculture, tourism, industry and urban expansion to the point of not being worth conserving. This story underlies others of military-environmentalism, providing literally the landscapes upon which environmental measures could then be enacted. It is a story that Cole identifies in his study of SENTA, which was requisitioned in 1940. At SENTA the message is displayed for visitors in explanatory text at the Garth viewpoint, which states that: with its agriculturally unimproved wet meadows at the bottom of the stream valleys and its acidic grasslands and peat bogs clothing the ridge tops, the training area has been little affected by the recent agricultural and forestry developments which have changed so much of the rest of Wales.49 Cole sees this preservation of landscapes lost elsewhere as a wilderness narrative, drawing parallels between the mission of radical environmentalists Earth First! to ‘withdraw huge areas as inviolate natural sanctuaries from the depredations of modern industry and technology . . . that can be restored to a semblance of natural condition’ and that of the military as self-professed saviours of the landscape.50 Cole ties this story of a military presence with that of civilian absence, as the histories of those evicted from SENTA are missing from such texts, found at viewing points and in the former Conservation Centre at the site. At Castlemartin, the narrative of the tenants forced out by the purchase of Stackpole estate land by the military is not visible but neither is that of military greening. In contrast to SENTA, which encourages visitors with the provision of a (formerly Conservation, now) Visitor Centre, view points and the Epynt Way bridleway, Castlemartin offers no comparable schemes or information. The history of the Castlemartin environment has to be sought out in the pages of Sanctuary. Castlemartin also contravenes Davis’s suggestion that militaries write themselves out of the landscape, for while visitors to the base find minimal information about the environment there,

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they are provided with a viewing platform that allows them to watch the day’s tank movements. The view also takes in the Castlemartin coastline and that of the surrounding national park, but it is for a view of the tanks that the platform is provided. By the 1990s the military-environmentalist discourse was fi rmly established in the day-to-day running of Castlemartin, and in its presentation to the public. Its status as a haven, for birdlife in particular, was well-established. After the public discussion of military land use that preceded the Nugent Report, and following the committee’s recommendations to the MoD to take seriously the environmental consequences and its responsibilities as a landholder, Castlemartin’s appearances in the local press (a gauge for local consciousness and feelings) in the late 1970s repeatedly reinforced the new environmental awareness. 51 The base was re-presented as a nature reserve. Birds found sanctuary, soldiers interacted with their environment, and cooperated with scientists and environmentalists (or ‘boffins’, as the Western Telegraph dubbed them). This pattern of media coverage continued into the late 1980s, when an article titled ‘Home on the range for the great round-up’ reported the annual movement of thousands of sheep and cattle from the high Preseli hills to the north to winter at the warmer coastal climes of Castlemartin, until they were removed again in April so that live-firing could resume. 52 Not only does this stress the willingness of the MoD to work with farmers and the local community (‘the round-up is very much a matter of all hands on deck for the farmers, who are grateful for help from range staff’). It places Castlemartin at the centre of seasonal shifts and old agricultural traditions, naturalizing their presence in the countryside (to borrow a phrase from Woodward). 53 While the movement of livestock from the hills down to warmer pastures is a tradition going back hundreds of years, the practice of moving them to Castlemartin itself is stated in the article as dating from 1948 as a response to devastating winter – since the military occupation, and reinforcing the protective, paternal role of the military within the community. 54 However, this portrayal of a pastoral military, an essentially protective force, overshadowed other interactions between military and non-military that were not so cordial. As Nugent had highlighted, other groups were making demands of the military while not sharing conservationists’ general approval of a military presence in the countryside. Walkers, rockclimbers, surfers, mountain bikers, motorcyclists all prize certain military landscapes for the natural physical features they contain. While these recreational groups wanted access to military training areas, their presence

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did not fit with the quickly established environmental slant of access to military lands. Since the Defence Lands Committee heard from conservationists who spoke in favour of military landholdings during the sitting of the committee from 1971 to 1973, the MoD foresaw a future of mutually beneficial cooperation. Conservationists ‘impressed’ the committee with the ‘weight of evidence about the many features of scientific or historical interest on defence sites’. 55 The committee believed ‘it is right that information about these features should be available’, and recommended that, ‘even on sites where security or safety considerations apply . . . organizations who seek to establish and record the scientific and historical importance of a site should be allowed to do so wherever possible.’56 With the advisory committee for the future running of military lands stating clearly the positive potential of a more environmentally aware military, the path for the greening of the MoD was laid out. Through the 1970s and 1980s, the dealings with outside organizations followed the guidelines set by the committee in 1973. That the conservationists reiterated the military’s own argument, that ‘MOD landholdings are, for the most part, shielded from commercial development and public use, thus allowing the incidental protection of flora and fauna and physical features from destructive agents’ established them as allies of the military presence, securing the opportunities for cooperation and protecting the MoD against antagonists. 57 Nature organizations and research bodies were able to engage with the military, fostering long-standing working relationships, securing access and sharing information. Other groups had also presented their views on the military landholdings to the committee. Many expressions of opinion, the committee mentioned in their report, ‘came from groups and organizations speaking for visitors who, in increasing numbers, wish to enjoy the amenities of those areas.’58 However, while the MoD conceded that ‘there are many sites where the services and the general public could reasonably share the use of land’, 59 it made clear that it held an acute awareness of the value of the land both as a commodity, ‘since in these crowded islands it is in ever-increasing demand’, and also as ‘the roots and foundation of our natural heritage.’60 The ‘public’, who called for inquiries here and access there, were a potentially unpredictable mass, lacking the discipline of the military or the predictable intentions of researchers and conservationists. They did not ask for permission to use the land, as did the conservationists. Rather, they insisted it was their right to access the land, despite the military. ‘Recreation’ incorporated a myriad of activities that could

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disturb military routines. When the committee admitted that ‘it gives us great pleasure to record that there is an active realization that land must be husbanded and safeguarded’, it is not unfair to assume that it was from the general public that land was to be protected – for our own good. In 1973, the military were insisting that the amount of land available to the Services barely met training needs, and that furthermore, that land was being protected by the military presence. The arguments by recreation groups for use of military land did not sit comfortably with the perceived needs and benefits of training.

Traversing boundaries While pro-military environmental stories dominated public coverage of Castlemartin range during the 1970s and 1980s, in the early 1990s the ‘other’ side, still pressuring the military for greater access, as they had in 1973, finally engaged the military in a struggle, for headlines and access. Rock-climbers had for some years been aware of the staggering cliffs and rock formations found within the military zone. With access to coastal paths at weekends, it was possible to walk the coastal perimeter of the base (which had pacified calls by walkers for more access, and kept visitors to the national park quiet, if not wholly content). Range East had been accessible to climbers, and was highly prized as a climbing site, for years. But trips to the base frustrated climbers who could see over to Range West, with its even more challenging and exhilarating edifices. Heavily used for live-firing, and highly restricted, the area was inaccessible. Guy Keating, of the British Mountaineering Council (BMC), the representative body that campaigns to protect the freedoms and promote the interests of climbers, hill walkers and mountaineers, admits that some members were unable to resist sneaking behind ‘enemy lines’ to explore better the potential for climbing.61 They reported back that there was excellent climbing to be had. For some years, Dave Cook and other climbers trespassed to climb Range West, naming along the way (with tongue surely in cheek) one ‘magnificent’ cliff ‘Greenham Common’.62 Describing it as potentially one of the most important rock-climbing sites in western Europe, climbers felt that access should be given, arguing that their presence threatened neither training nor the ecosystems of the cliffs themselves. The MoD maintained that the area was too dangerous to allow access. ‘The only reason they are not allowed on Range West cliffs,’ said Castlemartin spokesman Capt. Jack Ferguson, ‘is because of the unexploded shells’.63

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Rock-climbers decided to challenge openly this claim when they observed German tank men – at the time, the range’s main users – ‘wandering safely along the cliff on their time off’.64 Concluding that if the soldiers dared to venture there, climbers, too, could take the risk, the BMC decided to take their argument to its epicentre, and stage a protest on the base itself. On 20 October 1991, over 50 climbers trespassed on Range West to climb the cliffs, taking the concept of a sit-in to new extremes. Eventually escorted off the premises by MoD security, the climbers dominated the next day’s local headlines, securing a media victory, at least. The climbers joined a tradition of protestors against the military trespassing upon military land to make the point that, despite MoD claims to the contrary, sections of military lands were (relatively) safe to traverse. At Imber, the Association for the Restoration of Imber organized a mass rally in 1961 proceeding from the public road to the off-limits village (see Chapter4). The military at Tyneham found themselves at the centre of a row in 1969 when a range officer, inspecting Mupes Bay on 27 July, discovered not only officers and soldiers and their families using the beach (permitted by the military), but 15 civilians too. He ‘invited the civilians to leave’, which they refused, and called the civil police to escort them off the military’s premises.65 The written report in the Lulworth Dossier declares the area to be part of the danger area of the Gunnery Ranges (from which civilians were excluded). Military families were able to use the beach when the range was not in use, ‘provided that the head of the family is present to ensure that no explosive objects are touched or moved’. This measure apparently guaranteed that ‘the military families are, therefore, under strict control from the safety point of view.’ The same privilege ‘cannot be extended to civilians, because no means of safety control could exist to ensure their safety.’ The promise of the civilians involved to ‘create a press and TV fuss’ resulted in the military reassessing access to the beach. In favour of the status quo, it was argued that use of the beach was ‘greatly appreciated by young officers’ and that to withdraw it would be seen as ‘yet another example of the army giving way to outside pressure’.66 Against further use of the beach by military or others, were the following arguments: (1) Lulworth is a very sensitive training are and we should avoid any action which could act as an irritant to the public at large . . . . (2) Negotiations on the Dartmoor training area were in a critical stage, and we cannot afford any adverse publicity at this time (3) It is doubtful whether we could properly indemnify the Department against injury to civilians . . . .67

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Interestingly, the future of another training area (Dartmoor, which is lease held and re-negotiated at intervals) impacted upon events at Lulworth. The threat of bad publicity nullified any civilian hope of improving access, as it was decided that no one (military personnel included) could henceforth use the beach, unless future arrangements could ensure no ‘risk of injury to either soldiers or civilians.’ At Tyneham, the safety argument was upheld and used to enforce access restrictions, to the ire of civilians and military personnel who had before used the beach with no harm. Decades later, the same argument was used against the rock-climbers at Castlemartin who had similarly seen soldiers enjoying the area. Part of BMC’s long-running Coastal Access Campaign (which continues to this day, pressuring the government for rights of permanent access to the coastline, along with clarity and consistency in access arrangements68) the resulting protest was armed with counterarguments for the military’s condemnation of their actions. Playing out in the public forum via local and national newspapers, the rock-climbers defended themselves against the military’s insistence that it was for their own safety that access was denied with the story of soldiers wandering freely and without incident. The MoD then chose to invoke the military-environmental value of the area as an argument, reminding the public of its value as a bird sanctuary and decrying any interference with such a valuable habitat.69 This shift in the grounds of debate did not fox the climbers, who for many years had followed a self-policed code of avoiding nesting sites in breeding season. With open letters claiming evidence of beach parties by troops at the site,70 and other groups (fishermen, surfers) ignoring bylaws to no harm, the argument came down in the favour of the climbers, who won from the MoD a 12-month agreement that, subject to safety briefings and live-firing requirements, limited access was to be granted for climbing Range West.71 While Range West remains restricted due to the nature of the training taking place there, rock-climbers continue to have limited access to the site. They attend one of four safety briefing days held by the MoD at the start of the summer season (around the end of May and beginning of June), and are informed of when access has been arranged (mainly midweek evenings). According to BMC, relations with the MoD are much improved since the protests of 1991. Recently, they approached the MoD to install stakes at the cliff edge at the popular climbing spots, to tie safety ropes to. The MoD agreed, and offered assistance, in terms of manpower, and clearing the area of possible ordnance.72 What is clear to see in the fight for rights of access between the MoD at Castlemartin and the BMC is the willingness and ability of the MoD to use

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its environmental credentials to protect its control over the land. The importance of the site as a protected wildlife haven was brought in to supplement the argument that military lands pose dangers to non-military users (also used to prevent access at Imber). Here, the use of both arguments was not fully successful. The portrayal of the one site as both mortally dangerous, and naturally protective, established a dichotomy that climbers, and others have been able to argue against successfully, and challenge directly. Another group with access interests to the Range, this time in its waters, are surfers. Freshwater West beach, adjoining the westernmost point of the base, is renowned as one of the best surfing beaches in Wales. Those experienced in the ambiguities of local swells and winds know, however, that further west from the beach – into the military zone – in the right conditions, break excellent, empty waves. Local surfer Harry Cromwell recounts his experience surfing in the firing range, known as ‘Y Bocs’ (the Box). Not many people bother surfing this spot as its such a mission to get too . . . its about a mile walk across barbed fences and minefields, followed by a half-mile paddle . . . they test all sorts of people-killing tools there – tanks, bombs, rockets missiles, machine guns – and its pretty surreal when you hear it at full tilt. They seem to be at it almost every day, so the chances of getting the correct conditions and access are slim. Its not a good idea to venture over there when they’re firing, as the shrapnel from the bombs has a range that covers the break, plus they get a bit annoyed . . .’ After reaching the break, Cromwell and his companions ‘saw a Land Rover flying across the fields towards us. I had heard that if you get caught it’s a £2,000 fine, so we started pegging it for the sea. We managed to escape into the safety of the sea and started the marathon paddle. The waves were all-time, solid right-hand slabs, and we managed to get a few sick ones. All the while we could hear bombs going off and the rattle of machine guns. Then they sent a chopper over which hovered right above us while the squaddies were shouting shit at us! We had a few more waves before it stopped breaking. We now had an hour’s paddle back, avoiding the beach. Nearing the end of the paddle we heard a rumbling sound – it was the ranger boat! As the boys left me behind, my arms gave up. I sat there with my hands in the air thinking the squaddies were going to shoot me! They pulled me into the boat and gave me a right bollocking. In the past some of the boys have spent the night locked in the back of the MOD’s meat wagon. I was already starting to whimper! Luckily, I was too young to be arrested. They ended up

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giving me a lift back to the beach, while the boys clambered around the point.73 Cromwell’s experience makes for a good surf story. But it also reminds us of the extension of the military zone into the ocean, and the ability of the military to exert a form of law enforcement within the perimeters of the military zone. While Cromwell’s story is prone to hyperbole (he may have mistaken the noisy firing tanks for exploding bombs, for example), his experiences have been repeated by others in the Welsh surfing community, and the risks of surfing ‘Y Bocs’ are not taken lightly.74 For the MoD, too, the unwanted and unpredictable presence of surfers in the sea poses a new challenge to the boundaries of a military zone. When the conditions are right, surfers are tenacious in their search for waves, and will reappear on the military radar. With organized walking groups welcomed to the range, and rockclimbers allowed monitored, limited access, the approach by the MoD at Castlemartin to recreation groups wishing to access the site has been to closely liase, with complete supervision and control, the conditions of the visits. The surfers are far more unpredictable, and the quite exaggerated response to their presence (the scrambling of helicopters and patrol boats) indicate that it is the spontaneous nature of their presence that concerns the military so, and challenges their control of the base. The rock-climbers, when they staged their cliff-side sit-in, provoked some of the same concerns. Now, nearly 20 years of cooperation later, the MoD sends its troops on teambuilding coasteering days, on which they are taught to rock-climb.75 This suggests that variable aspects of recreation per se are not frowned upon by the military; they just don’t want them to occur on their land. Military training in the British countryside takes place far from the real dangers of war. While the MoD creates conflict situations for troops to handle that are as authentic as possible, they take place in highly prized and protected landscapes. Recreation may pose the biggest threat to military training. Threatening the military’s ability to go about training unimpeded, a non-military presence in a military landscape poses the possibility of potential accidents, unpredictable events, complaints and even law suits. For non-military interests who press for greater use of the lands, the MoD is a potentially aggressive defender of its right to train (see Harry Cromwell’s ‘bollocking’ by troops after trespassing). Having spent a day on Freshwater West beach when live-firing was taking place next door on the training estate, I can attest that the military presence at Castlemartin makes itself not only heard, but felt, as vibrations from firing tanks and exploding shells reverberated through the beach. While the

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military and environmentalists have found a mutually beneficial coexistence, the military and the recreational public remain at an impasse. The environmental benefits of military ownership of land for training, now well-researched and documented if not still widely known, are employed by the military to both offset the bellicose implications of their presence, and protect their ability to train. By representing military landscapes as protected havens, complete with animal and plant symbols of saved/safe nature, civilians who wish to traverse the lands as extensively as they do the surrounding national park are positioned as interlopers in the landscape, and kept at bay. Pembrokeshire is marketed actively by the Welsh Tourist Board as a prime destination for activity seekers. One campaign pushes its reputation for ‘extreme sports’ such as surfing, coasteering, climbing and kayaking with the slogan ‘Wild West Wales’. Tourists are encouraged in to the area by descriptions of open spaces, big beaches and not too many other people. The tourist information available in Pembrokeshire – maps, walking tours, activities pamphlets – reiterates the ‘active’ nature of a holiday in the area, inviting the visitor to ‘explore the wide open spaces’ and ‘observe the wildlife’.76 ‘Activity Pembrokeshire’ encourages the visitor to ‘have a go – in Pembrokeshire, anything is possible’.77 However, all the tourist literature has one feature – or lack of it – in common: an absence of any mention of the military presence. Maps necessarily demarcate the area, but no explanation is given as to the interruption in the coast path at Castlemartin, where the path stops tracing the coastline and veers inland to accommodate the base. The military presence is a silent one here, visible to those who look for it but otherwise remaining unmentioned. Certain features found within the base are publicized, such as the views and birdlife at Stack Rocks, and the ancient chapel carved into the cliff at St Govan’s head. They are recommended as a ‘man-made wonder’ (St Govan’s) and as a ‘best birdwatching spot’ (Stack Rocks) and are included within the Pembrokeshire National Park section of the holiday brochure, which, of course, they are.78 But they are also part of a military training area, a fact that could not escape a curious rambler or twitcher on arrival at the sites. For the Welsh Tourist board, the military presence is difficult to sell to the potential visitor. Access restrictions and danger signs don’t equate easily with the favoured image of the area as one where anyone can try a new hobby in the freedom of an open and welcoming environment. While landscape and wildlife features of the military zone are included in the guides, their precise location is not under discussion, and it seems easier to ignore, rather than tackle the potential problems for tourism, of the military presence.

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The deliberate silence over the military presence in tourist literature amounts to an effective erasure of that presence. By not mentioning it, the tourism board hopes that noone will seek it out. If it is not talked about, those new to the area will simply not know it is there. A recent study of Vieques island, Puerto Rico, examines the possibilities of absence, and the erasure of presence, from militarized landscapes.79 Formerly a US Navy bombing range, in 2003 the military land was transferred to the US Fish and Wildlife Service who now oversee what has become ‘the largest wildlife refuge in the Caribbean’.80 According to Davis et al., differing perceptions of the site’s purity and contamination exist, affected by differing knowledges of the island’s history. The lack of buildings and other signs of human activity in the former military zone have led to perceptions of the land as ‘natural’, ‘preserved’ and ‘pristine’, and the ‘natural purity’ of the site is now attracting tourists to the island.81 Contradicting this discourse, however, is the labelling of Vieques as an abused and contaminated landscape by inhabitants who protested against the military presence.82 The conceptualization of Vieques as a contaminated and stolen landscape, argue Davis et al., is dependent on knowing a history that is not easily seen. That history includes the previous agricultural activity [on the island], and the bombing and chemical contamination from military use. Both of these histories can be known through discussion with residents, texts and visual images, but are hard to see in the current landscape because the signs of them (in the semiotic sense) are largely invisible.83 This resonates with other research on militarized landscapes and my own study of the UK DE, which finds that multiple histories reside in military landscapes, but often with great differences and at times difficulty in being able to read or see evidence of said histories.84 Davis suggests that the erasure of the social life that existed prior to the military takeover has enabled a transfer from a military to a wildlife reserve that releases the US military from the financial burden of cleaning up contamination to levels necessary for human use.85 Furthermore, he argues there is in fact a double erasure on militarized landscape. Added to the erasure of evidence of a pre-military social life is erasure of a history of the military’s use of the land, too. It is ‘signs’ of naturalness (wildlife signs, the wilderness look, tourist advertisement portrayals, etc.) that counter these histories,86 and result in military landscapes as being seen as ‘natural’ and ‘pure’, when in fact other histories tell of contamination and complex social impacts.

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The portrayal of Castlemartin, particularly in tourist advertisements of the area, supports to some extent the idea of a double erasure, of both the previous inhabitants and the military presence. The few mentions of the base in tourist brochures are limited to natural features on the site. The military presence itself is problematic for the marketers of ‘Wild West Wales’, and so signs of naturalness are used to emphasize the ‘wildness’ of the area, without inclusion of the military and pre-military history of the site. However, Castlemartin remains in use by the military (unlike Vieques). And although signs of erasure and military absence exist in external tourism literature, the erasure of the military presence by the military itself, that Davis suggests, is not in evidence here. The base’s military history, in particular the use of the base by the German military’s Panzer tank divisions, is a source of celebration and even local pride (as well as protest).87 Soldier magazine marked the twentieth anniversary of Panzer training at the base with a special feature, while local newspapers mourned the eventual withdrawal of the German troops, and mark anniversaries of their arrival.88 At Castlemartin, the usual signs of military presence – perimeter fences, security signs, etc. – demarcate the base itself. A little further up from the base, however, on slightly higher ground overlooking the training area down to the sea, can be found the specially established tank viewing place. Here, people can park their cars and watch the tanks and troop movements from the comfort of their vehicles, or get out and feel the impact of shells through the ground, and hear the slight delay of the sonic booms. On the sunny spring day that I visited the viewing place, a number of cars were parked. In front of us, tanks raced around the base, puffs of smoke signalled live-firing and were followed by distant explosions in the earth as the shells landed. It was a theatre of war viewed from a safe distance. By providing the viewing place, the military encourages the public to experience the military presence, to revel in the thrill of real machines and the damage they have the potential to inflict. The viewing place encourages appreciation of weapons of war and the troops who operate them, celebrating the military presence rather than erasing it. By keeping the public at a distance the viewing place could also be seen to reinforce the military– civilian divide. This, the viewing place reminds us, is as close most people will come to firing tanks and combatant troops. In Pembrokeshire, the determination of the military to sustain restricted access, and allow only organized entry by civilian recreational groups (i.e., on guided walks, or set climbing days), suggests an unofficial agreement by DE, Countryside Council for Wales and the National Parks Authority who work together to determine the running of the base, that a military

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presence protects the site from the ever-increasing pressure of tourism. The wildlife of the area silently thrives, while the tourists continue to press on the security fences and call for more access. The military base controls its landscapes, uses them heavily and presents them carefully. But after a continued presence, its lands have become a haven for wildlife. With the surrounding area reverberating from the rumbling weight of heavy oil-laden transporter lorries to and from the processing plants at Pembroke Dock and Milford Haven, and the increasing tread of tourists exploring the countryside, for those interested in protecting wildlife and landscape, the military camp offers a better chance for future environmental success than its alternative, the holiday camp. Heavy industry remains unpredictably prone to expansion and exploitation of its immediate surroundings and natural resources, often with damaging consequences.89 And, unfortunately for the environment, the eco-friendly traveller’s mantra of ‘take only photos, leave only footprints’ rarely rings true. Tourism has brought great economic rewards for the area, and is relied upon for bringing income and vitality to the region. However, Castlemartin, as a destination from which casual tourists are dissuaded or outright forbidden (depending on the day) is spared the brunt of the effects that too many people can have on a delicate habitat. The surrounding national park copes with the littering, sanitation needs, habitat disturbance and general wear-and-tear that visitors bring, while the military area is spared, but in return, expected to protect and maintain its privileged isolation. Interactions between public and military have driven the greening of the MoD. Through cooperation (the environmentalists who spoke in favour of a military presence before the Defence Lands Committee, and persisted in their efforts to study military lands, to prove their point and better understand the possibilities of military-environmentalism) and conflict (the rock-climbers who literally refused to back down in their campaign to access the cliffs of Castlemartin), such exchanges of knowledge and demands have informed the MoD in no uncertain terms of the value and desirability of their lands. Public insistence that the MoD lands held such rich nature and heritage that they should be accessible forced the MoD to recognize the value of their lands, and to rise to the task of maintaining them. In terms of access, this has not always fallen in the public’s favour. Part of the greening process has been the acknowledgement that the lack of human presence has benefited wildlife, and now the MoD defends its right to impose access limitations – and with an environmental argument to support it.

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But, with conservation groups and other pressure groups arguing – and, at times, physically demonstrating – for more access, the MoD has been pressured to open up about the greening of the organization. By explaining the benefits of limited land use to an evermore interested and environmentally fluent public, the MoD has learnt to articulate its environmental initiatives, land management strategies and training policies. In doing so, it has documented its greening, moving on from ‘conservation by serendipity’ to embracing military-environmentalism. Now environmental experts are consulted on training matters, and initiatives that come from within the MoD win national environment awards.90 Public pressure, and working through civilian organizations, may not have resulted in greater public access, to the chagrin of many. But it has resulted in a more transparent military-environmentalism, which, through Sanctuary, keeps the public informed of both the demands and rewards of a military presence on the land. By keeping it in the public eye, the discourse protects the material manifestations of military-environmentalism. Too well documented and publicized to regress into secrecy or complacency, military-environmentalism on British DEs is now firmly established as a positive and ecologically valuable protection of the British landscape. Woodward’s criticisms of military-environmentalism rightfully remind us to keep in mind the destructive consequences of an active military. But, although the security fences remain erect and frequently patrolled, military-environmentalism can give us greater knowledge of the workings of military bases, opening up these landscapes for debate and research, if not for exploration by foot. Civilians should not stop in their calls for greater access to military sites. This pressure that has contributed to the greening of the MoD, while it has not opened up fully military sites, has secured a genuine environmentalism at work within the MoD that, by limiting recreational use and promoting environmentally aware military training, safeguards these landscapes, as well as their (and our) nature and heritage.

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Chapter 4

Salisbury Plain Training Area1

Tanks thunder across the rolling chalk grassland of SPTA. The largest of the British training estates, it is the only one judged capable of withstanding the impact of the full range of today’s weaponry. Used throughout the year, for artillery firing, large-scale tactical training and tank manoeuvres, this is, at first appearance, a site given over entirely to the full destructive force of modern military training. And yet, when the tanks have receded, in their tracks small pools of water collect. These form ideal habitat for the fairy shrimp, a delicate translucent crustacean, classified ‘vulnerable’2 but flourishing in this most unexpected of environments, reliant on the tracks of tanks to distribute its eggs as well as gouge out its home in the Plain’s chalky earth. The notion of the military site as an ‘ironic’ nature reserve, identified by environmental historians, is now being employed on Salisbury Plain by the military itself. Providing an alternative to conventional perceptions of military land use as invariably destructive, the presentation of the Plain as an ecologically diverse nature haven is evident in the MoD’s Sanctuary magazine. Reporting military conservation projects and featuring soldiers’ wildlife photos, there is rarely a tank or gun in sight. This chapter critically examines the increasing attention given to environmental values within the MoD, asking whether this constitutes a genuine ‘greening’ or, as Rachel Woodward has argued, a ‘greenwash,’ whereby a military-environmentalist discourse is used to justify a military presence in the countryside.3 Through a case study of Salisbury Plain, I begin to investigate the development of the military use and portrayal of its landholdings by following the story of the fairy shrimp, protected inhabitant of a military environment, and military environmental icon. This chapter addresses claims that the military presence has saved landscape and habitat from other (more damaging) developments, exploring the possibility that military training and conservation are not outright incompatible, a theme introduced in Chapter 3.

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I go on to situate such claims about the recent military use of land in the context of the plain’s longer military and pre-military use. It then turns to the story of Imber, the requisitioned village at the heart of the plain that was never returned, after the settlement of peace, to its inhabitants, as they believed it would be. The gradual decline of the village, and the campaign its fate inspired against the military, contrasts strongly against the more positive environmental history of SPTA, and opens the way for discussions of ‘greenwash’ and the selective erasure of human histories on the site.

The fairy shrimp (Chirocephalus diaphanous) Diă’phanous a. (Of fabric etc.) light and delicate, and so almost transparent.4 Chirocephalus diaphanous is well served by its name. The tiny crustacean is indeed light, and almost transparent; its 11 pairs of legs tread water in a blur of movement as it swims on its back, feeding on organic particles and microscopic animals. But delicate? In appearance only. They are one of only a few species able to undergo ‘cryptobiosis’, a state of torpor in which they can survive extremes of drought and temperatures.5 This enables their eggs to survive for up to 15 years even when the pools of water dry out, and to hatch when wet conditions return. The shrimp cannot coexist with fish species; therefore temporary pools of freshwater, puddles and ditches provide a predator-free environment for the resilient creatures. Historically, fairy shrimp eggs were dispersed by grazing cattle, picked up on hooves and set down in dew ponds.6 The decline in cultivation of the ‘impoverished’ soils of Salisbury Plain from the nineteenth to the twentieth century had threatened the survival of the fairy shrimp, which is protected under Schedule 5 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981.7 But now, thanks to an altogether different beast, the fairy shrimp is undoubtedly thriving once more. Incredibly, it is apparently due to the number of tanks thundering across the Plain that the population of the shrimp is growing. Rather than relying on the slow bovine plod to get around, fairy shrimp eggs hitch a lift on the metal tank tracks that gouge through their habitat and go on to create more habitable pools and ruts. The tank has become both homemaker and public transport for the shrimps, whose near translucent bodies withstand the movement of tonnes of metal above them. The relationship between shrimp and tank recasts our views of both. Nature, in the guise of the shrimp, is no longer a victim of military destruction. Instead, it adapts and uses the interference of habitat to benefit its own survival. Nature is not a passive canvas on which men act, nor is it in need

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of protection. Instead, nature-as-shrimp is opportunistic, using what it can to further its own survival. It uses the recent appearance in its world of tanks and vehicles to strengthen its population, reversing the militarydestructive narrative. In doing so, it transforms the tank’s original role of destructive strength, manipulated from within by soldiers, to an almost maternal role, distributing eggs and aiding procreation independent of its operators or mission. The blasting of shells, noise and movements from bullets and troops, seem to have minimal disturbance effects on the success of the shrimp population; small shell craters form yet more temporary habitats.8 This is not an isolated example of the long-term benefits of soil disturbance for animal populations. In Vietnam and Laos, for example, agricultural areas are characterized by numerous duck and fish ponds adapted from bomb craters from the Vietnam war, 1964–75 (among many other highly visible environmental consequences of that war).9 But it is the tank that has played an active role in the success of this particular creature, its vital contribution to habitat creation and population distribution accentuated by the incongruity of it all: how such a hulking machine aids rather than destroys a creature; how, in the conception of the tank as a weapon of war, surely no one foresaw its environmental benefits. The fairy shrimp was known to inhabit the Plain by the conservation groups that monitored the area with MoD approval from 1977 onwards. It was included in the list of species offered special protection by the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act. But the sheer unlikeliness of their story, the unexpected success in a seemingly hostile environment, means that the story of the fairy shrimp was destined for a sphere bigger than their freshwater pools. Its real rise to that of an SPTA environmental icon started with an article in Sanctuary. The creation and adoption of a recognizable pro-environmental protection policy by the military in the 1970s did not disrupt the daily routine of swimming and feeding, travelling and procreating, in which the fairy shrimps of Salisbury Plain were actively involved at this time. They continued as they had before, unaware that human interest in them was about to dramatically increase. But for the management and maintenance of military training areas, the Nugent report and resulting increase in environmental awareness had tangible effects. With a policy that recognized for the first time the ecological significance of military landholdings, and the appointment of an officer to coordinate future environmental policy, the age of the military unwittingly benefiting local environments had passed. The ecological health of certain military lands, as Nugent pointed out, was an accident of certain training practices

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and not the result of any considered environmental concern. While some range commanders were aware, and proud, of the natural beauty of their particular territories, the primary concern for the use of the land was for training purposes. In places where an agricultural tradition existed, and particularly where land was leased to or from farmers, agricultural practices were important to the scheduling of manoeuvres and the type of training taking place; for example, around the edges of SPTA where farmland created a buffer zone between military and non-military land, live-firing was restricted in order to minimize damage to livestock, farm machinery and of course the farmers themselves. Thanks to conservationists, the environmental benefits of military training had been recognized, but had remained outside the scope of the military’s administrative machinery. Post-Nugent, the military embraced the positive narrative of environmental protection taking place on military land. Once it had done so, however, it assumed responsibility for its continuance. The official wish to work with environmental groups, to encourage an environmentally based friendliness between military and non-military, necessitated greater access for the members of environmental and conservation groups, in order to conduct surveys and research. If the MoD was to acknowledge the ecological value of its land (and implicitly, the benefits of its presence), a precise picture of the nature of its lands was required. Although the appointment of a Conservation Officer provided a coordinator for environmental efforts, the military budget, at this early stage, did not extend much further in terms of funding an environmental work team. The groundwork was done by the volunteer members of the groups, who in return were granted greater access and logistical support for their work. In the archive of SPTA, the minutes, reports and papers of the groups working on the Plain chart the growth of the groups, and the breadth of their members’ interests. The SPTA (East) Natural History Conservation Group, established on 1 May 1979, set out their aim from the outset to: find, locate and record everything worthy of conservation in SPTA (East); then to do all that can done to exert pressure to ensure that these aspects are preserved, and to draw MOD attention to aspects of military life or training development which could adversely affect conservation.10 The group drew together subgroups focusing on their own areas of ornithology, archaeology, botany, arachnology and entomology and mycology. In the first year alone field days were arranged, slide shows and talks presented, surveys undertaken and even an experimental coppicing project

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commenced. By October 1985, enough information for a thorough site dossier had been collected.11 It was through such organized studies that data about the existence on the plain of creatures as great and as small as the fairy shrimp were collated. And it was through the publication of Sanctuary magazine that this information was then disseminated, to the military, to those active within conservation and beyond the boundaries of military landholdings, out into the general public. The leap out of the tank tracks and into the public eye came for the fairy shrimp in 1992, when it became the subject of an article in Sanctuary entitled ‘The fairy shrimp on SPTA’ that described the life cycle of the shrimp and emphasized its compatibility with tank training on the Plain.12 From this point on, the fairy shrimp as a news story crops up repeatedly. The Wiltshire Gazette reported ‘Army Stands Guard Over Wildlife Rarities’ that included ‘nationally important populations of the fairy shrimp, which lives in dew ponds and tank tracks’.13 In 2004 the MoD decided to act on the success of the US military’s ‘Iraq’s 52 most wanted’ playing cards and produced the Green Pack, whose four suits cover (a) archaeology, (b) military safety, (c) environmental issues and (d) archaeological conservation issues. The Seven of Hearts slot was given to the fairy shrimp. Its accompanying message informed players that ‘fairy shrimp love living in tank ruts’. The Green Pack was intended to raise environmental awareness among troops exercising on Salisbury Plain, providing (according to the MoD) ‘a compact means of educating the people on the ground about being good custodians for our natural and cultural heritage’.14 Word from within SPTA tells how the packs were very popular with troops, undergoing several reissues until the spread of mobile phones meant that spare time was spent texting or playing digital rather than card games.15 There is something gratifying in picturing the people who spent the day operating a tank then retiring for the evening and passing around a card depicting the shrimp they had unknowingly helped that day. The Green Pack (Figure 4.1) stands as one of the British military’s most creative attempts at engaging with the common soldier on a particular issue, and judging by its popularity, its message of environmental awareness was one that troops were open to. Fifteen years after the Sanctuary article the fairy shrimp remained a good form of publicity for the MoD, which launched a press release ‘Survey undertaken in bid to protect rare fairy shrimp’ in 2007.16 This generated a webpage in the Estates and Environment section of the MoD website covering the story, entitled ‘Military vehicles create fairies’ homes’.17 This, in turn, informed an article on the ‘Environment Times’ website (providing ‘current environmental information for UK commerce and industry’),

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Figure 4.1 The Green Pack and its Seven of Hearts, the fairy shrimp. Photo: Jamie Carstairs (2009).

which began: ‘The British Army are protecting not just their troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also a 1cm crustacean that is found in just a handful of puddles . . .’.18 In the development of the public profile of the fairy shrimp it is possible to see an increase in the emphasis on the military’s role in its protection. From initially being reported as merely inhabiting MoD land (in Sanctuary), in the later press release the shrimp were being ‘protected’. By the time it had trickled into the public domain via the internet, we are left in no doubt that the military, thanks to their vehicles, are directly responsible for its welfare. And taken out of military hands by its inclusion in a commercial site, the accuracy expected of a MoD press release is forfeited in favour of a more topical and dramatic retelling of the story. The transition from an anonymous inhabitant of the Plain to a MoD environmental success story has been made. The story of the fairy shrimp has been used to illustrate the ways in which military use of land can have surprising and beneficial consequences for that land’s non-human inhabitants. It can surprise us to hear that weapons and machines designed to damage and destroy have other roles. It also surprises us that there are stories in the landscape of creatures we can’t see (or don’t look for). But perhaps what surprises us the most is that this

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relationship between crustacean and machine has developed accidentally, without human intervention. Someone designs the tank; someone drives the tank; someone organizes manoeuvres on the Plain; someone records data and charts the health of the shrimp population. But no one thought of introducing tank to shrimp, and no one predicted they would get on so well. The fairy shrimp is a reminder that we can’t see all the consequences of military training, and often what we do see (and want to see) deceives us. When we see metal, and weapons, and shrapnel and debris, it is unattractive, destructive and detrimental to a landscape. ‘Nature’ doesn’t ‘see’ in this way; it utilizes and improvises. Thus, birds nest in abandoned vehicles, and shrimps hitch lifts on tanks.19 When we discuss the military landscape, we do so with preconceptions of both the military and landscape. The story of the shrimp confounds such preconceptions and forces a rethinking of the standard notions of the relationship between animal and machine, landscape and military. But while the relationship between shrimp and tank carries on regardless of human interest in it, the telling of its story relies on humans. And so, while it started out in the records of conservation groups, it eventually qualified for inclusion in Sanctuary, and thus entered the ranks of public interest stories that give a particular (positive) view of military activity. Now the fairy shrimp is a regular feature of the MoD press release, a symbol of SPTA. However tiny the creature may be, it is now a major icon of military conservation. While the shrimps have used the military to their advantage, the military in turn is using the shrimp’s image to improve its own. The story of the fairy shrimp, and other environmental success stories, offers a narrative of military land use that takes emphasis away from destruction and restricted access and places upon it the role of the military as steward of the countryside. It feeds into the oft-repeated assertion that, by preventing the ploughing or development of the land, the military has ‘saved’ it – from the pressures of the modern world, the expanding population and misuse by others.20 This discourse, which extends the military remit of defence of national territory to encompass the defence of specific, endangered and important environments, is readily presented by the military itself. In the DE User Guide to SPTA, the Commander’s introduction explains that ‘along with the rest of the Training Estate, Defence Training Estate Salisbury Plain is fully conscious of environmental, conservation and archaeological issues, many of which have been protected precisely because of the Defence Estate’s stewardship of this beautiful area.’ As well as being a ‘flagship’ training area that encompasses 38,000 hectares of ‘first class and diverse

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training facilities’, the military presents itself as ‘custodian of an important part of our cultural heritage on land that has been designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty as well as being one of the largest Sites of Special Scientific Interest in the UK.’ In this example of MoD literature, the site’s environmental and archaeological worth is presented alongside its training value, not only compatible with training but central to the site’s value to the military. In her assessment of army publications, Woodward identifies such statements as a continuing ‘balance metaphor’ that ‘understands and presents military training and environmental protection as conceptually equal’.21 For the military the attainment of a balance between training needs and environmental management is at the core of the dayto-day running of the DEs, ingrained in the management structure (in the DE team itself, where conservationists and archaeologists are employed to offer on-site expertise alongside military personnel) and the Integrated Land Management Plan (the system that coordinates training activities, working out when and where to place them). But for Woodward, the ‘idea of balance also implies the possibility of balance’, an implication of which is that: weighing up military activity and conservation is possible on the same set of scales; that the two originate from a unified set of objectives. The possibility that environmental protection and preparation for war might reside in fundamentally different moral orders is denied, removed from the debate through the use of the balance metaphor.22 But, equally, could not an assumption that military activity and conservation are fundamentally opposed remove from debate the possibility that they are, in fact, compatible? It would be unfair to present the military as the sole exponents of the concept that a military presence has protected valuable habitats from damaging change. The credit for environmental protection by the military was first publicly stated by independent conservation bodies who spoke in favour of a military presence, for those very reasons, before the Nugent committee (see Chapter 2). More recently, an European Union (EU) directive established Natura 2000 in 1992, to constitute a network across Europe of protected areas to shelter species and habitats that are rare or endangered at the European level. Funded by L’Instrument Financier pour l’Environnement (LIFE), the financing instrument for the environment, the network ‘forms the cornerstone of the EU’s nature conservation policy.’23 Between 2000 and 2006 SPTA and nearby Porton Down became one of several military

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sites across Europe (including France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark) to become stakeholders in Natura 2000, becoming a designated (and protected) Natura 2000 site, securing LIFE–Natura funding designed to ‘boost the work and deepen the partnership between the MoD Army Training Estate and English Nature.’24 The network produced a brochure, Life Focus: Natura 2000 and the military (2005), detailing the projects that had a military dimension. The brochure explains the reasoning behind extending environmental protection and funding to military sites, arguing that: most of the military areas, and especially those used for training and testing, contain significant, even spectacular, amounts of natural and semi-natural habitats and landscapes, with corresponding abundances of wildlife. Sometimes they are among the richest and most important sites for biodiversity in their country.25 Natura 2000 applauds the military for protecting habitats by keeping other forces of change at bay. Discussing the protection of heathland in Dorset, it notes that ‘much heathland in Northwest Europe has been lost to development, and what is left is almost everywhere threatened by the growth of shrub and trees’. At Bovington camp in Dorset, the heathland is used for live-firing, which causes expanses of heath to burn off, and for tank exercises, which create deep tracks and expanses of bare sand. This ‘sounds very damaging’, yet according to LIFE project manager, Dante Munns (RSPB), such rough treatment ‘mimics the traditional use which created and maintained the heathland semi natural habitat for many centuries.’26 Natura 2000 insists that ‘in other words, the armed forces had all those years been doing recurring heathland management and bare sand habitat creation on their Dorset sites, but not deliberately, simply as part and parcel of their normal activities.’27 EU conservation policy supports the military insistence that its training requirements can be aligned with responsible environmental management. The site at SPTA, as one of the first and largest of the Natura 2000 military sites, was considered by the project as both ‘pioneer and flagship for integrating conservation and military use’.28 Compared to other militaries across Europe, the MoD was considered by the EU to already take responsibility for environment and biodiversity on its own estate. LIFE Focus cites the role of the conservation officer and Sanctuary magazine, and conservation groups, as an ‘internalisation within the defence administration of a policy agreed at the highest level, [which] is significant as it means

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that Defence “owns” the policy and sets itself targets to achieve rather than having the policy “imposed” by another ministry.’29 The Natura 2000 project at Salisbury Plain aimed to improve land management, encourage improved grazing techniques and introduce habitat restoration. Its legacy was seen to be the Integrated Land Management Plan (ILMP), a statutory task outside the Natura project but which used information collected by the project, and which continues to coordinate training on the site. The ILMP was used (by Woodward) as a further example of the balance metaphor at work on military training estates, resting conceptually on the possibility of a balance of interests.30 But the European Commission channelled funding into that concept, seeing it as an opportunity to protect valuable habitat. The proliferation of rare habitats and species within SPTA offers evidence on the ground for the claims made by the military of habitat protection and conservation efforts.31 Cooperation with national and European nature organizations on environmental issues on the training area also suggests that both the military and the conservationists involved in the maintenance of the training area believe that a balance between training and conservation needs is attainable, and not incompatible.

Salisbury Plain: From a mythical to a military landscape Salisbury Plain is a land with a long and visible history. It is pockmarked by ancient barrows and tumuli. The ancient standing stones of Stonehenge are but one of many prehistoric protected sites. And so, while in literature about the site the MoD reminds us of the ‘long’ history of the area as a military training zone, in the longue durée of the Plain, it is a relative newcomer. Land on Salisbury Plain was first purchased by the War Department in 1897, the estate at Tedworth bought for £95,000 including ‘down pasture, arable and park, and the properties on it . . . a mansion, with stabling, kennels &c., eight farmhouses, thirteen farmsteads, and 107 cottages, and the Ram Hotel’.32 By December 1900, by acquiring piecemeal leasehold and freehold farms the War Office had secured 41,021 acres for its use,33 prompting a public inquiry in to the issue of compensation.34 While the local press reported the ‘negotiations for the amicable transference of land’ from agricultural to military were ‘on the whole successful’,35 the prices given for different types of land were cause for public debate. At this early stage of the military presence on the Plain, the land was already being extensively used for training purposes. Large numbers of

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troops traversed the open grassland in exercises, camping in tents. A cartoon depicted the training of artillery in the shadow of Stonehenge, a train of horses dragging a heavy cannon watched by civilian onlookers.36 The value of Salisbury Plain as a training area for the military was that the large open spaces could host large-scale troop and artillery exercises, testing in real time tactics otherwise played out on maps. The training conditions were unforgiving, particularly in winter, when a biting wind sweeps unimpeded across the open plain. As the War Office gained more land for training, the number of soldiers on the Plain increased. Their presence – and their welfare – did not escape the attention of local residents. As early as 1899, such was the condition of the training soldiers that the ‘Church of England Committee for the Welfare of Soldiers on Salisbury Plain’ was founded, with a mission to provide some shelter and entertainment for the beleaguered men, who had no respite from training as they camped out on the plain.37 Thousands of letters were written each week by the committee to raise the funds for the two marquees they erected by the camp, staffed by local clergy, which ‘night after night [were] crowded with soldiers, who evidently appreciate the opportunities provided for reading, writing, recreation and refreshments of a non-alcoholic character’.38 Before the erection of permanent barracks, the harsh conditions experienced by soldiers training on the plain continued through to the First World War. A letter from L. Harcourt of the Canadian Armed Forces to Earl Kitchener in December 1914 puts in perspective the worry over conditions, a concern even as war was raging across the channel: ‘I understand that, up to yesterday, there were 11,000 [soldiers] in huts and 20,000 in tents’, complained Harcourt.39 I believe that Mr Parley’s figures as to the number of sick were exaggerated and I expect that the majority of causes are venereal, which is obviously not the fault of the conditions of the camp . . . I fancy that the real complaint is that they are going back in their training . . . they had regular shooting practice and went out for two or three days manoeuvring under regular service conditions. On Salisbury Plain they have none of this, and owing to the conditions of the soil, they cannot even learn to trench. The hard ground and bitter cold of training on the plain in the winter of 1914 was nothing compared to the hellish theatre of war the men were about to enter in Belgium and France, but were nonetheless intolerable, even for Canadians used to cold. Harcourt apologizes for giving Kitchener

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‘so much trouble about the Canadians, but I am bound to have regard to the possible Imperial effect of these incidents in Canada . . .’. Harsh conditions and low morale indeed, if the state of Salisbury Plain had the potential to destabilize Allied relations at a time of war. Contrary to the image of Salisbury Plain as a wildlife haven that the army has promoted in recent years, this notion of the Plain as wild, rugged and even dangerous is an older view of the landscape, predating the military presence. The vast grassy terrain and big open sky, sitting in the heart of the hedgerows and copses of central Southern England, is a landscape so different to its surroundings that it inspired its own legends and superstitions. The hard chalk soil was difficult for farmers to work, and remained unenclosed by hedgerows, preserving a ‘wildness’ that is carried in a vista that stretches to the horizon uninterrupted by settlements or shelter.40 Such ‘wildness’ and feeling to be found in a landscape was the source of inspiration for Romantic poets. William Wordsworth wrote a long and dramatic poem, Salisbury Plain , incorporating old tales of ancient ghosts and roaming vagrants. For Wordsworth, who had walked across Salisbury Plain in 1793, it was a place that spirits inhabited and people passed through. A hostile landscape, its beauty was found in its uncompromising wildness: The troubled west was red with stormy fire, O’er Sarum’s plain the traveller with a sigh Measured each painful step, the distant spire That fi xed at every turn his backward eye Was lost, tho’ still he turned, in the blank sky. By thirst and hunger pressed he gazed around And scarce could any trace of man descry, Save wastes of corn that stretched without a bound, But where sower dwelt was nowhere to be found. . . . Hurtle the rattling clouds together piled By fiercer gales, and soon the storm must break. He stood the only creature in the wild On whom the elements their rage could wreak, Save the bustard of those limits bleak, Shy tenant, seeing there a mortal wight, At that dread hour, outsent a mournful shriek And half upon the ground, with a strange affright. Forced hard against the wind a thick unwieldy flight. The Sun unheeded sunk, whilst on a mound He stands beholding with astonished gaze,

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Frequent upon the deep entrenched ground, Strange marks of mighty arms of former days, . . .41 Wordsworth saw in the Plain all the elements, natural, unnatural and mystical, that combine to make an already dramatic physical landscape a supernatural, hyperphysical entity. Even benign animal inhabitants, such as the lumbering great bustard are recast in an unearthly, faintly threatening light.42 The elements batter the out-of-place traveller by day, emphasizing the lack of shelter and inhospitality of the landscape. Then, as night falls, the other inhabitants of the plain emerge; the stories, legends myths and old wives’ tales that give a place a reputation, or, here, a sense of foreboding and threat. It is unsurprising that ghosts reoccur in tales of Salisbury Plain, given the proliferation of burial mounds. With few occupied settlements, it is an open landscape upon which superstitions, and imaginations, run wild. Another legend picked up similar themes to Wordsworth’s poem; those of the traveller on the Plain, an unwelcoming landscape, and ghostly goings-on. The Dead Drummer, a Legend of Salisbury Plain was one of the Ingoldsby Legends written by Thomas Ingoldsby (real name Richard Harris Barham) in 1837, which became popular in the nineteenth century. The story of a drummer boy killed on the Plain who continues to haunt it on stormy nights (that Barham claimed Walter Scott had told him), lacks the finesse of Wordsworth’s language, but reiterates a similar view of the plain as a hostile environment: Oh, Salisbury Plain is bleak and bare, At least so I’ve heard many people declare, For fairly I confess I never was there; Not a shrub nor a tree, Nor a bush can you see: No hedges, no ditches, no gates, no stiles, Much less a house, or a cottage for miles; It’s a very sad thing to be caught in the rain When night’s coming up on Salisbury Plain.. . . And when with a good soaking shower there are blended Blue lightnings and thunder, the matter’s not mended; Such was the case In this wild dreary place, On the day that I’m speaking of now, when the brace Of trav’llers alluded to quicken’d their pace,

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Till a good steady walk became more like a race To get quit of the tempest which held them in chace.43 The publication of a popular legend took old sentiments of the wild and haunted plain to a wider audience. Works such as the Ingoldsby Legends and Wordsworth’s poem show the potent mix of a suggestive landscape, here bleak and ranging, with centuries of accumulated stories, to form a sense of place in which it was difficult to distinguish between myth and reality. The arrival of military operations on this landscape could not immediately undo such notions. While manoeuvres and tactics continued with military matter-of-factness, the fate of the poor soldiers condemned to survive out on the open plain was of great concern to local civilians, to the point of creation of an organization devoted to their welfare, the Church of England Committee. It took a much longer presence, beyond the First World War and up to the Second, to demystify the Plain whose very openness, and lack of population, had marked it out as suitable for military training. Traversing England’s down lands in 1936, Harold Massingham was moved to describe the landscape qualities of the Plain using maritime imagery to convey the sense of space and openness he felt. ‘Wiltshire chalk like the sea has no direction or destination . . . wide regions of this primeval unenclosed country remain, especially that lonely western section in the midst of which floats like a lightship the little village of Imber’.44 The military presence by this time was leaving its mark, Massingham noting that there had been shelling of a barrow, ‘mutilated by a hideous iron contraption’, but was not perturbed enough to refrain from the spoils disturbance had revealed. ‘I was a little compensated by picking up a tiny phallic charm within its disturbed eastern end . . . and beside a piece of shrapnel I found a fossilised red deer antler,’ he wrote.45 Yet for all the observations he made in writing a ‘survey of England’s chalk, its boundaries, geology, physical features, vegetation, landscape, architecture and prehistory’, Massingham could not shake the other-worldliness of the place: the solitude of the chalk downs. Not once but many times I have travelled their crests for a stretch of ten miles in high summer without sighting another human being, even tramp, shepherd, gipsy or archaeologist. If ever there was an abandoned country, left to the ghosts and the fairies, it is downland.46 Massingham wrote just before the Second World War changed Salisbury Plain (and the world outside it). His words remain untainted by the

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imminent upheaval of Imber, his view of the military presence uncomplicated by the needs of war and rights of civilians. Ancient remains, avid archaeology, free wanderings, literary heritage and the landscape itself were his points of reference, with old superstitions, folk tales and ghost stories nonetheless still resonating through the landscape. But soon, in a post-war age where the military found itself having to justify a presence in the land at all, an active rebranding of the plain as a haven, protected by the military, took place, to overthrow its older incarnations. While the military use of land is but a recent development on Salisbury Plain, the area remained a consistently military environment throughout the twentieth century, an era that has seen more changes and demands on land use in a few decades than during the entirety of previous centuries. The advent of mechanized agriculture has impacted on all rural environments. The large expanses of open fields on Salisbury Plain were particularly suited to the use of mechanical ploughs and combine harvesters, which allow farmers to grow arable crops on a scale reminiscent of the American mid-west, and rarely seen in Britain. The thin stony soil characteristic of the chalk downs had resisted cultivation until the twentieth century, being too hard to break by non-mechanical plough, and too marginally productive to warrant the man-hours needed to work it.47 It is estimated that many areas had already gone out of cultivation 2,000 years ago, and had remained unploughed – the reason why so many of the prehistoric field monuments found on Salisbury Plain had survived, and in such good states of preservation, until the twentieth century.48 Archaeologists had despaired at the military use of large areas of the plain in the early twentieth century. O. G. S. Crawford, the British archaeologist who pioneered the use of aerial photography for deepening archaeological understanding of the landscape, in his aerial survey of southern England in the 1920s thought the military areas so destroyed (in archaeological terms) – after the trench digging and shelling practices of First World War – that he did not bother to photograph them. ‘Salisbury Plain’, he opined, ‘is already ruined’.49 Now, though, after decades of heavy ploughing, urban expansion, and more intensive land use elsewhere, archaeologists have revised their view of the military landscape of the plain. The military zone, ‘once an island of destruction in the middle of pastureland, is now a refuge of comparative preservation in the middle of an archaeological desert of arable land.’50 This recognition of the protective role towards archaeological remains that the military is playing, as opposed to the previously assumed destructive role, is now largely accepted in archaeological circles. 51 The purchase

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of land by the War Office has resulted in the inadvertent creation of a ‘massive archaeological reserve’.52 Certainly, in the eyes of archaeologists, the military use of the plain has saved it from a worse fate: the ‘wholesale destruction by modern agriculture’ that has befallen other chalk down land, and the archaeological remains it held.53 It has caused a ‘fossilisation of the landscape’. 54 But this terminology implies that the military land has simply been preserved. In fact it has been heavily used, with effective training always the overriding priority. The remains of trench digging for training during First World War survive to some extent, and the present-day digging in of troops, along with the passing of tracked and wheeled vehicles and impact of artillery, are recognized – by the MoD’s chief archaeologist Ian Barnes – as a threat to the site’s archaeological heritage.55 Barnes also identifies natural agents as an archaeological threat, from rabbits colonizing and eroding earthworks to trees (planted as cover for training) that undermine remains.56 It seems that on SPTA, archaeological and ecological priorities do not always coincide. However, for both interests the recommendations of the Defence Lands Committee (1971–73) proved pivotal in the recognition of the wealth of heritage, be it natural or historical, found on military land, and the need to protect and preserve it. Efforts to protect archaeological sites on SPTA date back to 1925, when The Royal Label Factory – ‘makers of Danger and directions signs, rustless metal name plates and labels’ – were commissioned by the War Office to produce signs identifying earthworks (even as Crawford was despairing their destruction by the military).57 An awareness of the site’s archaeological heritage existed due to the proximity and national status of Stonehenge, and the amateur interest of gentleman officers who undertook a spot of archaeological survey in their spare time when stationed at the base. However, no official policy was in place as to the use by troops of archaeological sites, and digging, shelling and general disturbance continued without restriction.58 The Nugent report of 1973 marked a change in how the MoD valued and managed its landholdings. Commissioned in part as a response to the growing levels of discontent at army training taking place in areas of natural beauty, the report marks a shift from an overarching sense of an inherent right to train to a recognition of a duty to protect the land in use. The first formal archaeological management on SPTA began as a part of the recommendation that conservation work be undertaken, overseen by a Conservation Officer, and using the knowledge and skills of outside groups. In 1979 the County Archaeologist for Wiltshire received reports from the SPTA East Conservation Group that training was damaging archaeological remains in the area.59 The reports ‘prompted a debate’ on

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the issue of archaeological conservation, resulting in a survey grading all the monuments found on the site according to their archaeological importance.60 It is now known that there are a total of 2,300 discrete archaeological sites recorded on SPTA, 551 of which are protected as Scheduled Ancient Monuments, with restrictions as to the types of training allowed in their vicinities. The archaeological equivalent of SSSI protective status, the designations secure SPTA as a site of archaeological, as well as environmental, significance. The report’s recommendations of employing a conservation officer, and actively engaging with outside groups to coordinate conservation work, secured the futures of SPTA’s natural and archaeological heritages. The conservation groups included archaeology experts among their members. Although the groups did not see competition between environmental and archaeological conservation, there have been points of conflict for both. For example, the 5,000 acres of trees that were planted to create a diverse training environment have had beneficial environmental consequences, providing cover and shelter for wildlife as well as troops.61 However, for archaeologists, the erosion caused to earthworks by root systems poses a real threat, especially as in the past the ‘plantations designed for military training were established without regard to underlying sites’.62 Likewise, rabbit and badger populations are to one group an important component of the ecosystem, while to the other, perpetrators of subterranean crimes against site preservation. What is visible in the case of SPTA is that competing claims on the landscape by different interest groups have sometimes fought for primacy. SPTA, with a rich archaeological heritage inadvertently protected by the military presence, and an equally abundant environmental worth, gained a greater recognition of both areas with the publication of the Nugent report. As well as encouraging practical conservation on the ground, the report marks a more self-aware military presence on the land. A response to public outcry at the requisition of the village of Tyneham, and the restrictions on public access and recreation from military use of Dartmoor, the report’s recommendations were designed to pacify anti-military sentiments, and improve the MoD’s public standing. Not all were acted upon: the recommendation to return Tyneham to its former inhabitants was overturned due to the perceived continuing need for tank training facilities. But the very commission of the report marks a concern for the public standing of the armed forces; the swift adoption of many of its recommendations (such as the introduction of a conservation programme), the desire to improve the military’s reputation.

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The consequences for the environmental and archaeological health of SPTA of the military presence has secured recognition of habitats and monuments, and set in place training restrictions for their protection. But is this a further example of inadvertent conservation? Not in the daily groundwork being undertaken, for the conservation experts employed by DEs to oversee the management of the environmental and archaeological aspects of SPTA are committed to their work, and see real results and value in it. But what about the motive for instigating such initiatives? The growing anti-nuclear, anti-military movements of the 1960s and 1970s, coupled with the rise of popular environmentalism, contributed to the vocal protests against the military use of land, which prompted the Nugent Report. Since the end of the Cold War, further questioning of the continued use of swathes of the British landscape has persisted as many argue for the contracting of both the size of the military, and its landholdings. The controversial conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years have served to cement a negative public image. And so the publication of Sanctuary, for example, provides a forum for a regular discussion of positive achievements of military personnel without reference to destruction or death (those undeniable consequences of combat, which capture media attention). Military land is attractively packaged in wildlife photography. Even routine training is rarely directly referenced. Instead, focus stays firmly on the environment. Likewise, press releases promoting the success of species reintroduction, the vitality of creatures such as the fairy shrimp and the launch of educational initiatives such as the Green Pack playing cards, filter through to local and national media narratives of the military from which the inherently violent nature of the military is singularly absent. This absence corresponds with Davis’s idea of a double erasure in place on militarized landscapes. The celebration of the preservation of the landscape by historical military use (particularly in archaeological terms) encourages the perception of the plain as a ‘pristine’ landscape. The privileging of environmental and archaeological interests in the publicity materials and press releases featuring SPTA emphasizes the training area as a ‘natural’ environment, minimizing the military presence within it. Rather than the use of weapons, tank disturbance or noise pollution, it is the stewardship role of the military that coverage in Sanctuary magazine, for example, reports. Davis’s argument follows that ‘the labelling of any environment as “natural” necessarily involves the erasure of the social history of the landscape.’63 As this chapter goes on to show, at SPTA the rise of the environmental narrative of the plain contrasts with the downfall of village life on the plain. At this site, Davis’s concept of double erasure on

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military lands offers a useful interpretation with which to approach Imber, the ‘ghost-village’ of the plain. Woodward is also critical of the representation of militarized landscapes by the MoD. She argues that military activities damage the natural environment in many different ways, an issue that is obscured by the military ‘greenwash’, achieved through the controlled release of information.64 While in the case of SPTA the beneficial consequences of the military presence for the environment are palpable and publicly signposted as SSSIs and scheduled ancient monuments, and the intentions of land managers working towards conservation goals are genuine, Woodward’s argument raises awareness of the ability of the military, as an organization of great size and standing, to manipulate its own image. The environmental successes on its land improve the army’s relations with local communities, securing its continued presence and capacity to train.65 Davis’s identification of a double-erasure offers an analysis of the military capacity to represent their land. Woodward’s arguments place this representation within a wider political context, wherein the ability to train is protected above concerns about landscape and environment. As such, the environmental narrative is proudly displayed to the wider public, and since the Nugent report it has become a key feature of the publicly encouraged portrayal of the military in a protective role of landscape stewardship.66 Other narratives, less favourable to the desired portrayal of the military, have been denied the same standing as the environmental and archaeological stories. While the profiles of the robust nature and mute wildlife inhabiting the plain have risen, the voices of the human inhabitants of the plain have struggled to be heard by those in power. The story of Imber completes Davis’s notion of double erasure. In addition to the erasure of military use of the site in favour of a portrayal of a natural landscape, with Imber the MoD – unable or unwilling to confront the controversial requisition and retention of the village – has effectively erased the social history of the village.

Imber In December, 1943, the War Office ordered the evacuation of Imber village so that it could be used for training purposes, specifically preparations for the D-Day landings. Imber sits at the very heart of SPTA, isolated and surrounded by open chalk down land. It is difficult land from which to wrest a living. In spite of this (or, equally, because of it) a close community

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survived. The village had its own church, school, post office, public house, blacksmith’s and manor.67 It also lay at the centre of the army training area installed on this part of Salisbury Plain. When the War Office bought land in the early years of the century, they also bought the estates and their attendant workers’ cottages. Farming, for the most part, continued, and so did the village life it fed. But by the outbreak of the Second World War, nearly all of Imber was in fact already owned by the military. Residents were tenants of the military, and so when the time came to surrender normal life for the greater good of the national war effort they were served their notice directly by the Defence Land Agent. Residents left on the understanding, they maintained afterwards, that they would return to their homes when peace resumed. One surviving notice of eviction seems to support this general understanding, stating that ‘the [War] Department will refund the cost of removal to store and reasonable storage charges until you can find another house, or until the Imber area is again open for occupation, whichever is the earlier.’68 However, in the years after the Second World War, the army revealed that there would be no further inhabitation of the village, as it was imperative for training to continue. In the following years, protest groups worked for the return of Imber to its former inhabitants, as the uninhabited village fell slowly into disrepair, its walls absorbing training bullets and its roads closed to the public. Having discussed the rise of the environmental profile of the plain, we turn to the fall of the human narrative of the plain, in the form of Imber. This is not the place to chart the history of Imber the village. Rex Sawyer devotes a book, Little Imber on the Down , to that subject, a thorough portrayal of Imber’s history up to, and beyond, the evacuation. Rather, it is Imber’s relationship to the landscape in which it sits that interests us here. Almost hidden in the folds of the downs, Imber has been left to decay with time, when other areas of SPTA are managed so attentively. Access to the village has been closed to the public, and so a sense of division and partition has come to bear. Imber became a potent symbol of military oppression, a focus for protest and anti-military activism.69 And, although not lived in, Imber is inhabited for short periods by the troops who train there, and leave their marks of graffiti on the walls, and bullet casings in the grass. In this study of the military use of Salisbury Plain, Imber stands apart from the stories of environmental benefits and careful landscape management. It represents an altogether less predictable, less appealing story of military presence, one involving issues of memory, dislocation and loss. A very human story, it challenges the ‘greenwash’ of relentlessly positive environmental narratives with a human history that fought the military to be heard.

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Figure 4.2 Boundary fencing around the graveyard at Imber. Photo: M. Dudley (2008).

The side road branching off the main A360 that dissects SPTA, once signposted to Imber, now boasts large red signs warning the public away (Figure 4.2). It used to link the insular village with the outside world. From 1951 the Ministry of Transport had issued a temporary order preventing the use of the public rights of way in and around Imber on the grounds of public safety.70 From 1955 the military requested an order to permanently close the rights of way in the area. Now, it really is a road to nowhere. Imber is off the map, and users are threatened with prosecution should they choose to cross from non-military to military land. Other areas of the plain are liberally signposted, warning of tanks crossing, ‘out of bounds’, ‘danger’ and so on – standard military signage. But the signs around Imber seem particularly forceful in their tone, the MoD especially resolute in conveying the message: ‘No Access’. I have walked around Imber unaccompanied by military personnel, free to explore.71 This is unusual. Since the forced relocation of its inhabitants, and its transition to training area, members of the public have been denied access to Imber, as have former residents unless granted special permission (for example, to visit a grave).

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This is a subject of contention. Those who lived in the village wanted to be free to revisit the resting place of ancestors, and the site of living memories. Others felt it a matter of public interest to press for continued access to the site, fearing an erosion of civil liberties. The issue of access highlights the control the MoD has over its land. When an issue runs against its interests – as the protests against the requisition of Imber have and continue to do – it has a privileged power to limit access to a site. Since the requisition of Imber, the village has not stood frozen in time. Old buildings have decayed, while new ones have been erected (Figure 4.3). The value of the village to the army is that it provides a realistic built-up training environment. Unlike the troop movements, survival techniques and camouflage skills that are developed on the open plain, the streets and buildings of Imber provide the setting for a different set of skills and tactics. During the Second World War troops needed to be prepared for close-up street fighting, and Imber bore enough of a resemblance to the small rural villages of Northern France and Belgium that many troops found themselves in a few weeks after training, to prepare them for conflict. But while the buildings were not demolished, neither have they been maintained (with the exception of the church, which remains consecrated and Church of England property). Some original buildings still stand, window- and roofless, but most of the pre-1943 buildings have simply succumbed to the ravages of time.72 A sign still hangs outside The Bell , identifying the village pub. Apart from this, no other markers of village landmarks exist; cottages and farm houses are anonymous in their decay. The layout of the village changed with the construction of a mock Londonderry council estate in the 1960s and 1970s, at the height of the Northern Ireland Troubles, to simulate urban warfare conditions. Sitting ingloriously alongside the older ruins, and now dominating the village landscape, the utilitarian concrete shells offer a clear statement that no sentimentality governs the MoD’s use of this site. It is primarily a training area, used heavily and without regard for the history (or any future) of the village. Robert Bevan argues that the destruction of architecture by militaries is not merely ‘collateral damage’.73 The destruction of architecture, and with it, historical memory, tradition and the past, is the goal itself. Although he is referring to a wartime environment, his argument rings true for the treatment of Imber since its MoD requisition. Due to access restrictions, the evicted were unable to revisit the village physically, retaining only memories of life there. But as the village was altered by training and time,

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Figure 4.3 Past and present uses collide in this picture of a farmhouse at Imber. Photo: M. Dudley (2008).

the site of memory was degraded to a point where little value, from a heritage perspective but equally from a personal perspective, could be found in the empty shells. The life had been taken out of the village by the forced eviction. By preventing the re-entering of inhabitants, even to remember, the military ensured that there was no role for Imber beyond that of a place of training. The restriction of access to the village by the closure of right of way signalled the MoD’s intention to retain Imber as a training ground in the long term, and, for former inhabitants, reneged on its word that they could return. It provided a rallying point for those wishing to protest against the use of Imber as a training area but also the treatment of its inhabitants by the MoD. Austin Underwood, councillor of Amesbury Rural District Council, demanded a public inquiry on the issue. By taking the story to the local press and petitioning other local councils to join Amesbury in lodging an objection to the proposed order, Underwood raised the profile of the issue and effectively organized the local population into a campaign

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against the military use of Imber. The Association for the Restoration of Imber was born, and had clear goals: (1) To keep open for public use the rights of way previously closed by the Defence Regulations. To strenuously oppose any order for their closure. (2) To re-establish the farming life of Imber. (3) To re-establish Imber as a civil and ecclesiastical Parish of the County of Wiltshire.74 Right of access was an issue that drew people together in opposition to the military. For those displaced from Imber it added further insult to injury; having been removed from their homes they were now unable to even revisit the area. For others, it signalled a consolidation of a military ‘rule’ of the land at the expense of recreational users, a gradual erosion of rights to ramble, experience and enjoy open countryside. Capitalizing on growing public concern over access was the Association for the Restoration of Imber, which, in keeping with its aims, organized a mass rally to trespass (or symbolically reclaim, depending which side of the argument you were on) Imber village in 1961. Underwood wrote to the War Department informing it of the planned rally, and received a polite but short reply, informing him that ‘you and all members of your party do so at your own risk’.75 The reasoning behind access restriction had been that, due to unexploded ordnance, it was too dangerous for the public to be allowed in the area. Those opposed felt this was used as an excuse for the military to illegally and illicitly erode public rights and interests in the land. The rally went ahead, with an estimated 700 or more vehicles forming a procession down the road to the village, where Underwood issued a notice of eviction to the MoD, mimicking their actions of 18 years previously (and displaying an intuition for media-friendly demonstration). Local and national press covered the event, bringing Imber and the question of access to military land to widespread public attention.76 The military kept a low profile during the demonstration, although a Range Officer arrived with loudspeaker to warn the crowd from leaving the road or entering the houses as ‘the ground has not been cleared and is not safe’.77 The instructions had already been ignored, and were met with jeers and laughter from the crowd.78 If this was the strongest argument the military had for restricting access, the rally was effectively undermining it. The episode galvanized the determination of the Association for the Restoration of Imber, and embarrassed the MoD.

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The rally was a successful publicity stunt but the real aim of the local councils (which, thanks to Underwood’s lobbying, had united in opposition to the order preventing access to Imber) was to bring about a public inquiry into the military’s occupation of Imber. Given the public attention the issue was receiving, the call could not be ignored, and a public inquiry into the ‘Proposed Permanent Closure of Highways in the Imber Range Danger Area’ commenced at the County Hall in Trowbridge on 3 October 1961. The inquiry was to consider ‘whether or not the highways shall be permanently stopped up . . . that is the only issue’, Sir Harold Emmerson, the Chairman, warned at the outset. ‘The Commission have no authority to report to the Minister on any other issue, however tempted they may be to do so.’79 Despite the warning, however, it was clear that more was under discussion than simply access by road. The public inquiry was the first opportunity to question the military publicly about the requisition of the Imber area for training, and all present were prepared to discuss it. Anthony Cripps, War Office spokesperson, reiterated the official line that: there are a large number of unexploded missiles . . . the main danger on such a range such as this arises from tampering with missiles which are found by persons who do not understand them. The most obvious case, of course, is a child on a picnic party who sees maybe a mortar bomb . . . and plays with it, or perhaps the young boy who has finished his lunch and is lying in the sun and who starts throwing stones at unexploded dangerous objects.80 While perhaps Cripps hoped to strengthen support for the military’s proposed access restrictions by illustrating it with images of injured children who had strayed from the path, the overall argument was rather undermined when Major General Harrington, also representing the War Department, was cross-examined by Underwood. When asked if unexploded ordnance, if present, would injure or maim a horse, Harrington replied in the affirmative. When asked if the military hunt rode through Imber, Harrington had to reply that they did. What Underwood succeeded in showing was that the threat from unexploded ordnance was not great enough to disrupt the tradition of the military hunt on Salisbury Plain, inferring that neither was it a threat then to members of the public who would also like to access the land, merely drive or walk through, let alone ride across the downs. The episode highlighted the military’s ability to use arguments presented as protecting the public to prohibit them from the land.

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That the first public hearing about the military requisition of Imber focused on the closure of rights of way was not simply a smokescreen for the wider issue. Access to the site was central to the distinction between its civilian past and later military use. The closure of the rights of way into and out of the village not only signalled, but physically and legally ensured the site’s transition from a civilian community to a military landscape. Just as, for the military, the closure of the roads had been the most immediate expression of the intentions to retain the site for training after the end of the Second World War, for those fighting the military the reinstatement of access was the first step in regaining the site. Alongside the task of removing a military recovering from a victorious war, for campaigners the smaller goal of reclaiming access to the village presented a smaller, symbolic, goal. The defence of its right to restrict access indicates the importance of complete control for the military of its training areas. Threats of interruption to, or observation of, training activities by civilians were unacceptable and the right to restrict access was deployed, and staunchly defended. The public inquiry went on to discuss at length the nature of the requisition of the army’s village, hearing from those displaced, most emotionally from Martha Nash, widow of the late Arthur Nash, the village blacksmith. Nash had been born in Imber and spent his whole life there. When he left, he had to leave his forge behind, receiving no compensation for loss of livelihood. Mrs Nash remembered the War Department Land Agent telling her and her husband that ‘Yes, you will be back in six months, if not before’.81 Mr Nash died not long after leaving Imber. The cause of death signed by the doctor from Devizes was a broken heart, because of shock of the way in which he was removed from Imber.82 The questioning of Mrs Nash at the public inquiry, and cross-examination by Cripps for the War Department, is a sobering exchange, and a reminder that among talk of access rights, recreation, training needs and land use, lives were being determined by the military presence on the plain. The public inquiry ultimately found in the military’s favour, closing the public highway into Imber in the interests of public safety and instigating the installation of the deterrent signs that are still in place today. Another burst of publicity occurred in 1981, when the MoD took steps to close further rights of way. Internal MoD correspondences, now accessible, name the ‘future requirement to train US Ground Launch Missile [GLCM] Flights’ as the reason for restricting access further, but simultaneously demonstrate an awareness that, ‘in view of possible public reaction by the anti-nuclear lobby I find it difficult to see how we could use the need to train GLCM Flights as a reason for closing further public rights of way’.83 By this stage, the site as a military training area was well-established and

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secure, but access had not diminished as an issue central to maintaining the ability to train. However, in the post-Nugent age, external pressures to keep access open and maintain a good public image are more tangible concerns than in 1961. A. J. Fuller of the Lands Department (now DEs) expresses this in his correspondence on the matter: I believe that it would be most unwise at present to endeavour to prevent all forms of use of such areas. It was agreed some years ago under pressure that the MoD would allow access to impact areas, when not in use, by responsible organisations such as botanical and environmental groups under supervision. Clearly we must restrict access to such areas, but I do not feel we can go further than this.84 Cooperation between the MoD and environmental groups was by this time established enough to influence decision-making regarding SPTA. The MoD reverted to the well-worn argument of preventing access ‘in the interests of public safety’ to ultimately win the bid to close further rights of way. Bad publicity was not avoided, with the local press reporting the issue under headlines such as ‘Walkers on Warpath Over Plan for Plain’.85 But for the first time in this scenario, MoD rhetoric was careful to acknowledge the ecological health of the plain, and the potential damage that the threat of the ‘growing desire of residents from expanding urban areas to seek recreation in the open air’ would cause, as well as the danger to their personal safety that crossing SPTA could pose.86 Khaki conservation was being used at SPTA in the 1980s in a way that it had not been used before, to protect existing access restrictions by drawing upon the potential damage that too many people could cause to the (now-recognized) environmentally sensitive military training area. The threat of environmentally damaging recreation was a more plausible argument against open access than that of public safety, which had been so roundly disproved by the 1961 public enquiry. Both arguments were heard at all four other sites, by a military anxious to maintain control of their territory. Unable to access the village, protestors were left to conduct their campaign away from the area of concern. Underwood continued to be a committed campaigner on behalf of those displaced from Imber, writing in publications such as Country Life , where he presented Imber as ‘The Lost Village of the Plain’, a irrecoverable site of a bygone way of life; or in Peace News (‘for non-violence and unilateral disarmament’), where Imber became ‘The Murdered Village’, directly compared to a Polish village ‘under the Nazi heel’.87 After the army won the right to restrict access to the village, Imber became a symbol of ‘lost’ villages and displaced persons. It became

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a caricature, the language used in the press to discuss it drawing on ideas of rural England that no longer existed, a way of life that had passed. There is an irony here with such portrayals of Imber echoing those of Tyneham, also portrayed as a ‘timeless’ rural idyll safeguarded from modernization by the military occupation. Cole identifies such rhetoric at Tyneham and compares it with the traces of the community of Epynt, seeing in the presentation of these places as picturesque ruins a narrative of ‘a military landscape as a site of salvation’, reborn as nature reserves and tourist attractions.88 But Imber remains uniquely closed to outside visitation, with no redemption available from tourism. Of all the ‘dead’ villages of the military lands, Imber remains the ghostliest, its strange peace undisturbed by tourist activity. The military did not succeed in avoiding the discussion of Imber, but by restricting access it did sever the connection between the concept of Imber the village, and the reality. Imber as an abstraction, and associated ideas, lived on in the public sphere. Yet the army had the land, and it was theirs to do with as they wanted. By preventing people from accessing Imber, the military exercised an effective tool of forgetting. Memories could not be anchored to an accessible, material location.89 They lived on, but were more fallible. Imber action groups attempted to reclaim some right to experience Imber (even in its abandoned state) by organizing rallies and conducting church services.90 Ownership by the army, and continued use as a training ground, have denied those removed from Imber the right to memorialize it. A small plaque stands outside the church, marking the day when the village was evacuated, but the real fate of Imber is written in its walls, pockmarked by bullets, and covered by graffiti. The ruined buildings are the traces of the community that once lived there. Unlike other abandoned communities on military training areas such as Tyneham in Dorset, and the Mynyyd Epynt in the Brecon Beacons, there is no information at Imber to explain what has happened to the site. Due to the restrictions of access the MoD is not expecting any passing interest. But should this mean a disregard for the history of the site? It is still used by soldiers, who shelter in the buildings for a night and leave their thoughts written on the walls for the next battalion to ponder. At some points over the past few decades, Imber activists have also tagged the buildings, cries of ‘Save Imber’ and ‘Imber Freedom Fighters’ sitting next to lines of ‘squaddie’ humour and homesick messages. Does this provoke any thought among the training soldiers? If they have any questions about the site, the answers are not laid out for them by the MoD. Other than the plaque by the church, and the tired sign still hanging outside The Bell Inn, there is no

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acknowledgement of a historic past, the lives lived when Imber was a village, not a training area. The social history of the village has been erased. The site’s recent past is still emotive, and potentially bad press for the MoD, who prefer the history of their land to be long dead: the ancient earthworks of the plain are safe, any struggle or contention long buried by time and chalk. They are easily managed, and easily discussed. Voiceless, the archaeological past of SPTA is valued by the MoD, and protected. While the earthworks are cordoned off, the buildings at Imber see tanks and troops run through on a regular basis. An ongoing, tangled issue that does no favours to the public perception of the military presence on the Plain, the preferred method of management of the history of Imber has been to ignore it. Ownership of land does not extend to the memories of that land, but it can control how they are expressed at the site. The troubled recent history of Imber has not been confronted by the MoD. Salisbury Plain has collected legends about the restless souls that pass through it. It is no wonder that soldiers keep themselves busy by writing on the walls of Imber, the ghost village of the plain (Figure 4.4). Imber lies in a valley, tucked away from the winds that whip the open plain. Isolated and empty, it remains as much a part of the landscape decayed and destroyed as it did when it was a living village; what we are able to read from that landscape contributes to our overall knowledge of the military on Salisbury Plain. What the treatment of Imber tells us is that the MoD exercises a privilege of choice in the way it manages its landholdings. When circumstances run in its favour, as a national governmental organization it is able to fund and sustain efforts to conserve and protect. The environmental benefits that military training has undeniably caused lie within this sphere. However, equally, when an issue runs counter to the immediate interests of military training, it has the might of powerful interests behind it. Imber, to its downfall, fell into this category.

Figure 4.4 Anti-military messages stand out among troop graffiti on Imber walls. Photo: M. Dudley (2008).

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In looking at the military presence on SPTA, and in particular its environmental aspect, I was initially interested in the agency given to previously unknown and undervalued species, such as the fairy shrimp. Through initiatives backed by the MoD, the environmental health of a valuable habitat has been safeguarded, and brought to the attention of an interested public. But the history of Imber has to be considered together with that of the plain in which it lies, and it would be wrong (and irresponsible as a historian) to ignore the many (human) voices the MoD has made difficult to hear over the thunder of the tanks. Woodward’s suggestion that flagship species like the fairy shrimp actively serve the MoD’s interests ring true at Imber. The success of individual environmental stories has diverted attention away from a bigger picture that includes Imber as a part of the site’s history and identity. The MoD makes much of its role as protector of the land on which it trains. As Imber shows, however, it is always acting to ultimately protect its own interests, of which training remains paramount. A greening has taken place within the military, with expert conservationists and archaeologists employed to undertake the day-to-day management of vast tracts of land, the ecological value of which is understood, valued and protected. But a ‘greenwash’ is also in operation, whereby the military is using images of nature to improve its own reputation, and deflect attention from other more difficult, but no less important, histories investing military land. The LIFE–Natura 2000 brochure described the environmental work on SPTA as incorporating ‘restoration work to correct the results of past neglect (overgrown grasslands) or inappropriate actions (tree planting to create cover for exercising troops)’.91 At no point did the literature acknowledge or address the state of Imber, whose neglect remains perpetrated and uncorrected by the MoD. While SPTA as a case study provides a counter argument to Woodward’s assertion that military activity and conservation remain incompatible, it cannot convince that Woodward’s suggestion of ‘greenwash’ in operation on military landscape is erroneous, nor that Davis’ idea of double erasure on military lands is out of place here. The history of the nature conservation of SPTA has been one of increasing success, military involvement and publicity. Imber, however, offers a counterpoint wherein a controversial and neglected area of the training site sits, physically and discursively, as an island amid a sea of green.

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Chapter 5

Tyneham

Chapter 5 introduces the Lulworth Range on Dorset’s coast, which contains the village of Tyneham. Like Imber, it is a ruined village at the heart of a military training area, and offers a second opportunity to consider questions of requisition, eviction and memory in military landscapes. Tyneham is an unusual ‘ghost-village’, however. Open at weekends to the public, tourism to the site is encouraged by car parks, toilets, nature trails, a heritage barn and information boards that promote the site’s heritage and environmental credentials – and, subsequently, those of its owner, the MoD. A stark contrast to silent and inaccessible Imber, it offers a different perspective on military-environmentalism and its consequences for inhabitants and users of military lands, and those excluded from them. This chapter examines the development of Tyneham in the twentieth century, starting chronologically by examining its inclusion in several walking guides to Dorset. Through these texts, Tyneham is seen as a heritage landscape where physical beauty and literary precedents merge to create a vivid place that readers were encouraged to experience for themselves. The texts cultivate a particular reading of Tyneham as a ‘timeless’ rural idyll, heavily influenced by Thomas Hardy’s fictional Wessex. The chapter goes on to explore how these writings contributed to a lasting perception of Tyneham as a village where time had stopped and rural life existed untainted by modern change. This myth was exacerbated by the military requisition of the village and its subsequent ‘death’, and perpetuated by the anti-military campaigns to restore the village to previous inhabitants. This chapter also examines notions of Tyneham as a ‘wild place’, its structural decline at the hands of the military contrasted by unchecked verdant growth. It notes the shift in perception of this lush vegetative state, from an overrun and threatening nature to that of a precious nature reserve that deserved protection and management. This is linked to the policy change instigated by the publication of the Nugent Report, the military’s decision

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to retain the site despite Nugent’s recommendation for its release and the compromises made in the wake of this controversial decision. The changes in the military’s approach to the site as a training area, but one that was nationally recognized as a site of environmental and historical importance, describes the gradual realization and implementation of military-environmentalism. Access continues as a key theme in this chapter, which further develops an understanding of how challenges to access restrictions, and MoD responses, shaped the use and perception of training areas. The role of conservation groups in establishing an environmentally centred understanding of military training areas, monitoring their ecological well-being, and contributing to day-to-day maintenance, is common to all five sites, but is given particular space in this chapter. The conservation groups are discussed, from their relation to the operation of military-environmentalism on the ground to its wider discursive meanings, responding to Woodward’s critique. Chapter 5 argues that these groups – while vital to the practice of military-environmentalism – take little interest in the wider debates surrounding the military use of land, instead maintaining a detailed local focus on sites, the habitats and wildlife they contain, and their continuing ecological condition. Finally, a postscript brings together disparate hopes for Tyneham’s future as expressed at different stages in its history by various groups and individuals. This is in response to its status as a landscape that has been the focus of imaginative literature, experienced extreme change in use and been the focus of an energetic campaign to reverse the military occupancy. The imagined futures demonstrate that the site’s development as a military training area was not inevitable, and that different readings of its use and its past shaped a future that saw it remain as a military landscape, in which military-environmentalism and heritagization are overtly displayed.

Tyneham in the twentieth century I reserve the right to be moved by the sight of an English landscape or barn, but if you put me down in Tyneham village as it was before it was destroyed, I would be itching to escape. (Patrick Wright, 1997)1 In his 1905 guide to exploring the Dorset coast, Charles Harper thought it wise to point out that, ‘the coastline of Dorsetshire is not easily overpraised,

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nor without difficulty explored, for it combines beauty, ruggedness, and general inaccessibility, each in a very high degree.’2 He employed feet, bike and boat to access its ‘innermost recesses’, warning that ‘the cyclist’s lot, in especial, is an arduous one’.3 Approaching the village of Tyneham from the eastern side of its coastline, after a steep climb he suggested that: This is the time when even those least appreciative of scenery sit down to admire the view, long and often, and certainly that view is of the grandest. Kimmeridge Bay, which has just been left, appears down there in the semblance of a little pool, and farmsteads, fields, flocks and woodlands are all parcelled out . . . A scrambling descent from these high places to the low levels near Tyneham leads to a pleasant little road descending a gorge which presently ends in the little neck of land connecting Worbarrow Tout – or Worbarrow Knob as it is sometimes named – with the horn of land forming the eastern side of Worbarrow Bay. This is one of the most strikingly bold and picturesque nooks of a virile and romantic coastline. Harper described the lay of the land as he saw it from his path tracing the coastline. It was a path his fellow travel writers tended to follow, approaching the village from its coastal edge rather than over the high ridge that shelters the village to the north. Sidney Heath, in his 1910 South Devon and Dorset contribution to the County Coast series guides, setting eyes on Worbarrow Bay, described it as ‘one of the most beautiful bits of scenery along this Purbeck coast.’ He turns his eyes inland, too, however, noting the ‘little village [Tyneham] which nestles beneath the shelter of the hills a short distance inland’, before carrying on to Kimmeridge Bay.4 Of this stretch of coast, Heath proclaimed that ‘nowhere is the delicate turf of the downs so smooth and pleasant to walk on, and nowhere can its atmospheric effects of light and shade be matched.’5 In 1935, Geoffrey Clark and William Harding Thompson traced a similar route from east to west, taking the ‘grassy track [that] leads along the top of the cliff to Worbarrow Bay. Everywhere the scenery is superb’, they exclaimed.6 ‘Beyond Worbarrow there is a steep climb to Flower’s Camp, with a reward on reaching the summit of a grassy seat on the ramparts and a view which stretches for miles across the heath to the Dorset Downs.’ If one paused here, it was to contemplate the surrounding landscape, Clark and Thompson noting Dorset’s ‘unchanging atmosphere of rural solitude’.7 Continuing west, from ‘Flower’s Camp the track leads down to Arish Mell.

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Here, the walker is faced with the danger of firing from Tanks, and he may be compelled to turn inland to East Lulworth.’ Clark and Thompson offer an unexpected reminder that the military presence in Dorset, as in Wiltshire and Devon, also predates the Second World War and the infamous requisition of Tyneham village in 1943. Bovington Camp, a few miles to the north of Tyneham, had been a place of ‘elementary training’ since 1899.8 In November 1916 the Tank Corps, which had been established in March 1916, moved from Bisley Camp in Surrey to Bovington. The dry sandy soil and low-growing grasses of the Dorset heath made it a suitable spot for tank exercises. Additionally, a proximity to Poole, Weymouth and Dorchester provided logistical benefits and transport links. In April 1917 land was obtained at Lulworth, to the west of Tyneham, and a danger area was fi xed to allow live firing. As tank training developed, according to the dictates of the First World War, land was added again to the Lulworth range in 1918, and on 2nd February the Gunnery School at Lulworth was established. The range at Lulworth was increased from approximately 1,300 acres at the time of the First World War to 8,500 acres during the Second World War, when Tyneham village and its surroundings were added to the training area.9 Lulworth range now holds 7,500 acres of land and a foreshore length of 6.5 miles at high tide.10 It is recognized as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and occupies an enviable position on the Dorset coastline, a slice of Britain’s first natural United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage site, the Jurassic Coast. The stretch from Lyme Regis to Bournemouth, encompassing the Lulworth Range, is also protected as a Heritage Coast, its many literary and historic sites attracting tourists and generating revenue. Though protected by relatively recent conferral of such statuses (the coastline was included on the World Heritage List in 2001), the landscape that continues to attract visitors is recognizable in the travel accounts that were written long before. The military presence, too, was a part of that landscape then as it is now. Walkers and visitors to the area had to incorporate potential firing delays and diversions to their routes from 1916 onwards, and local residents became familiar with the boom of tank fire, which, as Bovington Camp grew, looked set to become a permanent feature. In the interwar period the military presence did not generate any particular ire among the gentlemen wanderers who shared their appreciation of the Dorset coastline. Clark and Thompson reminded fellow walkers that ‘on Sunday’s when firing is not taking place, [t]he[y] may walk up the side of Bindon Hill, take care not to pick up any object on the grass which might explode.’11 The

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emphasis when describing the surrounding area, was firmly on the glory of the landscape, and the particular qualities it suggested. Dorset, for Clark and Thompson: with its unchanging atmosphere of rural solitude [tank training notwithstanding] . . . is one of the least spoilt of English counties. Time has stood still on its bare chalk hills and in those remote valleys cut off from contact from the noisy outside world . . . the past in Dorset is stronger than the present.12 This sentiment is a recurring motif in writings about the Dorset countryside, which was never more popularly or captivatingly described than by Thomas Hardy. Although Hardy set his novels in a carefully mapped fictional ‘Wessex’, it bore a thinly veiled relation to south-west England: ‘The presence of rural landscape is hard to avoid or forget when reading Hardy’s novels. Moreover, this landscape is not only a general “rural” one, but is “particular”, specific to “Wessex” – that is, to Dorset and the surrounding counties.’13 So evocative is the landscape context of Hardy’s novels, ‘he has become identified with this aspect of his achievement: he is to many the historian of Wessex, the Wordsworth of Dorset.’14 The Dorset guides treat him so. Heath’s Guide to South Devon and Dorset , after noting archaeological points of interest, and relevant Civil War battle spots, relies mainly on Hardy’s literature to illustrate his travels in the countryside. ‘Mr Hardy’s topographical riddles are easily solved’, says Heath with the relish of one who has succeeded.15 His encounters with the small nuclear villages of South Dorset like Piddlethrenthide, Lulworth and Wool provided something of a portal back in to the fictional rurality of Hardy’s imagination. When Heath describes Wool as ‘worth visiting for the old manor house, the seat of the branch of the Turberville family and the place where Tess and Angel Clare came to spend their tragic honeymoon’ the lines between fictional Wessex and real Dorset are blurred.16 Pite warns today’s Hardy scholars against the pull of Hardy’s geography and the tendency to search for the recognizable in his fiction. In terms of literary criticism, ‘more harmfully,’ he says, ‘treating Hardy as someone who records particular places and times, using invented names as only a thin disguise, leads people to treat the novels too literally.’ For the authors and explorers of the Dorset countryside in the early twentieth century, the warning comes too late. The guides celebrate a vision of Dorset that draws heavily on this fictional heritage. They present a landscape in which survives a pre-industrial way of life. The lack of metalled roads is a virtue, as:

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although possessing but few highroads the land of Purbeck is covered in innumerable lanes and trackways that lead over the open moorland from hamlet to farmstead, from manor house to sanctuary, or, most frequently of all, from nowhere to nowhere. Then the natural scenes of the neighbourhood are but half its charms.17 Isolated villages are to be happily stumbled upon, herder’s pathways followed. The guides present a ‘partly real, partly dream country’ – indebted to Hardy and which, like his fiction, is ‘recognizably the West of England and, at the same time, a transformation of that place into something different’, an idyll seen through the lens of literary heritage.18 In the midst of such carefully presented bucolic bliss, Tyneham and its surroundings are repeatedly singled out as being particularly ‘timeless’, a semi-truth that outlasted the village itself. The guidebooks’ preoccupation with the area’s literary heritage, its celebrated geology, and its archaeological wealth results in rare references to the present (and real) world they are walking through. Harper and Heath walked around Dorset, in 1905 and 1910, untouched by the First World War. When Clark and Thompson walked through Dorset in 1935, the countryside had suffered loss and hardship during the war and in its aftermath. Tyneham, like most English villages in the interwar period, had a social structure missing many of its young men. The names of six men of Tyneham Parish, ranging in age from 21 to 38, who died in the war are recorded in the chancel of the church.19 The school closed in 1932, ‘unviable’ after a steady decline in numbers.20 A village hall was built in 1924 after sustained communal fundraising efforts, and rebuilt in 1929 after its destruction by a winter gale, demonstrating civic life in Tyneham was still vital and cohesive, population decline notwithstanding. Its often-praised rural isolation translated into lack of roads and electricity that made for a hard existence. The manorial landlord William Henry Bond resisted change in the village and lived by candle- and gas-light in the early 1930s, along with his tenants, the villagers.21 The military surveyed the village immediately after its requisition, and the reports –painstakingly detailed – show the fabric of the buildings to be in varying states of repair. While, for example, ‘Cottage No. 11’, inhabited by S. G. Churchill, was found to be in ‘in fair order’, adjacent ‘Cottage No. 12’ was ‘in poor and neglected order. Needs repainting . . . gardens: overgrown and neglected’.22 And yet, it is to pre-conceived notions of rural bliss that the guides turn, and return in later years. Writing 22 years after the military takeover, Ralph Wightman, in his Portrait of Dorset (1965), comments that ‘there are

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twenty miles between Bridport and Portland Bill without a bathing hut for hire. I do not think there is a tea shop . . . I am reasonably certain there is no “amenity”.’23 Compared to the ‘almost continuous development of the coast from Kent to Poole, and for the commercialization of every beach in South Devon’, this is not criticism but a cause for celebration: ‘It seems almost miraculous that Dorset should have remained so little changed.’24 In these guides, the countryside around Tyneham repeatedly inspired lyrical exclamations of its natural beauty, and extended musings as to its perceived ‘timelessness’. It seemed, to its observers, to possess a rural integrity lost to other places. Vicariously walking with them (through their descriptions, and through the century) in the landscape offers the reader an overview of Tyneham village that – far from conveying an understanding of the reality of life there – demonstrates a textured and multi-layered construction of a landscape that owes as much to imagination and fiction as to real views and walks. What makes these guides so interesting, from an environmental historian’s perspective, further to the perceptions of a particular place they present, is their ability to shape initial perceptions and understandings of place. Often relied upon by new visitors, and used as references, the walking guide can help shape the mental version of the physical landscape they depict. They orientate one in the landscape by maps and descriptions, and annotate the view with printed information. By walking a route, they keep connection with the landscape that this chapter hopes to follow, walking through Tyneham’s history and environment. Walking around Tyneham is as necessary a part of research as a trip to the local museum and library (Dorset County Museum not only holds a rich collection of local studies and documents, it houses them in a splendid library panelled with oak donated from Tyneham House, dimly lit through Bond family heraldic glass). Maintaining the conviction stated at the start of this thesis that Simon Schama was right in his enthusiasm for an ‘archive of the feet’, I have become convinced that he was not only on the right path, but that a direct experience and engagement with place is indispensable to its understanding. Works such as Robert Macfarlane’s Wild Places have used experiences of nature as the starting point for exploration of landscape, its history, and its meanings.25 The submersion of self in a sensory landscape leads to instinctive responses; subsequent thoughts, readings and writings are then informed by an understanding of the place.26 Tyneham’s capacity as a canvas for imagination and speculation was far from exhausted with the abrupt requisition of the village. This chapter goes on to explore the possible futures imagined for the village at a time in its

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history when it was hoped by many to have been released from military use. The debates that raged over its takeover and the fight for its release also employed narratives of rural life, land use and the history of the place that trace a link to themes raised in these guides, and expand on their notions of what Tyneham was (if it ever, in fact, was). These will be discussed as will the possibility, raised by some, that by taking over the village, the military brought it closer to the ‘timeless’ character it was said to have had. In his book, The Village that Died for England: The Strange Story of Tyneham , Patrick Wright examines in depth the constructions and expressions of ideas of ‘Englishness’, rurality and the pastoral landscape, all cradled in the Tyneham valley.27 He draws out in his portraits of the characters in Tyneham’s history the range of interests constructing and utilizing constructs of Englishness, from the fascists and communists, to anarchists and ecologists. Although it was Tyneham’s military evacuation that had captured Wright’s attention he admits that it was the pre-war society of the village that snared his attentions. The book continued themes he had raised in On Living in an Old Country (1985) and A Journey Through Ruins (1991) of (architectural) expressions of a culture that has lost its cultural and political base. Dalston Lane in London (the setting of A Journey Through Ruins) and Tyneham in Dorset serve as ‘small-scale models for the modern British city or English countryside’.28 Together with A Journey Through Ruins, The Village that Died for England became a wider exploration of two opposing forces: on the one hand, the fiercely modernizing thrust of a new market economy dismantling the ethos and structures of the Welfare State, together with traditional ways of living and thinking; on the other, the resurgence of ecological and cultural conservatism and the recycling of British history in a new heritage industry.29 The military was pushed to the end of The Village that Died for England , in a final chapter that addresses their claims of environmental benefits for the area with a tone of wry amusement. ‘Seen from a distance’, Wright explains, ‘the Army’s conversion to conservation suggests the final triumph of the metallic state over the old organic nation of romantic protest . . . there is also a rising sense of incredulity: a sudden disbelieving laugh, familiar to everyone who has ever tried to advance this unlikely claim that tanks are good for the environment, and shellfire a force for conservation.’30

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Wright admits that ‘the laugh is short-lived’, hears out MoD Conservation Officer Col Baker’s defence and lunches at the Officer’s Mess at his invitation.31 Wright mentions briefly the existence of a Conservation Group and cooperation between military and civilian agencies such as the Nature Conservancy. But while the roots of early ecological activism and environmentalism in the 1920s and 1930s captivate Wright and lead him to various eccentrics and attempted utopias, the more recent rise of military-environmentalism is afforded little more than a postscript. This chapter takes as its starting point the place where Wright ended his journey. More than an amusing juxtaposition to heritage and nostalgia, military-environmentalism is central to the history of Tyneham after 1943.

Tyneham, 1943–73 Two important dates punctuate the history of Tyneham in the twentieth century, and both relate to its existence as a military training area. The notice of eviction on 16 November 1943 signalled the end of village life and start of the incumbency of the military. Thirty years later in 1973, the Defence Lands Committee published its proposals for the future of this, and other, military land holdings in the United Kingdom. The intervening decades were dominated by the campaign to return Tyneham to its former inhabitants. Tyneham was not relinquished without a fight, and became a battleground for groups protesting the military presence here and elsewhere. As the campaign profile rose from the local to the national level, Tyneham became a symbol, encompassing wider issues of rural life, Englishness and individualism that found resonance in its cause. This is the context that triggered Wright to write his study of the village, and which framed the rise of the public profile of Tyneham. The period of eviction was short and sharp. Notice was posted in the village on 16 November 1943 and the inhabitants had to be out by 19 December of that year.32 As tenants of the Bond family who owned Tyneham House and the village, the villagers had no property rights to their homes nor the grounds on which to delay the eviction. The incursion of the military into civilian life in the village had been a more gradual process than the abrupt eviction suggests, however. A radar station was built at the start of the war on the limestone ridge between Tyneham and South Egliston (RAF Brandy Bay), surrounded by anti-aircraft gun emplacements.33 When the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) came to work at the radar station they were

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billeted at Tyneham House.34 The Bonds at first cohabited with the WAAFs but by 1941 had moved to a gardener’s cottage.35 Officers were billeted with villagers with spare rooms, and in empty cottages, and non-commissioned RAF men bedded down under canvas.36 As the war progressed and preparations for D-Day were made, more land was required and the War Department extended its use of Tyneham House to claim the village and surrounding ground for training. All cottages, empty or occupied, were commandeered. The surrounding short-sward grass down land was well suited to accommodate US Sherman tanks en route to the continent.37 As with Imber, notification of eviction was sudden but the assumption of return widespread. One villager recalled the notice being delivered with verbal and written promises that they could return at the end of the ‘emergency’.38 I have been unable to trace documentary evidence of these promises. However, while later defending the use of the site as a training area against protests, the military worked on the assumption that such promises had been made.39 The 1947 White Paper on ‘The Needs of the Armed Forces for Land for Training and Other Purposes’ clarifies a muddy situation: In the case of some of the proposed training areas particularly Stanford (Norfolk) and the Purbeck Gunnery School it has been, or may be represented that pledges were given that persons required to leave their homes would be allowed to return at the end of the war.40 The Government accept that pledges of this kind were given or understood to be given, and it will not therefore be necessary to press the point at any public enquiry.41 However, an internal memo of 1944 suggests that the intention to keep Tyneham as a military area had already taken hold. Responding to Ralph Bond’s enquiries as to the rumours of the imminent release of his house, It appears to be common knowledge to everyone except myself (the owner) that my agreement with the War Ministry is to be cancelled almost immediately, that the RAF are to vacate the house and that it is to be used as a target for tank practice.42 the War Department’s internal correspondence reports the inquiry with withering amusement that: the owner of Tyneham House has been poking you in the ribs as well. He has covered not only the War Department at low level, but also at high

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level . . . We have no official intimation that the Air Ministry are permanently giving up Tyneham House or other requisitions they have in that area.; what we do know is that one unit is moving out to make place for another as they have done in the past, and I think Mr Bond is confusing this with any permanent evacuation of the area by the RAF – a natural enough mistake which can arise in the mind of a layman.43 Bond’s fears were well founded, and Tyneham was subsequently heavily used for training, with little regard for the natural environment or fabric of the village. By 1958 the Ancient Monuments Commission had sent an architect to review the state of the house. He found the internal construction to be: beyond repair. The house has, in fact, been open to the weather since 1949. Repair and reinstatement of the house would cost about £30,000 and, with the exception of the external walls and main trusses, and some small pieces of panelling, it would be an entire reconstruction.44 While the state of Tyneham House attracted some comment – the official at the Ministry of Works, on receiving the report above, replied that it was a ‘sad business’45 – no similar attention was paid by the military to the village, which silently slipped into ruin. The degradation of the former holiday destination did not entirely escape the notice of the press. A Times article reported ‘Spoiled Beauty Spot: devastation in the Lulworth area’, although the focus remained on Tyneham House itself, stripped of lead in the roof by thieves.46 Tyneham House, and the rest of the village, was left exposed not only to artillery fire but, also damagingly, to the elements. Although the buildings suffered from neglect the surrounding environment responded differently. Flora and fauna overran previously well-maintained boundaries, as weeds, trees and shrubs grew unchecked and wildlife inhabited new spaces. The later campaign to oust the military focused on the material decay of the village, the verdant overgrowth only emphasizing the lack of human presence in the landscape. After 1945 Tyneham remained under military control. Its future was decided at a public inquiry held at Wareham in 1948 that acknowledged the pledge to villagers that they would return, but concluded in favour of the army. The military had continuing requirement for the lands, and they were judged non-returnable to former use.47 It was followed by a compulsory purchase order in 1952 that passed ownership to the military. The beginnings of the Cold War gave the military new grounds on which to

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claim the need to train. This sealed the end of the process of militarizing Tyneham that had begun at the start of the war, and progressed during the conflict. The public inquiry dashed lingering beliefs in the pledge to return. At the time of eviction, the notice had read: ‘the Government appreciate that this is no small sacrifice which you are asked to make, but they are sure you will give this further help towards winning the war with a good heart’.48 The Tyneham residents’ sacrifice extended beyond the resolution of conflict, as they made their lives in nearby places, the village that was theirs by birth or by choice tantalizingly close but out of bounds. Hopes of returning the village to its former inhabitants had not died though, and protests against the military presence grew in profile and organization to their apex in the early 1970s. The politics and fortunes of the varying strands of the campaign to remove the military from Tyneham are enough to warrant a thesis of their own.49 There is neither time nor space to adequately cover their interwoven histories here – nor justification, as this subject, interesting though it is, is tributary to the focus of my thesis. And yet, neither can they be ignored, for in the press releases, pamphlets, statements and actions of the protestors – and the military’s counteroffensive – new interpretations of Tyneham and its environment can be found. Thus, while brief overviews of relevant figures and campaigns are included for clarity’s sake, the focus will be on how Tyneham’s evacuated state – overgrown greenery and unchecked nature obscuring crumbling buildings – shaped perceptions of the site and was included in the campaigns to free it from military control. After 1948, the military used Tyneham with only training in mind. Troops were no longer billeted in the buildings, which instead became strategic structures – terrain markers, shelters and targets. Basic maintenance was not a component of training, and so roofs and windows soon degraded. Training activities left marks, as stray bullets clipped masonry (or, as Bond feared, hit their targets). Civilians were kept out of the area and the signs of human occupancy and daily life disappeared. Simultaneously, the natural matter once kept at bay by weeding and gardening and agriculture flourished. Ivy hastened the fall of brickwork. The open stretches of grass, look out points and gun emplacements were kept clear for tank manoeuvres. Down in the village, however, vegetative forces ran amok.50 The military wished to further seal the area from the public. In December 1959 The Ministry of Transport published a draft order under the Requisitioned Land and War Works Act that would end access to over 40 footpaths over the range area.51 Local councils and recreation groups

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protested, and the matter came before another inquiry. Favour fell once more to the military, who closed the footpaths on the condition that access to Tyneham and Worbarrow Bay was ceded during block leave times.52 Protests were made through the ‘proper’ channels, as local councils spoke out at the public inquiry and lodged formal oppositions. Local groups felt a strong sense of injustice. A reporter came to Tyneham in 1966 to explore the ‘forbidden wilderness’. His words are saturated with imagery of decay. It was not passive decline or the inevitable passage of time wreaking damage, but an aggressive nature that was attacking man’s structures and erasing their traces: ‘great folds of cancerous moss have replaced the window glasses . . . cruel spiked tress crouch with their shell-scarred branches to the ground in desperation, like surplus props from Macbeth’s blasted heath’.53 Accompanied by some returning villagers, the photographer ‘was inclined to portray them as if they were an archaic species of wildlife engaged in strange rituals of mourning.’54 Nature had claimed the village, its former inhabitants now the matter out of place.55 This imagery-laden description of an overrun Tyneham contrasts starkly with the precise military surveys of the site undertaken during the war, which draw a detailed picture of the tree habitats of Tyneham House and village. The trees within the grounds of the house were mainly ornamental. Seven mature beech, of ornamental shape, three Scots pine, one sycamore (15 feet high to the first fork), ten young holly trees, a row of laurel, one young beech about 11 feet high, five yews 8–12 feet high, one small yew, one oak, five willows and one unidentified flowering tree all occupied a space and are all recorded from a place west of Tyneham House, on the edge of Tyneham Great Woods (towards the western reaches of the range, nearer Brandy Bay than Worbarrow).56 The accompanying map marks places in the valley where ‘no hazel [grows] west of this point’. The survey adds that ‘on the seaward side the trees are short and windswept and increase in height towards Tyneham House. The biggest trees are at the bottom near the stream. Most of the butts are overgrown with ivy’.57 The reasons behind such an elaborate arboreal survey are unknown, but are thought to relate to the need for timber for military use during the war. It maps Tyneham during its transition from civilian to military environment, viewing the site strategically at this early stage of acquisition: ‘the plantation is of value as a windbreak and as an amenity, rather than as timber’.58 Scheduling of the houses of the village included descriptions of the cottage gardens that were noted to be in ‘generally well cared-for condition’, and ‘33 soft fruit bushes of various kinds [and] 6 fruit trees of various kinds’ were counted.59

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The marked contrast with the description of the site in 1966 shows that the military, although focused and thorough in their assessment of the site during the war, did not uphold an active observation or management of the training environment, beyond immediate training requirements, in the intervening years. There was no attempt by the military to maintain the surface artifice of an inhabited village (it may have been thought that allowing brambles and nettles to profligate created a more challenging training environment). In the years between 1948 and 1966, Tyneham was owned by the military, but overrun by nature. Tim Edensor, in Industrial Ruins: Space, Aesthetics and Materiality, sees in this botanical ‘colonisation’ of ruins signs of nature’s agency.60 Although Edensor focuses on urban ruins and their descent into ‘wasteland’, his concept of the unruliness of nature, and the transgression of boundaries by unwanted species is applicable to a rural village setting. Indeed, the overgrown and neglected cottage gardens of the village are as good an example of boundaries transgressed as any industrial ruin, the appearance of weeds here made even ruder by lingering evidence of individual maintenance efforts, of vegetable rows once hoed and borders neatened, either in the military records or in the reporter’s photographs. The ‘cancerous’ spread of nature as reported by the Frenchman in 1966 was a surprise – an affront, even – to a person expecting a ‘dead’ village to be devoid of life. Plants, trees and animals seemed so abundantly present while the focus had been on the human absence. In 1968 Rodney Legg founded the Tyneham Action Group (TAG), which was to decisively alter the course of the campaign to wrest Tyneham from its military owners, and how the site was viewed. Mr Durant-Lewis, Clerk to Wareham and Purbeck Parish councils and a ‘veteran of earlier struggles’ wished him luck, his council having ‘tried every constitutional means to dislodge the Army and failed.’61 As the name implies, TAG set out to energize and activate what had become a tired campaign. A subgroup, Friends of Tyneham (FoT), branched off from the parent group to pursue a more activist campaign, taking Legg with it.62 Legg believed that ‘talking has got us nowhere’, and with his supporters, vowed to ‘make trouble with a capital T’.63 Along with a dose of direct action, the new campaign was centred around new arguments. The pledge remained an important element in generating anti-military sentiment, but the campaign placed (literally) Tyneham as a site at its centre. Legg recognized the power of the Dorset landscape to motivate and inspire and made the public right to enjoy it the call-to-arms of the anti-military campaign.

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Out went imagery of death, decay and ruin. What had been ‘wasteland’ was now ‘wilderness’ – ‘Dorset’s greatest natural wilderness’, no less.64 This new classification recast the site as wild, but living, untamed but not hopeless. The activists responded to a perception of the village and its surroundings since the military takeover that had also struck the visiting journalist in 1966. The presentation of the military training area as wild was not exclusive to Tyneham. At the requisition of Epynt, the military was quoted as intending to ‘blast the site into wilderness’ (Chapter 6), eradicating its recent past as a domestic space – a farmed landscape and farming community – to allow the qualities of empty ruggedness so valued by the military to exist unchecked. Tyneham, however, was requisitioned partly for its provision of a realistic urban training environment. The small village on England’s south coast was used during the Second World War to simulate the villages of northern France, preparing soldiers for close-range combat. Unlike Epynt, there was no statement to blast Tyneham to wilderness, its very value being held partly in its buildings. However, by 1966 the site was, to an outsider, both a ‘forbidden wilderness’ and a ‘blasted heath’. Following the war, there had been no maintenance of a pretence of rural village life. It was enough that the shells of the buildings provided a façade of a village, targets at which to fire, walls behind which soldiers could shelter and structures which were used tactically to defend or attack. While this façade remained standing, the fabric of the village was allowed to decay. Roofs, windows, doors and garden walls were left broken and damaged by artillery, to which damage the natural elements added further erosion. Simultaneously, undergrowth became overgrowth as plants proliferated in the emptied village. The military at Tyneham had, through its use of the village and its lack of maintenance, blasted the site into a condition seen by outsiders as a wilderness. The visiting journalist contrasted the unkempt and overgrown Tyneham he encountered in 1966 with descriptions by former residents of what the village had been like before its requisition. He saw the wilding of the site as a negative change, an aggressive natural takeover to mirror the military acquisition. But in 1968, Tyneham activists viewed the wildness of the site differently. In their quest to reclaim Tyneham for the public, its wild qualities and abundant nature were its strengths. Such qualities suggested the site could be important for reasons other than its (increasingly distant) past as a living village. An environmentally significant site deserved sustained and expert stewardship, and thus access. TAG and FoT literature did not discuss the potential for increased human presence to threaten this recently realized ‘wilderness’. For Tyneham activists, the wilding of Tyneham offered an

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identity and future beyond military use, and the environmental worth of Tyneham became central in the campaign to reclaim it. The recasting of the Tyneham environment from ‘wasteland’ to abundant ‘wilderness’, is immediately tangible in descriptions of the site in TAG and FoT literature. Tyneham was ‘superb’, ‘precious’, a ‘refuge’ and ‘the conservation opportunity of the century’.65 But the Tyneham activists went further than deploying rhetoric. On the August Bank Holiday of 1968, TAG temporarily reclaimed Tyneham. They had encouraged people to visit (it was a non-firing weekend) in the local press in the preceding weeks, and, on the day, an estimated 6,000 visitors descended on the village (TAG members manned a stand in the car park publicizing their cause).66 A sense of reclaiming what was rightfully the domain of the British public infused publicity material. One leaflet encouraged the reader to ‘Join the Tyneham Action Group if you are concerned about the following: walking and riding . . . sailing . . . ornithology . . . natural history . . . geology . . . archaeology . . . scenery . . . fair play.’67 Each had an explanation. Were walkers and riders aware, for example, that ‘the military had already closed miles of public paths, including the superb coastal path’? Or if the reader took an interest in natural history, did they know that ‘tangles of strong fine wire from guided missile firing are a barbarous hazard and a deathtrap to wild and domestic animals’? TAG reminded them of Tyneham’s place on the ‘Heritage Coast’ and its status as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). The focus had shifted, from honouring the sacrifice made by former inhabitants by returning them to their homes, to upholding the right to use, and duty to protect, the site. The passage of time had contributed to this shift; it was no longer realistic to reinstate villagers, some of who had moved away or died. Now that nearly 30 years had elapsed since the evictions, Tyneham’s scenic value – always central to its appeal – held more weight than its past as a living village, which was consigned to history.68 Furthermore, between 1966 and the investigations of the Nugent Committee in 1973 Britons were becoming more environmentally aware, more mobile and more recreationally active. This relatively short period in the history of environmentalism saw an explosion of proactive, high profile environmental groups founded: the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group, the Tree Council, the Ecology Party, Transport 2000, the Lawyers’ Ecology Group, the Socialist Environment and Resources Association, the Professional Institutions’ Council for Conservation and many others.69 The rise of environmental consciousness in Great Britain was galvanized by environmental crises. The sinking in 1967 of the Torrey Canyon tanker off the Isles of Scilly, and the resulting

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pollution, shocked the British public and is often cited as a watershed moment that brought environmental issues close to home.70 Friends of the Earth, United Kingdom, was founded in 1969, and environmental Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) joined lobbying alongside governmental organizations.71 TAG and FoT, with their local focus but campaigns that were ambitious in scope, were a small part of this movement. The repositioning of the landscape and environment at the centre of its campaign reflect a wider awareness of environmental issues both among its campaigners, and the larger British public. While criticizing the army for allowing the area to descend unchecked into the wrong kind of wilderness, FoT recognized the land value of the undeveloped site and introduced conservation as an appropriate alternative. In this respect, they acknowledged that ‘the land at Tyneham is precious because the Army has never sprayed it with chemicals’.72 This is an early example of the ‘khaki conservation’ discourse, but it comes from the ‘other’ (anti-military) side, which does not see it as justification enough for the military presence to continue. The environmental understanding of the site was very loose at this stage. Although the protection from development that military occupation had afforded the area was recognized, an environmentally informed alternative was still some way off. TAG proposed that: rough grazing by cattle and sheep is the only way to preserve this immense wild area. Ecological studies [uncited] prove that all agriculture except rough grazing would vandalize and devastate this unique chain of varying habitats which are the last refuge for many rare and vanishing species of birds, animals, insects and plants.73 FoT was adamant that the appropriate future of Tyneham was to be ‘managed for the public good by experienced organisations’ – namely the National Trust, the Countryside Commission and Dorset Naturalist’s Trust. TAG treated the removal of the military as not just a likelihood, but the inevitable next stage of Tyneham’s history. It was a conceptual leap that fortified the campaign. The debate swung from challenging the military’s right to train to showing that they were not adequate stewards of a precious landscape, and should be removed forthwith. This is striking given the later military claims of the environmental benefits of training and the importance active land stewardship gained within the military post-1973. It also highlights the stress on the visual attractiveness of the site rather than

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its biodiversity by campaigners: as long as the military were present in the landscape, they were a blot on it. The campaign had made an important shift in its perception of Tyneham as a place with a military presence, as well as the absence of others. The aesthetic value of the landscape was such that it was a national asset, to be protected but also experienced by the public. Friends of Tyneham were adamant in their belief in a positive outcome. ‘When the need for campaigning is over’, they stated, ‘Friends of Tyneham will become the care organization working in a non-controversial background role to co-ordinate the protection of the most beautiful scenery on the whole South Coast.’74 Through TAG and FoT campaigns, Tyneham captured the popular imagination of locals and people further afield. People wrote to the organizations applauding their efforts, and to their local members of Parliament to take up the cause. One reads: Dear Sir, My husband and I wish to add our plea to the many who advocate pressing the Minister of Defence for the release of the Lulworth ranges to the public, and as our member of Parliament ask you to support us in this effort. The coastline of that area is of unparalleled splendour and its misuse is a scandal . . . surely a less attractive site could be found for these activities if they are really necessary?75 Such appeals occasionally filtered through to those in positions to act. Michael Hamilton, Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Salisbury 1965–83, wrote to David Owen, the Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Navy, asking: ‘What may I advise my constituent, Mrs Froder, whose letter I enclose, about Tyneham, I wonder? Defence comes first, but can you spare this piece of coastline?’76 The momentum that TAG generated was a large factor in the commissioning of the Defence Lands Committee to assess the future of military land holdings. Negative publicity about Tyneham, and other sites such as Imber and Epynt, was more than a thorn in the military’s side. It came at a time when an increasingly eco-conscious public were voicing protest and pooling their strength by forming organizations. A groundswell of antimilitary sentiment posed a serious threat to the future of training areas. A change in the management of military landholdings was needed to challenge the British public’s association of military training with environmental degradation.

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Tyneham since 1973 When the Defence Lands Committee sat from 1971 to 1973 it represented a victory of sorts for TAG and its supporters. It had been shown that the status quo of military land management was no longer defensible. The government’s calling of the committee shows that the campaigns against the military had been heard loud enough to constitute recognition of a problem, and engender a political will to resolve it. From this point on, the military’s attitude to the site was forced to change. The controversy over Tyneham was known to the committee, but made clear by the number of representations for the site by various groups. The committee reported that they ‘received more evidence on Lulworth than on any other site other than the Dartmoor complex.’77 The committee heard representations for Tyneham from a wide range of groups, including the Council for the Protection of Rural England, the Ramblers Association, the Dorset Naturalist’s Trust, the Youth Hostels Association, the Nature Conservancy and the British Council for Archaeology. These groups joined TAG in calling for the release of Tyneham from military use. Unlike representations for Salisbury Plain and Dartmoor, environmental and conservation bodies did not speak strongly in favour of military training in the area. Only the Nature Conservancy considered that MoD occupation of the land had ‘contributed to the safeguarding of the scientific interest of the area, and would not welcome its release without adequate safeguards to conserve scientifically interesting features.’ They added that ‘the nature conservation value of the area would be considerably enhanced by sympathetic management’.78 Ninety residents of Purbeck had written to the committee with the ‘general view that military training should continue’, for the jobs and economic stimulus it brought the area.79 These were outweighed considerably by the 1,500 fully paid-up members TAG could claim at the time of giving evidence.80 The range and number of people presenting evidence to the committee demonstrated that the MoD had not succeeded in redefining Tyneham as a military site. It was viewed variously as a place of history, nature and play; it was a local landmark, a nationally appreciated landscape that would later become an internationally significant stretch of coastline. The committee concluded, on the weight of evidence presented, that the MoD sites at Lulworth should be released (the RAC Gunnery School relocated to Castlemartin) and ‘special steps should be taken to ensure that the land released can be protected and enjoyed’.81 But in 2010 Lulworth remains a military range, with Tyneham accessible on non-firing weekends. Despite Nugent’s recommendations, the MoD

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played an unpopular hand and refused to give up Lulworth. Relocation of the Gunnery School was deemed too expensive and Castlemartin, at the centre of a National Park, unable to take the pressure of more use. 1973 and the publication of the report still holds a pivotal position in Tyneham’s history, however. The widespread discontent with the management of the site was public knowledge and had been heard by policy makers. The weight of evidence for this, and other contested sites, had taken by surprise those within the MoD who saw it as an institution above criticism, and the committee’s recommendations for change had been even more unexpected. For those within the military establishment sensitive to the concerns of the public, and aware of the issues at stake, the committee’s recommendations initiated a change in approach to land management that could work to lessen the gap between training needs and public expectations. The appointment of the Conservation Officer and publication of Sanctuary magazine, as discussed, were two important steps in this process, initiating changes from within the military structure as to how its lands were managed with the environment, and other non-military values, in mind. Another key element in the process of building military environmental awareness was the establishment of conservation groups. It was hoped that conservation groups would reach out to civilians with an interest in military lands and bring together a broad knowledge base, from which better approaches to the management of military lands could be formulated. Part apology, part olive branch, the conservation groups promised that military lands would be run differently in the future, and acknowledged that civilian interests had a stake in them. Nowhere in the UK DE was this more needed than at Tyneham. The impact of the Nugent Report was immediate. Aware that the MoD’S decision to overrule the recommendation to move the gunnery range was controversial, a public meeting was called to offer explanation and reassure those present that the other recommendations were taken seriously. The speaking notes made in preparation for this meeting are illuminating. The MoD was anxious from the outset to make clear that they agreed that ‘as many people as possible should have the chance to enjoy the beauty of Lulworth’, and would ‘therefore take steps to improve access for the public at the cost of about £100,000’.82 Consultation with the Department of the Environment, the Countryside Commission and the Nature Conservancy Council would proceed as soon as possible, and the MoD would ‘seek to establish the closest continuing co-operation over the management of the area.’83 Responding to a continuous theme in criticism, the first action the MoD took were prompt steps to improve public access. A committee to

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oversee this met at Bovington on 22 November 1974 and made good the MoD’s promise to consult with outside bodies, consisting of representatives from Dorset County and Purbeck District Councils, the Countryside Commission, the Nature Conservancy Council, the Department of the Environment and the MoD. Work was to start before Christmas, and paths were opened on weekends and extended periods over holiday times from 1975.84 Other changes were also underway. The maintenance of the ranges was improved by hiring 21 more Range Wardens. Recruiting locally, the MoD was ‘heartened’ by the level of response that saw 50 applications for the posts.85 The new, locally knowledgeable workforce enabled work on the new footpaths to start quickly, and was the foundation at the ground level for better maintenance of the ranges. Charged with acquitting their responsibilities as landowners better, the military saw that ‘certain matters are already in hand but the question of further improvement must start from knowing what has been done so far’.86 An important task of the military at Tyneham post-Nugent was to collect information about the site, something that had not been systematically done since its requisition in 1943. The Conservation Group set up at Tyneham in 1977, as they were at Salisbury Plain (SPTA West in 1977; SPTA Centre in 1978), Sennybridge (1984), Castlemartin (1983) and Dartmoor (1981) in the wake of the Nugent Report, provided the expertise and manpower to collect information. Reports on the ancient history of the area, past land use and farming, geology, place names, the seashore and coastline, woodland, mammals, flora, butterflies, beetles and other fauna, were all compiled to form a comprehensive site dossier. The group was drawn from the environmental and conservation bodies already advising the MoD on the future running of the site, but was open to individuals who wanted to be a part of it, and who had an interest – professional or amateur – in one of the area’s many features. The information they collected was used to inform plans for training, so that archaeological features or delicate or disturbed habitats could be avoided by troops and tanks. Post-Nugent, the MoD worked on the premise that the more known about the site the better it could be run, ultimately, of course, benefiting training. The conservation groups formed the knowledge base (military and civilian), which transferred this from premise to a workable reality. The Nugent Report and the MoD’s response did not defuse all controversy at Tyneham. TAG pushed for the transferal of the gunnery range to Castlemartin, and as an alternative published ‘The assessment of a chartered engineer of the more realistic means for training British Army

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tank gunners by employing modern techniques at acceptable national expenditure’, which proposed using simulators rather than real tanks.87 Lord Brockway initiated a debate in the House of Lords to make Purbeck a national park, continuing a discourse that was critical of the military’s treatment of the area around Tyneham.88 However, military reactions to the Nugent report had been swift and serious enough to reassure people that their fears had been heard and were being acted on. An MoD publication ‘Lulworth Ranges Public Access’ (1974) shows the military responses in the wake of Nugent Report to be more than paying lip service to a change in policy. The publication acknowledges that increasing public access – a task the MoD was charged with if they were to stay in the area – would ‘introduce a number of conflicting requirements’: the Countryside Commission wanted to open as much land up as possible, the Nature Conservancy to limit access to preserve the ‘ecological community’. Meanwhile, the army wished to train, but public safety had to be ensured.89 Although the MoD conceded to provide new footpaths and improve access when it rejected Nugent’s recommendation to release the training area, tension remained between access, conservation and military training at the site. Before the Nugent committee assessed the site’s future as a military landholding, the military had experienced some difficulty in controlling use of Mupes Bay, a popular beach among troops and their families, and civilians. In July 1969 a range officer discovered civilians enjoying the beach alongside military families and asked them to leave (see Chapter 3). The following quarrel over access to the beach prompted the military to suspend all access for recreation, military and civilian alike. The prevailing argument in restricting access on military lands, that of public safety, was used here. While footpaths were laid out and Tyneham village opened up at weekends to the public after the publication of the Nugent report in 1973, other areas of the Lulworth range remain off-limits to non-military personnel. West of Tyneham, on the edge of the range, lies Kimmeridge Bay. Offshore, within its waters but hidden beneath the surface is a rock ledge, which, in the right conditions, allows a uniquely hollow and powerful wave to break. Regarded as one of ‘Britain’s best kept surfing secrets’, surfers had not been discouraged by live-firing practice and ‘no entry’ signs to access the wave on the rare occasions when it was breaking. However, after a series of run-ins with range officers (mirroring the experiences of surfers at Castlemartin, see Chapter 3), and a change in firing arrangements in 2008, which effectively left the bay off-limits from Monday to Friday, a protest movement emerged, culminating in an organized protest in June 2009,

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organized by the environmental pressure group Surfers Against Sewage.90 Andy Cummings, speaking for the organization, said that: Broad Bench has always been on the edge of the firing range boundary, but there is a way the template could be moved. If it could be, the MOD could still have full range and surfers can still have full access to the wave.91 Access to the bay was restricted to weekends and occasional days in summer, but Cummings pointed out that the unpredictable nature of surfing demanded access when conditions were right, whenever that may be. He said, ‘Nature won’t accommodate a timetable set down by the MOD.’92 On 20 June 2009, Surfers Against Sewage (Figure 5.1) organized a mass sit-in in the sea, with over 200 surfers paddling out on their boards to where

Figure 5.1. Surfers Against Sewage poster 2009. Photo: Surfers Against Sewage (2009).

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the wave breaks. The act received local and national press attention, but failed to persuade the military to alter its stance on access to the bay.93 A familiar argument was used against the surfers, that of personal safety, but (unlike at the cliff sit-in by rockclimbers at Castlemartin) on this occasion the safety at stake, argued the MoD, was that of troops rather than civilians. An MoD spokesperson said: The primary purpose of the defence training estate at Bovington and Lulworth is to provide facilities for important military training, including pre-deployment training to British Service personnel. It would be threatening to service personnel if training was curtailed to allow greater land access to members of the public.94 In a new twist on a familiar theme, the MoD continued to use the argument of safety to maintain restrictions of access, but used the context of conflicts in which British troops were involved (Afghanistan and Iraq) to invoke a sense of duty-of-care towards troops, to emphasize the importance of predeployment training. The safety of the surfers was not discussed by the military, and they continue to risk confrontation and tank fire to surf Broad Bench when nature, rather than the military firing schedule, dictates. The conflicting requirements of aligning training needs with the provision of greater access to Lulworth Range after 1973, was, despite persisting evidence of unresolved access issues in 2009, taken seriously by the MoD. To reach a more informed position, after the publication of the Nugent Report the MoD turned to research done at another scenic tourist destination, Ebbor Gorge (a nature reserve in the Mendip Hills, Somerset), as ‘a very rough guide in the absence of any other statistics’. They used data collected from Ebbor Gorge to project how many visitors they could expect at Tyneham, and at what times of the year. The data showed that most visitors to Ebbor Gorge went for a country outing (34%) or to walk (33%), some 13 per cent for nature study and 9 per cent ‘for the children’, 5 per cent came to walk the dog, 53 per cent of visitors stayed for 1–2 hours and 45 per cent remained for 3–4 hours. While the figures: may give a general idea as to the type of visitor that can be expected, because of the beach and swimming facilities at Lulworth it is felt that the percentages . . . may require adjustment to include a day by the sea.95 Of particular note in the report is the data that ‘41% of visitors wanted the area left in its natural state i.e. as managed by the Nature Conservancy’.

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This document shows the military to be taking its new responsibility to increase access seriously, conducting research and looking to other successful tourist destinations for guidance. The relevant data contributed to a considered and well-managed programme of opening up the ranges to the public, that was aware of what visitors came to the area for – not to watch tanks rattle around, but to enjoy the landscape, scenery, fresh air and natural beauty. The MoD was prescient enough to realize that they were not the attraction; the landscape and environment of Tyneham was.96 With well-prepared schemes such as this and a new task force to monitor (the Conservation Group) and maintain (the new team of Range Officers) the ranges, a turnabout in the way the military managed Lulworth Ranges was underway. This took the wind out of the anti-military campaign’s sails. TAG disbanded in 1974, disappointed that they had ‘won the battle but lost the war’.97 General Mark Bond (son of Ralph, heir to the family seat of Tyneham House and prominent figure in the campaign to release Tyneham, despite his military credentials), president, and the rest of the group, agreed to ‘give the movement a decent burial’. Friends of Tyneham vowed to fight on, even storming the last TAG meeting to distribute leaflets. Rodney Legg reportedly proclaimed: ‘You are traitors to the Tyneham cause! Join Friends of Tyneham who will continue to fight to right injustice!’98 Thirty-four years later, though, and Legg profiled Major Mick Burgess for an article in Dorset Lives entitled ‘The Army Conservationist’. In the years post-Nugent, Legg has become a supporter of the military at Tyneham, not forgiving them for the manner of their arrival, but applauding them for the conservation work done since the 1970s. He credits the military estate as conserving 7,500 acres of the best natural wilderness on the south coast. The events of 1943, Legg wrote in 2002, ‘may well turn out to have been, in retrospect, a beneficial accident as they have created a remarkable natural oasis midway along the busy South Coast.’99 Military ecology, he told Patrick Wright, is better than no ecology at all.100

The role of conservation groups in military training areas Conservation groups were encouraged post-Nugent as a complementary aid to the management of training areas. Far from a temporary measure, they have become an integral part of the management of military landscapes. After several visits to SENTA, Lt Col Chris Sernberg (Commandant SENTA) invited the ‘Militarized Landscapes’ project to give a short presentation about our work to the Conservation Group there. This gave us an

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opportunity to observe and participate in a conservation group meeting, at Sennybridge, on 25 October 2009. I then approached the Lulworth/ Bovington conservation group, which allowed me to sit in on another meeting, on 19 November 2009 at Bovington Camp. Conservation group meetings tend to be biannual, and all members are invited to attend. Minutes are taken, and then deposited in the site dossier at Tilshead SPTA, the administrative heart of the military in the South West and Wales, and home of the DEs conservation and environment team. Items of interest in the minutes often later appear in Sanctuary magazine, suggesting they are read with an eye to publication. Collected since the groups started (mainly from the late 1970s to the late 1980s) these documents form a paper trail that records not only the development of the groups, but that of the military lands they oversee. In these documents, the evolution of military-environmentalism is slowly but carefully detailed. In terms of the format of the group meetings and minutes, little has changed over the years. The groups are run semi-formally: the commandant attends and oversees proceedings. After apologies for absence, matters arising from the ranges are discussed, with each interest area having the opportunity to speak. In the meetings I attended, future projects and foreseeable issues are then discussed (often arising from seasonal conditions – for example, at Lulworth in November, a big topic was the necessary cull of deer and its progress).101 Updates are confirmed to be given at the next meeting, and individual meetings with relevant groups (e.g., to organize labour for maintenance work, or arrange a site visit) are arranged. These patterns are repeated in the minutes of conservation groups down the years. This consistency suggests that the format is a successful one – structured, but open to input and discussion. Over the years, however, the complexity of the meetings and their minutes has gradually increased. Each year, updated scientific studies are submitted to add to the knowledge of the site. Not every group gives a report every year – they are often dependent on the availability of a researcher. For example, at Lulworth in 2009, a doctoral researcher was studying the bats of the area and had detected a species new to the area. Previously at Lulworth, dragonfly experts had produced detailed reports in 1990 and 1996.102 But each report builds on previous ones, gradually constructing an extensive and detailed information repository from which the military can manage their estates more sensitively. As the dossier grew, so too did military-environmentalism. It is reflected in the dossier: increasing knowledge of the ranges, military– civilian cooperation, new management techniques trialled and funding sought. A similar story is evident at the Sennybridge conservation group,

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through whose research a far more detailed understanding of the Epynt environment was reached, and used to develop environmental initiatives at the site.103 But in addition to being reflected in the dossiers, militaryenvironmentalism was brought about by the existence of the conservation groups. The conservation groups enabled a productive dialogue between military and civilian groups to be established, which focused on ground work and productive cooperation rather than past disagreements. It is on this basis that someone formerly so vehemently opposed to the military presence and the methods of managing the ranges, like Rodney Legg, could then sit on the conservation group and contribute to the running of the area as a military training area. Attending conservation group meetings was an important counterpart to researching them in the archives. One immediate observation that does not always come across in the minutes is the amount of time devoted to discussion of public perceptions of the ranges. At Sennybridge, the new Visitor Centre had opened and the group went over visitor comments, suggesting improvements to the displays and assessing the success of the centre. At Lulworth, Tyneham Farm had been developed, extending the visitor area to Tyneham village, and events – Christmas carol singing, amateur dramatics, craft fairs – were being planned for the newly renovated ‘History Barn’, conceived as a new local facility as well as a heritage initiative.104 Schemes such as these, unaccompanied by scientific studies, may only get one line in the minutes, but take up a fair amount of discussion. It is also evident from attending meetings that the military–civilian bonds encouraged by the groups are mutually beneficial. The military has access to a small ‘army’ of enthusiasts and experts, who in turn can access resources and manpower. Joint projects also bring rewards of funding, to both parties. Additionally, the environmentally beneficial schemes in place at Lulworth show signs of radiating the greening process out beyond military boundaries. A high level stewardship initiative by Natural England that rewards MoD tenants is encouraging farmers and tenants to adopt an environmentally sensitive outlook and management techniques for their farms, in line with that taking place on adjacent military lands.105 Such a scheme spreads the ‘greening’ out to the peripheries of military lands. Another observation is the impact so many informed and active people have on the conservation group, and the military. A list of names in the minutes, in my experience, translates into a lively meeting, with laughter, light-hearted joking (often at the military’s expense) and a palpable sense of achievement: in this atmosphere, no one feels unable to speak their mind, and no one is above the criticism of their peers. The increased

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pressures of tourism on military training areas had been predicted by the Nugent Report. In the establishment of conservation groups as a method of operating, I do not think it was foreseen that in the course of getting things done (promptly and ably), such a convivial appreciation of military landscapes would be generated. Conservation groups – in meetings and minutes – are, to make a bold statement, non-ideological. They are practical and scrupulous in their discussions of the minutiae of managing land. The academic debates over manifestations of environmentalism in the military – ‘khaki conservation’ and ‘military greenwash’ – do not intrude on the discussions of the groups. Individual group members may hold strong opinions on the military – indeed, at Lulworth, the intensity of the war in Afghanistan was a discussion point. But it was so primarily in the context of the impact on training, necessitating sudden training decisions and increased use of the ranges, with reportedly minimal effect to date on the environment. The issue was the balancing of training needs versus environmental needs. The groups meet specifically to oversee, discuss, report and initiate work on military lands. Meeting twice a year, time limits topics to the matters at hand, as does the consensus that – despite wildly different backgrounds and interests – all members of the groups are there to see their interests represented, and get work done. Rachel Woodward, leading academic analyst of military geographies, sees the development of ideas about environmental awareness by the military as serving to ‘divert attention from the military’s complicity in environmental destruction’.106 If we apply her argument of military ‘greenwash’ to the conservation groups, then members of the groups would be too involved with this process to see the ‘control over the environment as a discursive or representational practice’ that the military exerts over them too.107 Additionally in this argument, so narrow is the individual focus – bats of the Lulworth Range, for example – that the wider picture cannot be appreciated. A thorough read of conservation group minutes and attendance at two meetings confirm that it is the [small issues] of each training area that are discussed. I am wary, however, of agreeing with Woodward that the focus on the specifics of the management of a military landholding obscures the wider issues at stake. During the meeting of the Lulworth conservation group I attended, for example, walkers’ access to the range and a nationally diminishing songbird population were addressed as wider issues in the discussion of the absence of audible lark song the previous spring. Current trends in farming towards more ‘natural’ maintenance of hedgerows, and the possibilities of securing EU funding for MoD tenants

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for environmentally beneficial stewardship, were also discussed. However, while groups referred to wider changes in relation to the specific habitats of training areas, there was, as Woodward rightly suggests, no debate as to the nature and implementation of military-environmentalism, or questioning of its features. Wider environmental and rural issues provided a context to discussions, which remained focused on the management of the training area. Political or moral debates about military activities and the use of land for military training were largely absent. The scope of conservation groups remains fi xed on the environment and heritage of the training area concerned. While this does not exempt them from contributing to or perpetuating ideas of military-environmentalism, the groups themselves remain focused on outcomes, not motives. Woodward does not give extensive consideration to conservation groups in her study of military geographies. But her general stance towards military-environmentalism is based on a conception of the green movement that does not allow for the kind of small-scale, local perspectives of groups and individuals that often contribute to conservation groups. Informed by her work on feminist anti-military protest and the anti-nuclear movement, she frames her definition of environmentalism in terms of organized left-of-centre environmental politics and pressure groups, such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.108 Environmentalism as defined by these groups – though influential – is limited to a ‘green critique of militarism and industrialisation’ that finds no room for collaboration with militaries. Neither does it include a whole portfolio of British conservation and environmental bodies with a local and national, but importantly, rural scope, and preservationist outlook organizations that have worked with the military in assisting the management of their lands – organizations such as the RSPB, CPRB, English Heritage, English Nature and the Nature Conservancy. Groups such as these may not follow the anti-military stance Woodward assumes they should, or be situated on the left of the political spectrum. Referring once more to the Nugent Report, conservation groups spoke out in favour of military occupancy of lands, directly challenging Woodward’s claim that ‘military activities are environmentally destructive’.109 They are just as legitimate participants in the environmental movement as international organizations, despite being less prominent on the political stage, and in the greening of the military they occupy an important position. Woodward’s analysis of the environmental benefits of training relies on military statements and promotional material. These support her argument that the MoD manipulates environmental discourses of their

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training areas. Conservation groups offer an arena of study from which carefully worded press releases and publicity material is largely absent. Consequently, Woodward’s conclusions – rightly sceptical of her source materials – are less easily applied to conservation groups. The minutes of the conservation groups are documents unembellished by rhetoric or ‘spin’. As she critiques, their detailed minutae does not ask bigger questions of military-environmentalism beyond the needs of particular and local issues. Nonetheless, since 1977, by systematically recording the dayto-day events occurring on military landholdings the conservation groups and their records provide a small archive that is focused exclusively on the practicalities of land management. Through them, a gradual layering of issues and responses builds a picture of military-environmentalism as it has developed in complexity and effectiveness, which gives due credit to the contributions by non-military groups. This is credit that Woodward does not extend to either side. The development of environmental awareness in the military has been supported – since 1973 when the military began to take its environmental responsibilities seriously – by non-military environmental, conservation and rural interest groups at the places where ultimately national policy, discourse and land management is adapted to the local and implemented, the military sites themselves.

Post script – Imagined futures For a short time in Tyneham’s history, people believed that the release of the village from military control was imminent.110 Recommended by the Nugent Report in 1973as the proper course of action for the contested site, by September 1974 the MoD had decided to retain all lands at Lulworth Range.111 The intervening months offered a window of opportunity for speculators to propose their model for Tyneham’s future. As different ideas jostled for prominence in the local press, they drew on different aspects of Tyneham’s past to form their best intentions for its future. A popular suggestion for Tyneham’s future release was that it should become a nature reserve. This future gained publicity through one spokesperson, Lord Brockway, who raised the matter in the House of Lords.112 He cited the distinctive wildlife and geological value as reasons for its protection. The landscape was ‘like a cathedral of nature’, with ‘indescribably mystic appeal’. He conveyed his sense, at Tyneham, ‘of belonging to all time’. He recalls its description in Hardy’s The Return of the Native ‘ in language that captivated every reader’. The timelessness of the landscape, its

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mystic and evocative qualities, echo a tradition of describing and relating to the Dorset coastline that ran through the travel and natural history guides to Dorset of the early twentieth century. Brockway’s vision for Tyneham’s future is made in the image of these guides, his insistence that it become a nature reserve wishing to preserve the landscape and protect it from change. Tyneham, the nature reserve, would protect a natural, historical and literary landscape from the fast-paced changes of the modern world. Brockway’s vision for Tyneham’s future found supporters in the locality who valued Tyneham primarily for its landscape qualities, inadvertently protected to this point by the military. The FoT group who were campaigning for the removal of the military agreed with Brockway that agriculture would threaten the landscape quality (enclosing the open grass heath) and to privatize the area to reduce public access even further. They proposed that management by ‘an experienced countryside organization like the National Trust’ would safeguard both landscape and public access, with no inherent conflict.113 FoT’s future Tyneham was based on the wildlife and environmental value of the site, but was also informed by the restrictions of access placed upon it by the military. This imagining of Tyneham’s future for them presented not only ‘the conservation opportunity of the century’, but the chance to reclaim territory lost to the British public. Others involved in the campaign to wrest Tyneham from military control did not see a future as a nature reserve. Major General Mark Bond, whose father Ralph had been the last private landlord of the Tyneham estate, presented his future Tyneham to the Dorset Natural History and Archaeology Society, of which he was president.114 He favoured a future of ‘controlled agriculture’ with limited public access, on the grounds that ‘agriculture was the historical and traditional use for the valley and formed the framework of the landscape and its atmosphere’. Under the Crichel Downs rule, which returned released military lands to their former owners, in this future Bond would regain his country seat at Tyneham. This future would restore Tyneham as a private country estate. Informed by the Bond family history, and a sense of entitlement to the area made acute by its forced requisition during the war, it proposes a future seen in the mould of the past. In his own proposal, Mark Bond wished to turn back the clock no less than Lord Brockway, but for personal reason – and gain. In the running debate over Tyneham’s future in the local press, a local farmer, John Vearncombe, was approached by the Dorset Evening Echo to give his view on the matter. Vearncombe suggested agriculture as the appropriate, productive future for the site. He dismissed its wildlife value – ‘I don’t doubt that there are one or two species there. But wildlife as it should

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be, in varied abundance – never’ – and with it the proposals of a nature reserve. His understanding that ‘abundant’ nature could not be found on the bare, open heath highlights the assumption that military lands did not encourage wildlife to flourish, and that landscapes empty of hedgerows and fields were also empty of nature. He opposed even more strongly the proposal that the National Trust should have the land. ‘If the National Trust get it – and they already have too much property – it just won’t be a local community. They will bring hordes of tourists who are otherwise not a bit bothered about Tyneham.’ The transfer from one national institution (the military) to another (the National Trust) would not reabsorb Tyneham into its surrounding agricultural community. For Vearncombe, a future as a tourist destination and heritage site would be a misuse of the land: ‘Stately homes, yes, a good thing [for the National Trust], but not farming land.’ Vearncombe’s future for Tyneham traced a line back to its past as agricultural land, but was focused in the future on releasing the potential productivity of land that had implicitly been left wastefully to lie fallow in the intervening years. A farmer would approach Tyneham ‘with a five-year plan in mind’; Vearncombe himself suggested stocking the stockable acres with animals to get a quick cash return, and then from the first year he thought it should be possible to get corn growing. For this farmer the land’s future as a nature reserve would be wasteful, and as a tourist destination, frivolous: Tyneham’s land value could only be released through agriculture. Speculation over Tyneham’s future reached its apex in surprising quarters. The contested nature of this small corner of Dorset had caught the attention of the Architectural Association Diploma School. Here existed, in real time, a real space in which arguments over land use and planning were being enacted. A project was launched that merged reality and imagination, by asking students to set out their plans for Tyneham’s future.115 The site was actual; the time, a short imaginative leap to the very near future, where the army had gone, the site had been nationalized and had been settled up to a density of 860 persons per square mile giving a population of about 12,000 people (this the first of many stretches of the imagination required). The task set was to devise an alternative to the contemporary ‘new towns’ formulas, and devise ways in which communities could survive without reliance on nearby urban centres. It required students to consider concepts of rurality, ways of ‘inhabiting a landscape and more importantly inhabiting your ideas’, to investigate the effects of human presence and architectural activity in a landscape. The project also encouraged architects to predict future living trends by anticipating in the

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designs of the day, the needs of future populations. ‘One can envisage a decreasing rural population and land becoming the property of a decreasing number of owners, mainly intent on optimizing profits’, while urban populations put ever-increasing pressures on built-up environments, the project suggested. Tyneham here is a blank canvas, an ‘empty space’ (a space of the imagination) upon which students could project their workable, functional idylls, for the sake of the future of the British population, judged doomed in its rural and urban spheres. Its standing as a place of nature and beauty is deemed irrelevant, a construct in place to prevent other, more useful, futures: in this context, it would seem that the peculiar concept of areas of outstanding natural beauty are used as saccharin in a bitter mixture. Their usefulness can be judged by the attitudes that govern them. They are ruled by a high conservatism where what is preserved with a myopic picture postcard consciousness is primarily the view, where any significant increase in population is prevented. Instead, Tyneham’s future lay at the vanguard of a ‘rural resurgency’ wherein ‘the countryside should be re-occupied’, born of a conviction that ‘it is possible to reverse trends’. When the project asked its students ‘what is the nature of future landscapes?’ in its imagining of Tyneham, there is little room for nature at all. Tyneham, the village that had already ‘died for England’, here sounded a death knell for the future of a rural, natural England in favour of a populated, structured and planned future utopia. Regrettably, student responses have not been stored alongside the course information. But perhaps their ideas would not have seemed any more surprising now than the concept of the project itself, or indeed any of the futures imagined for Tyneham.116 This brief but illuminating interlude in Tyneham’s past reminds us that its future was never certain. The military training area, protected landscape and heritage destination that we know as Tyneham today was not a preordained outcome. Tyneham’s imagined futures put into relief the actual course of events that accumulated through the twentieth century to pause, but by no means conclude, at Tyneham in 2010. It shows that the gradual increase of environmental awareness by the military at Tyneham (and elsewhere) was not inevitable, but needed a hard-fought campaign against it and a high-profile reprimand– that they must, and would do better – to kick-start the process. It demonstrated that landscapes rarely die,

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but that our conceptions of them (as dead, or wasteland, or unruly and wild) shape our treatment of them (left to nature). When it was realized that the absence of people at Tyneham had allowed its natural habitats to flourish, a new life was given to the landscape. Tyneham’s present state as a landscape that is used for military training, but one that is carefully managed to protect its wildlife and heritage features, and configured to support substantial visitor numbers has pacified many who declared it dead and decried its fate, and even manages to fulfil some of the hopes put forth in its imagined futures.

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Chapter 6

Sennybridge Training Area

Sennybridge Training Area, or SENTA, is the fi fth and final site examined here. Named for the village at the foothills of the Welsh uplands where the barracks are located, the training area sits high above on the mountain plateau.1 Changes familiar to the other sites have also occurred here. Epynt was requisitioned in the Second World War, and its inhabitants evicted. Chapter 6 continues the themes of displacement explored in Chapters 4 and 5. But whereas at Imber, and especially Tyneham, a story of ‘Englishness’ has been told, which tied notions of national identity to a rural way of life and a pre-modern agricultural landscape, at Epynt the military requisition had its own meanings and impact, distinctive to the place. This chapter foregrounds the Welsh story of evictions and protest, in response to Patrick Wright who told an English story of ‘ghost-villages’, and to develop further the exploration of the removal of people, and erasure of memory, on military training areas.2 Filling the void where hill farmers lived, at Epynt as at the other sites, was military training and military-environmentalism. The militarization of the landscape is described, as military place names replaced Welsh ones, and new land uses and management practices were established. The development of environmental practices at the site is placed within the context of wider policy change (the Nugent Report, for example), but with reference also to the fears of Welsh nationalists who publicized the military’s intentions to ‘blast the place into wilderness’. The wilderness theme, which has emerged as fundamental to military understanding and use of their training areas, was used at Epynt by both the military and the Welsh opposition. The transformation from a productive agricultural landscape to a military landscape emptied of residents underlines a vociferous, but ultimately unsuccessful protest movement against the military at Epynt. Like the other sites under consideration, Epynt’s development as a prized site of military-environmentalism, regularly featured in Sanctuary, reflects a wider greening of the MoD. The implementation of environmental

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policies, including conservation groups and the development of the site dossier, and the role of individual commandants, are discussed. However, here too Epynt displays some site-specific features of military-environmentalism. The Epynt Way, a walkway and bridle path that circumnavigates the site, has allowed unprecedented access to a heavily used training area and pacified calls for better access. The initiative has won praise for its successful compromise between protecting training capacity and increasing public accessibility. A Visitor Centre also encourages civilian interaction with the training environment and the wildlife it encompasses. The Visitor Centre’s presentation of the history and wildlife of the Epynt provides a valuable source of military-environmentalism, conceived by the military and presented directly to the public. This chapter analyses the development of military-environmentalism, drawing on Woodward’s and Davis’s theories of ‘khaki conservation’ and double erasure. Epynt, however, contains some aspects of military-environmentalism that go beyond the scope of these theories, to suggest a post-military environmentalism that addresses the complexities of the site’s history in a manner more successful than seen to date at other military training areas. The social history of the Epynt is included in the presentation of the site’s history; military activities are visible, not only in the landscape, but in the public presentation of the landscape. Military-environmentalism at SENTA shows signs of going beyond the reluctance to address the difficult history of eviction and protest witnessed at other sites, and the tendency to erase the military presence in the landscape in discussions of environment and conservation.

Mynydd Epynt: The story of a Welsh mountain Mae’r oll yn gysegredig Mae barddoniaeth nefolaidd ar yr holl fynyddoedd (The whole is sacred There is poetry on all of these mountains)3 In the autumn of 1939, after the outbreak of war, an army representative visited the dispersed families and farms that together comprised the community of Mynydd Epynt. He brought news as fracturing and foreign as war itself: the military needed the area to train troops, and so the people of Epynt had to go. The War Department gave orders of eviction by 30 April 1940. A committee was formed to represent the people affected, complaining not least that

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it was too short notice to re-home farm stock and find alternative accommodation. The War Department did not change their minds on the matter of training on the Epynt, but did push the final eviction date back to 30 June to allow lambing to take place before stock was moved.4 Perhaps hopes were raised by this concession to the seasonal patterns of life on the mountain. Or perhaps the gravity of the situation failed to sink in for some. When Ronald Davies, a boy at the time, went up to Cilieni in the spring of 1940 he found ‘some of the farmers were out with their teams of horses ploughing, ever hopeful that an eleventh hour reprieve would come . . .’.5 A reprieve did not come, and 219 people from 54 homes had no choice but to leave. Local inhabitants were joined by National Farmers Union representatives to challenge the requisition of the area. The chapel, the school and the public house became symbols of a community refusing to be displaced without a fight. But most defiant of all were the Welsh Nationalists for whom the cause was comparable to Hitler’s invasion of Poland. For them the cause was more than the mountain or the people of Epynt. It was Wales, fighting the English colonizers again, to preserve a way of life, a language, an identity. At this high, isolated spot in Mid Wales several forces, of history, war, politics, ideology and nature were colliding, and feeding the military decision to take the land – and the decision to oppose it. To understand the larger significance of the community of Epynt, and the army’s presence in the Welsh countryside, several broader themes need to be explored. The local people’s link to their upland way of life, and its role in shaping their identity, is informed by a wider, longer narrative of the formation of a recognizably Welsh identity, and the centrality of landscape within it. When the military moved in, so too did different perceptions of the land, with new consequences for the landscape and inhabitants of Mynydd Epynt. These themes frame this chapter’s exploration of the environmental history of Mynydd Epynt, and particularly the contrast between these two distinct pre- and post-military phases. The isolation and bleakness of Mynydd Epynt recommended the area to the military as suitable for training. Several training estates are found in upland areas, for example Dartmoor and Otterburn. Such topography fits with many preconditions for training: among them, open spaces allow firing, exposure to extreme weather conditions tests the mettle of troops and lack of population and built up areas supposedly minimize the impact of troop movements. The same perceived isolation of upland communities had singled them out to theorists of ‘Welshness’, the high hills protecting

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such communities from outside influences, and the hills themselves becoming symbols of Welsh identity. The wind-whipped mountainsides of the Epynt supported a small, dispersed community of hill farmers, seen by nationalists and anthropologists as representative of the Welsh gwerin , or ‘folk’.6 These isolated communities and rural areas of Wales were celebrated by Plaid Cymru. When it emerged in the interwar years, Welsh nationalism held representations of natural landscapes as central to Welsh identity, underpinning concepts of Welsh history, language and culture.7 The uplands represented Welsh identity, and incorporated into the Plaid sign, were used symbolically to represent their affi nity with the immovable, unchanging, protectors of Welsh culture: ‘The mountains! The perpetual witnesses of our history, and the unchanging background of our language: we can express it in symbolic form – therefore our sign . . . the TRIBAN.’8 The three peaks of the Triban represented three Plaid values: selfgovernment, cultural prosperity and economic prosperity,9 anchored in the bedrock of Welsh identity and history that was the Welsh upland landscape. The upland landscape had not always been so revered by the Welsh. One scholar, who, along with many contemporaries, adopted Welsh as his preferred medium, was Theophilus Jones (1759–1812), who travelled the country writing a history of the land.10 He made it up the mountainside to Llangynog, one of the oldest churches in the area of Mynydd Epynt. He was unmoved by the bleak landscape, writing: The church, only rebuilt a few years back, from its exposed position, is again nearly dilapidated and ruinous. It is . . . upon the brow of Epynt, and the inhabitants, upon the return of spring, have the mortification of seeing the verdure of the meadows in the vale . . . and of hearing the chilling, wintry blast, howling along these mountains, while all below is shelter, stillness and comfort . . . This poor mountainous district is barren of incident or interest, either as to history, soil or produce.11 The celebration of the remote upland areas, or their isolated inhabitants, by the Aberystwyth School or Plaid Cymru is not yet evident.12 But Jones’s passion for the Welsh native tongue was matched by others’ passion for the Welsh natural landscape. While Jones believed in the use and promotion of the Welsh language, others strove to make the Welsh understand that their landscape must be cherished.13 As Morgan points out, the shift towards appreciating wild mountain scenery took place all over Europe

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as Romanticism rode the wake of the Enlightenment, but it particularly affected: small mountainous peoples such as the Welsh or the Swiss. The Welsh very gradually came to see their hills not as punishment from the Almighty who had driven them from the lush lowlands of England, but as a fastness or fortress for the nation.14 By the end of the eighteenth century, Wales was considered a fashionable tourist destination of great natural beauty and landscape value. By the midnineteenth century, the Welsh celebrated and safeguarded the mountainous Welsh landscape as a pillar of Welsh identity in their national anthem: Old Mountainous Wales, paradise of bards Each cliff and each valley to my sight is fair With Patriotic sentiment, magic is the sound, Of her rivers and brooks to me.15 The turn in attitudes towards Welsh history, culture and landscape over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a prerequisite for the later nationalist awakening that drew on the ideas this period had established as part of Welsh identity, from the validity of the Welsh language to the qualities of the landscape. By the twentieth century, Wales, its culture, history and people, were sustained, protected and best represented by the land itself, and incursions on that land by outsiders could not go unnoticed. When the War Department declared its intentions to requisition Mynydd Epynt for the war effort, many members of the local community were resigned to relinquishing their homes for, ultimately, a British cause. Some Welsh Nationalist observers, however, saw the army’s actions as part of a gradual appropriation of the Welsh landscape. The Welsh Nationalist movement had begun their sustained campaign against ‘another nation’s seizure of our lands for any purpose, and especially its seizure for filthy work’.16 A perceived appropriation of land by the military had begun in 1935, when plans were announced for the establishment of an aerodrome and bombing school at Porth Neigwl on the Llŷn Peninsula. The area was over 90 per cent Welsh-speaking, and prized by the movement as the heartland of Welsh culture. It was ‘imperative’, argued the geographer D. T. Williams in 1936, ‘that the peninsula should maintain the unsophisticated purity of its native tradition’.17 When a peaceful campaign of lobbying and demonstrations against the aerodrome failed to prevent its construction, prominent Welsh

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Nationalists resorted to violent measures. In September 1936 Saunders Lewis, the Reverend Lewis Valentine and novelist D. J. Williams set fire to the bombing school, subsequently presenting themselves for arrest at the local police station.18 They were jailed for 9 months, winning massive public support in Wales, and galvanizing the young Welsh Nationalist movement.19 The movement continued protesting against military requisition of Welsh land during the Second World War at the Preseli Hills in Pembrokeshire, and at Epynt. This lent the anti-military campaign at Epynt a backstory very different to those of their contemporaries at Imber and Tyneham, deeply informed by notions of place and identity that drew heavily on Welsh history. Isolated and beautiful spots, the value of these places to the Welsh nationalist movement resided in their encapsulation of Welshness itself, the remote landscapes cradling the culture. While the extreme methods deployed at Porth Neigwl were not resorted to again against military installations, opposition to a military presence in Wales continued into the Second World War, and focused on the requisition of Epynt.20 Saunders Lewis, in his column ‘Cwrs y Byd’ in Y Faner, wrote in a piece about Epynt on 3 March 1940 that: for five years it has been a consistent aspect of the military policy of this Imperial Government to locate ammunition factories and military camps with increasing frequency within the boundaries of this small nation whose neighbour she is, and confiscate her best agricultural lands, and place its own foreign institutions in the midst of her localities, which for centuries have been the backbone of the language, culture and distinctive life of the oppressed nation.21 In this tract not only is the ‘one consistent theme in Plaid Cymru’s territorial politics . . . the English exploitation of Welsh land’ at the fore, 22 but Lewis demonstrates the fundamental and essential role of the Welsh landscape in the nationalist conception of Wales, its culture and history. Although spread across the uplands, the people of the Epynt identified themselves as a community, regularly brought together through chapelgoing, schooling and agricultural events such as stock sales. Reminiscences of life on the Epynt further support the nationalists’ insistence on the continuity of Welsh history and culture in upland areas. Rees Price, who worked as a servant on various farms in the area, claimed in taped interviews that his father and neighbour once found old swords in the deep peat bogs.23 Such instances illustrate the ‘continuity’ in Welsh history better than the nationalists could have hoped. In 1887 the geologist James

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Croston referred to Wales as a ‘wild, romantic principality . . . Its very soil . . . is older than that of any other part of our island home.’24 This soil not only held archaeological remnants of ancient battles but, according to Croston, sustained a people ‘descended from the aboriginal Cymri; for centuries they resisted successfully the advancing tide of hostile invaders . . . primitive in all their ways, speaking, in many places, the language of their remote progenitors.’25 At Epynt, the direct line to an ancient pre-Welsh people had been broken over the course of time. Welsh was the spoken language, not an uncorrupted ancient linguistic predecessor. However, the name Mynydd Epynt has been translated as the ‘Haunt of the Horse’, not from the Welsh but from Brythonic, a Celtic language from which Welsh evolved.26 The romantic linking of the remoteness of places like Mynydd Epynt with timelessness was not a completely contrived concept, as the survival of old ways of life into the early twentieth century attests. But nor was Epynt an impenetrable fortress, shut off from the outside world. Nonetheless, Epynt was experiencing a decline common to rural areas across Britain, as people (particularly the young) moved away to towns and industrialized areas in search of work.27 School numbers had slowly but steadily dropped, from 39 in attendance in the school’s opening year, 1882, to 19 in 1922, 15 in 1934, and 13 in 1939.28 Chapel attendance likewise dipped. Fifty-four attended Babell Chapel, a Calvinist Methodist chapel in Cwm Cilieni (and the only church forced to close by the military requisition) in 1859. By its closure in 1940, this was down to 30.29 It was not, however, a ‘dying’ community as the military claimed of Imber, for example. When notice of evictions came, the inhabitants of the Epynt were taken by surprise. ‘As the army car drove off’, remembers Ronald Davies, ‘there was a terrible silence . . . No one knew what to say, no one could believe what was in store for them. Things were never the same in the valley.’30

Requisition The uncertainty Davies describes on hearing of the impending evictions is of little surprise. Bemused by the suddenness of the announcement, in September 1939, inhabitants wondered if and when evictions would actually take place, where they would go, and what would happen to their farms, families and animals. By Christmas the order had come from the War Office that everyone was to be out by 30 April 1940 at the latest.31 Acutely

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aware that spring was the busiest, most important time of year for sheep farmers, and the worst time to attempt to sell stock, by March 1940 a public meeting had been called so that farmers could voice their concerns. At the meeting were farmers and local men of standing like the Lord Lieutenant of Radnorshire, and the chairman of the Breconshire War Agricultural Executive Committee.32 Also present were representatives of organizations showing an interest in the matter. Moses Griffiths of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, was there to emphasize the loss to Welsh agriculture that requisition would incur. Tom Ellis spoke for the Committee for the Safeguarding of Welsh Culture, which would, he promised, assist the farmers in every way possible. The Committee signalled the proactive attitude of outside organizations in the move against the requisition by informing the meeting that they had already sent a telegram to the Prime Minister asking for a deputation meeting with him and/or the Minister for Agriculture.33 The emphasis of this meeting was the loss of valuable agricultural land. The farming community of Epynt had been preparing to respond to the wartime need for increased agricultural production, and were surprised that the value of their land was not seen in terms of its productivity, but in its ability to absorb shell blasts. Only a week later the Brecon and Radnorshire Express reported that the Welsh Parliamentary Party had joined the cause and would attend the deputation. The protests against the requisition were gaining voice – but, conversely, were receiving little media coverage. The local paper’s reportage was peculiarly vague. Several articles reported the requisition, but in none was Epynt specifically referred to by name.34 If relying on local papers alone for information, one would be aware that the government was planning to requisition ‘certain common lands in the county of Brecon’, but not much more. Not until individuals wrote to the paper on the matter do specific references to Mynydd Epynt appear.35 Press coverage further afield was largely non-existent, or at best dismissive.36 This changed when the Welsh Nationalists became involved. They were already present at the first meeting, in the guise of the Committee for the Defence (or, as reported, ‘Safeguarding’) of Welsh Culture (CDWC). While a united front limited the activity of the political wing of the nationalists, a cultural organization was able to sustain lobbying and ‘defence of the Welsh people’, and counted leading nationalists – T. I. Ellis (Secretary of CDWC), J. E. Jones (Secretary of the Welsh Nationalist Party), Saunders Lewis – among its activists.37 With experience of campaigning CDWC set about gaining support from the people of the Epynt, and promoting their concerns.

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CDWC worked tactically, and not always alongside other groups involved in the protests. In a memo on how best to mount a campaign against the authorities, Saunders Lewis wrote to J. E. Jones: it would be better . . . by visiting the farms to get their agreement to refuse to sell and not move whatever the consequences. It can be emphasised that . . . all the Welsh organizations would be certain to support them if they did this.38 Lewis recognized a sustained presence by the CDWC was needed, for ‘if they see that they are standing alone, and at the mercy of the officials of the Farmer’s Union and similar timid people, they will soon despair.’39 In the view of the Welsh nationalists, the National Farmer’s Union (NFU) had not given enough support to the Epynt farmers, buckling under the demands of the government, accepting the requisition and advising them only on the selling of stock. A British, not Welsh, organization, the NFU’s presence in the Epynt was held by nationalists to be a hindrance, threatening local solidarity against the military. J. E. Jones, responding to Lewis’s advice, spent a fortnight on the Epynt visiting farmers, ‘encouraging and stimulating them to stand firm in their homes, against the War Office’. As far as he was concerned, CDWC was fighting a lone battle: We had enemies in the area, mainly the leaders of the NFU and some auctioneer, and they managed to warn the farmers against us to some degree, so they would not accept our proffered hope unquestioningly. Nevertheless, we succeeded in saving the farmers from falling into despair.40 But while CDWC members held themselves to be the ‘leaders’ of the protests41 and the only party fighting for the interests of the people of the Epynt, the stand against the British military provided an outlet for nationalist views at a time when, in the interests of a national war effort, antigovernment action was put on hold. The Epynt also encapsulated aspects of Welsh identity that the nationalists were able to use for their cause. When the deputation met, not with the Prime Minister but with Lord Cobham, Assistant Secretary of State for War, the influence of the nationalists on the campaign could be seen. Moses Griffiths spoke again for the agricultural importance of the land, but this was coupled with arguments that emphasized the cultural significance of Epynt as an old Welshspeaking community that embodied the best of Welsh folk culture.42 At a

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later Calvinist Methodist Church meeting, the church passed a motion of protest on the grounds that: it deplores the depopulation of such a vast area, the ruin of its ancient homes, the economic loss to an industrious people and the dispersal of a community that has dwelt there from time immemorial . . . the inevitable destruction of its distinctive culture.43 Nationalists had successfully managed to raise the importance of the cultural value of the area as one central to the campaign. Welsh nationalists spoke and campaigned on behalf of the people of Epynt. But did they represent their views, or use the opportunity to advance their wider cause? Saunders Lewis wrote an article in March 1940 directly comparing the actions of the British government in Epynt to those of Germany against Poland. The government we talk of now is equal to Germany in power and wealth . . . Step by step the Government of England is devouring Wales . . . a foreign government has no right, England no more than Germany, to destroy a nation . . . our farmers must stand.44 Lewis’s views were not representative of the community at large, who were contributing to the war effort and making preparations to further do so. They also threatened the reputation and standing of the Nationalist Party, which distanced itself from them, issuing a statement saying ‘Welsh nationalism had never supported the cause of any foreign nation which is opposed to England’.45 The nationalists were unafraid to speak loudly and passionately on behalf of the Epynt people, but in doing so promoted certain ideas over and above the standing they held among inhabitants. In their defence of Epynt, the nationalists believed that: the most important basis for the stand of the inhabitants was Welsh nationhood. Many times I [J. E. Jones] was told, ‘In olden times, the English drove the Welsh into the mountains; and, now, here they are attempting to drive us from the mountains again’.46 This conviction is difficult to equate with reports of the reactions among inhabitants to news of the eviction, which speak of surprise, confusion, anger and resignation but make no references to old Welsh/English grievances. Concerns were of a much more local and personal perspective, of

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where new accommodation would be found, animals sold and compensation paid. Herbert Hughes cautions that it is possible to overstate the national consciousness among inhabitants. The Welsh Nationalists overemphasized this, it seems, to bolster support for Epynt, but also to further their own, national, cause. The historical context of the requisition of Epynt is essential to an understanding of the nature of protest. With knowledge of the bombings of Cardiff, Swansea and Newport, men signing up, women taking on unfamiliar work, families taking in evacuees and making rations stretch, the fight to remain on Epynt cannot be seen in purely nationalistic terms. There were cries of anger and injustice, but: on the whole, these people are not conscious of the injustice imposed upon them from any nationalistic viewpoint. They grieve because their homes have been destroyed and they long for the old community, but they take their view that their sacrifice was necessary for the purposes of war.47 Welsh nationalists felt this was a sacrifice too far for a nation asked to give so much, for no political independence or sovereignty in return. But framing the problem of military requisition of land along Welsh nationalist lines, they erroneously argued that the problem was one of Welsh land being taken. Simply put, it was not, as the evicted communities of Imber and Tyneham could attest. The Welsh nationalist involvement at Epynt raised the profile of protest and offered organized direction. Gwynfor Evan’s claimed that ‘We came close to success in preventing Epynt from being destroyed, but on the very day that the government came to its final decision, Hitler chose to attack and conquer Norway.’48 But this conviction is misleading. However, he recognizes the unpredictable effects of external events on internal affairs at this time. Regrettably for the inhabitants of Epynt, it was precisely these which sealed the fate of Epynt. By adopting Epynt as a nationalist cause, Welsh nationalists linked it to other territorial issues, feeding it into existing nationalist discourse of land, identity and Welshness. Several other sites were contested and joined Epynt in the debate over the ‘theft’ of Welsh land by industry and government. Some places– Porth Neigwl on the Llŷn Peninsula, the Preseli hills, Snowdonia – had been earmarked by the military, and successfully challenged. Others – Lake Vyrnwy, the Elan Valley, Tryweryn – had been, or would soon be, put forward for big hydroelectric projects, flooding valleys and creating reservoirs to provide water for English cities.

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Lake Vyrnwy and the Elan Valley had been constructed in the 1880s, to supply water to Liverpool and Birmingham.49 At this time the engineers involved celebrated the purity not only of the Welsh water, but the landscape from which it sprang. 50 Harnessing natural resources was seen as progress, by the engineers and by the Welsh, who were looking for a greater role in government rather than opposing core Victorian values. By the time of the requisition of Epynt and other sites for military use, the nationalist movement had emerged, and positioned itself as a protector of Welsh land, heritage and values against incoming plunderers. Opposition to the military was consistent as proposed training areas were isolated spots of great natural beauty and landscape value, and threatened the rural communities held by the nationalists to define the Welsh nation. 51 Other sites were more ambiguous, however. Projects like hydroelectric works that promised to bring work and development to communities challenged the nationalist impulse to oppose ‘imperialist’ schemes. The nationalist movement shifted away from the reactionary anti-modernism that had characterized its pre-war thinking to consider the view, as put forth by Peate, that for the countryside (and its language and culture) to flourish it needed a self-sustaining economy. 52 Engineering projects, for supporters, offered positive investment in the Welsh countryside, stemming depopulation: ‘properly applied, it can make us into a happy, prosperous, self-reliant nation.’53 The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) provided the model, seen to have successfully reconciled democracy and scientific advance, while benefitting the ordinary folk. Additionally, Plaid Cymru noted that by 1942 11 million people had visited TVA dams and reservoirs. Such schemes in Wales could open new opportunities for tourism. For supporters, rather than afflicting the landscape, large-scale hydroelectric projects offered an opportunity for landscape improvements, as well as a ‘way for Wales to achieve electrification and modernity without surrendering sovereignty’. 54 The reaction of nationalists to hydroelectric and engineering projects demonstrates that the sustained campaign against the military at Epynt was not a knee-jerk reaction to Welsh land being taken. Where value was seen in a development it was discussed, as reference to the advantages for locals of TVA attests. The nationalist attitude to land use and progress was not stationary, and it changed with the political and ideological aims of the movement. The presence of the military at Epynt was felt to have no benefits for the community; rather, it was tearing a community from its heartland, and taking with it precious connections to Welsh history, language and customs. After the Second World War, half a million acres – almost

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10 per cent of Welsh land – was held by the military.55 A significant presence in the Welsh countryside, the military could offer little in return for the land, and certainly not the political sovereignty sought by nationalists. Later the nationalists fought once more the water schemes that had not developed as hoped along TVA lines and benefited only English cities. At Tryweryn, this culminated in 1963 in the detonation of explosives at the site to halt work, bringing the issue to national attention and galvanizing Welsh public opinion behind the nationalists. Land use was a continuing theme in the development of nationalism, from its early incarnations through to later militancy. Fighting proposed changes in land use strengthened the Welsh nationalist movement, in terms of the values it held, how it imagined Wales, her ‘enemies’, and the movement itself. At Epynt, the military was the ‘enemy’. The ‘enemy’ won the fight, and a new imagining of the Welsh landscape at Epynt was underway.

The sheep of the Epynt As the military moved onto Epynt to claim the land, a new age in the history, perception and treatment of the land began. The new occupants, like the old, had a purpose for the land. It was to be used, but in a very different way to the previous centuries of hill farming. Before the military transformation of the Epynt is discussed, however, we must acknowledge some inhabitants, and custodians, of the mountain. Momentarily removed at the outset of the military occupation but quickly restored to their habitat, sheep to this day dot the landscape as they have done for centuries, unlike the cattle or ponies which, also removed, did not return. Placid yet hardy, the Epynt sheep are easily overlooked. But they have had a presence on the Mynydd Epynt since prehistoric times. The sheep enabled the inhospitable extremities of the uplands to be habited, sustaining a human population and making use of otherwise unproductive land (the lower lands were grazed by cattle and cultivated for vegetables). Without sheep, an upland existence would have been impossible for Welsh hill farmers, and the seasonal patterns of lambing and droving sheep to market shaped the rural year. The sheep of Epynt form a continuing link with its past. The Reverend Jones-Davies stretched the temporal extent of this past to envisage a time of ‘shepherds on Epynt when King David was watching his flocks on the hills on Judea’, bringing the mountain, satisfactorily for a man of the church, a little closer to God.56 If the history of the Epynt can be divided into two distinct phases – the pre-military

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hill farming community, and the post-1940 military age – then running through both is the continuing presence of sheep on the mountain. The centuries-old practice of droving sheep and cattle across Wales to and from markets continued in the early twentieth century.57 Sheep drovers used old drover’s tracks to traverse the difficult terrain safely with shelter and hostelries dotting the way. Drovers converged at Epynt on the way from South and West Wales to England. In his collection of memories of inhabitants, Herbert Hughes relates the recollections of David Jones, who as a lad helped drovers pass through Epynt in the 1920s: The droves were often large. On one trip from Brecon Jones and three other men drove one thousand two hundred fi fty ewes, ‘and a slow lot they were! . . . We travelled six miles by night in pouring rain with no moonlight . . . .’58 Inns like the Drover’s Arms offered respite from the weather. On another drove, ‘it was raining and there was a strong wind before we got to the Drover’s Arms. By that time I was soaking wet. We were very glad to see a good fire and had a very kind welcome’.59 As well as a warm hearth to sit by, the men could exchange news with other drovers and locals. The movement of people through Epynt allowed a flow of news, current religious and political views, songs and gossip. Drovers were ‘significant couriers’, not only of livestock and trade but also ideas.60 Although a bleak landscape on which inns offered necessary shelter, Epynt sheep sustained a community connected to the world beyond. While the mountain ponies of Epynt were relocated upon the Army’s arrival, and the farmers had to sell off their stock and relinquish their farms, farms neighbouring the training area were able to graze their sheep on the mountainside. Thus the arrival of the military did not end the pattern of sheep grazing on the mountain. The sheep play a vital role in maintaining the quality of the hillsides. They crop the grass and as ‘tenants’, bring in an important revenue for the military from the farmers. As roaming groundskeepers, however, the sheep also pose a conservation problem. As they go to drink from the rivers and streams, the sheep break down the riverbanks and threaten to damage the protected fish stocks, requiring fences to be erected around sensitive areas. Cole also notes the scarcity of a shrub layer due to sheep grazing, which has impacted upon the site’s birdlife.61 The sheep’s selective grazing habits (a preference for soft leafy vegetation) has allowed coarser-leafed bracken to run rampant across the site.62 The encroaching bracken blanket impedes troop movements,

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and is tackled constantly and decisively by the military, which relies on pesticides to control the spread. However, as then-Commandant Lt Col Hayes proclaimed in 1990, the ‘Range’s primary use is as a military training area but agriculture and conservation enjoy equal priority in our land management’.63 For all their conservation faults, the sheep keep the mountainside grass fertilized and closely cropped, the better for soldiers to manoeuvre around. The sheep remain active, if not always helpful, participants in the maintenance of SENTA, as central to its use as a military training area as they are and have been to its agricultural use. They are also the privileged few to have totally unrestricted access to the site. The sheep, unlike military personnel, are able to roam at will the entire range, including the central impact zone. Heavily laden with decades-worth of artillery and ordnance, it is judged too dangerous for humans to enter. The MoD maps mark clearly the safe areas dotted around the perimeter of the impact zone where ordnance is regularly cleared, which corresponds with clear demarcation on the ground, too. Even in such a large area, the spaces the military itself can safely use are highly restricted. So while the military use of Epynt has made areas impassable for the military itself, the sheep continue to have the run of the entire area, traversing boundaries with ovine innocence. They occasionally pay for this freedom with their lives, however. The SENTA site dossier contains a fascinating document detailing the number of sheep casualties on the range. In 2005, a total of 51 sheep were lost, 31 on the roads of the range, and 20 out on the firing ranges.64 The Epynt sheep have not been unaffected by the military presence, but have continued the system of grazing and managing the mountainside from an agricultural through to a military age.

The military age The arrival of the military on the mountain affected far more than the sheep. With the removal of the community, a way of life drawing on ancient traditions of upland living was consigned to the past. With it went particular concepts of the landscape and its significance in local identity and lifestyle. Replacing them were military approaches to training troops on a demanding terrain. Military installations, road networks and signage are just some of the ways the military era has left its mark on the Epynt. Wildlife, the rivers and streams, archaeological remains and public access have all been affected by military use of the land. By looking at these features of the

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landscape, a new set of values, different and distinct from those of a premilitary age, manifested in the environment, can be read. Ronald Church, a Range Officer at Sennybridge Training Area (SENTA) wrote a history of Epynt as a training area that, uniquely among local histories, offers a military view.65 From his perspective as an employee of DEs, his account describes the site from a military standpoint. It focuses on very different qualities than the histories of pre-military Epynt. Church’s Epynt of 1940 is a landscape of available facilities and useable features. When logistical problems cropped up, practical solutions quickly followed. The first camp was a tented camp: hurriedly erected in a large boggy field . . . due to the low lying nature of the site, drainage was virtually impossible . . . the camp suffered severe flooding. Land belonging to the Evans family of Ryhd-yBriw was requisitioned and the camp moved to Llwel in March 1940.66 For the personnel overseeing the transformation of the mountain to a workable training area the landscape was reduced to the simplicity of such problems and solutions. Certain features already recommended the land for training. Its boggy peat ground absorbed the blasts of artillery pumped into it by trainee gunners. Other features that hindered training were swiftly addressed. The open expanses on the one hand suited manoeuvres and live firing. On the other, the boggy land swallowed vehicles with ease. In order for the range to ‘accommodate large numbers of training units and for them not to waste valuable training time recovering distressed vehicles a system of good quality metalled roads would have to be constructed’, and the military promptly set about constructing a road network through the training area.67 Church describes the land with a military eye, focusing in his account on the improvements and building works needed to achieve a workable landscape for training. To judge from his account, for the military in 1940 Epynt was nothing more or less than a landscape given entirely to training. Already emptied of people and domesticated animals, it was a blank canvas on to which the military could – and did – project its own meanings and values. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the naming of parts of the area. Some new features took their names from the farms that had stood there, Pengawse anti-tank range was named for nearby Pengawse farm, for example.68 But new roads called for new names that introduced military vocabulary to the landscape. Burma Road, Gun Park Road and the inspired Concrete Road physically and nominally constructed a permanent military

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presence on the landscape. The names of junctions and viewing points like Piccadilly Circus and Canada Corner cast their shadows across the landscape; ancient valleys are viewed from military platforms; landmarks are described by their vicinity to military constructions. The result is a militarization of space, redefining old and established landmarks along new military lines. Woodward discusses the militarization process and its consequences for access and information to military lands. A lack of public information on military lands, for example, their minimal marking on Ordnance Survey maps, infers that: military lands are secret places. The defence estate remains invisible because its precise extent and details of its location are not revealed. Furthermore, by controlling the information available on military land, that land becomes labelled as solely for military purposes.69 The re-labelling of Epynt places asserted the military presence, and its control of the landscape. It is telling that memorial volumes about Epynt have told the stories of those evicted, listing the names of former residents and their farms in a litany of the dispossessed that is also an act of defiance against the militarization of the mountain.70 In 2007 the military erected signs with the original farm names following a request by the Fellowship of Reconciliation in Wales, a pacifist organization that protests the ongoing training of military troops at the site.71 The Welsh signs demand an alternative interpretation by a visitor to the site (soldier or civilian) than that of a solely military place. They signal a pre-military history and identity, and provoke questions about Epynt’s past, challenging the military presence to invoke a more complicated, historical hybrid landscape. The introduction of English people to a previously Welsh landscape substantiates the Welsh nationalist claim in their anti-military pamphlet Havoc In Wales that the ‘seizure’ of Epynt affected the surrounding community in deeper sociocultural ways. ‘Linguistically’, they said, the military ‘seizure’ of Epynt ‘has driven the border of Welsh-speaking Wales back 10 miles towards Llanwyrtyd’.72 For the nationalists, who saw the strength of the Welsh nation expressed by the health of her native language, this meant one thing: ‘When the War Office went to Epynt part of Wales died’.73 Anti-military pamphlets were published by Plaid Cymru during and after the Second World War to spread a message of exploitation-without-representation. Amid the nationalist rhetoric lie words and phrases that reveal more about the military requisition of land in Wales than simply a kneejerk anti-military reaction. ‘Wales and the War’ sets out some nationalist

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arguments, of resisting the reduction of Wales to ‘England’s military camp’, of deploring the ‘defence’ of Welsh rights when Welsh soldiers were forbidden to write home in the Welsh language.74 However, it also takes the War Office to task over an ‘official description’ of their intentions for Mynydd Epynt. The place was ‘to be blasted into a wilderness’. Plaid Cymru compared this to the ‘treatment dealt to the Poles by the Germans’, a recurring theme in nationalist literature dealing with the military and Wales. But my interest is in the phrase, and choice of words, itself. It holds the key to the army’s perception of, and intentions for, Epynt as they took over the land in 1940, and how these were viewed by others. ‘Blasted into wilderness’ was, Plaid claimed, an official War Office term featuring in their literature. It suggests that, for the military, the mountain was (already) no longer a place of habitation. Its (still very recent) past as an inhabited landscape brought nothing to a training area. Its qualities of bleakness and remoteness were its value, and would be actively ‘improved’ by the military through their training programmes. Indeed, the removal of the human population, and the livestock and mountain ponies of Epynt, initiated a time when the very emptiness of the landscape was its greatest quality. The intention to ‘blast’ the landscape reveals an active and aggressive approach to stewardship. In war and immediately post-war the military’s need to train went unchecked. No time or thought was given to ‘conservation’ or habitat preservation. The overriding need was for the creation of a convincing training terrain, and if manipulation of the landscape to meet certain criteria was judged necessary, it was swiftly done. Roads were constructed and farmhouses were employed as targets, literally blasted off the land and with them, traces of a once cultivated landscape. The phrase (‘blasted into wilderness’), picked up by Welsh nationalists, stood for everything they opposed about the army requisition. It infers the removal of the history of the land along with its inhabitants; the reduction of the land from living community to empty wilderness; the change from a productive use of land (in agriculture) to a mechanical exploitation and destruction. It speaks of a military that, at a time of war, was at the height of its powers. But in their desire to ‘blast’ Epynt ‘into wilderness’ the military reveal an important point that has been impossible to ignore, and that the MoD have – through necessity – come to recognize in their management of the training area: ‘wilderness’ was not the natural state of Epynt. Whatever was meant by the ambiguous term needed to be achieved, and maintained.

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The military began the ‘wilding’ of Epynt before troops arrived, ordering the removal of the moorland ponies for which the area was known, as well as most of the grazing sheep, at the same time as people were evicted. These directives, while unpopular with the local community, secured Mynydd Epynt as a training area, (minimizing the risk of live-firing casualties) and emptied the landscape of domesticated, valuable animals.75 No conservation programme or land management policy was implemented at this time, however. The immediate training needs of the military determined the treatment of the Royal Artillery Practice camp, as SENTA was then named. Neither was there provision for the protection of the recently emptied buildings, suggesting that at Epynt – unlike Imber or Tyneham – there was no promise or intention of returning the area to its inhabitants.76 Buildings were used for target practice, the ruinous effects described by Church as ‘unfortunate’, but ‘unavoidable for those within the impact area as they were subject to either direct hits or fragment damage from artillery shells or mortar bombs’.77 Not until the late 1970s did restoration efforts take off, by which time most of the former farm buildings had been razed to the ground by weaponry. Once animals and humans had been cleared from the site, the military could commence training unhindered. In the pre-Nugent stage of military training, and post-war, a victorious military exploited a training landscape unobserved and unimpeded. A policy of allowing non-military persons to access the land was not in place, although one group were allowed on to Epynt, with military approval: the Silver Dragons. A joint project by the Builth Wells and Carmarthen Motor Clubs, the Silver Dragons ran the Mainland Tourist Trophy Motorcycle Race on Epynt – or Britain’s largest mainland mountain circuit, as it became annually, between 1948 and 1953. With the full support of the military, the Dragons set out fences and cleared debris along the 5.2 miles of roads that made the track. Then, over a weekend, competitors, commentators and an incredible estimated 35,000 spectators congregated on the mountain.78 The selection of the Silver Dragons as the acceptable users of the training area in the post-war years further supports the argument that the military at this time managed Epynt as a commodity to be used and exploited, rather than a landscape to be preserved. The permitted recreation brought mass crowds and more vehicles to the site. The races did not directly damage the environment as they used existing roads, but brought noise and disturbance and large crowds to the area. Compared to the forms of recreation encouraged in a post-Nugent, environmentally aware age – hiking, mountain biking, bird watching, horse riding – motorbike racing was a high-impact (and

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high-octane) pastime to be invited on to the newly established training area. Nonetheless, Epynt endured as a motor rallying site, continuing as a stage on the Rally of Wales to this day.79 An evolution of attitudes to recreation paralleled that of attitudes to conservation, and is indicative of a general change within the military that was marked by, and articulated in, the Nugent Report. By the 1970s people were becoming more aware of environmental issues, more involved in conservation work, and more motivated to act on environmental issues. A series of conferences during the 1960s called ‘The Countryside in 1970’ was staged by Nature Conservancy.80 They responded to the feeling that new social and economic trends had altered the traditional structure of the countryside, and aimed to secure a new countryside policy acceptable to country folk and townsfolk alike. The conferences brought together groups with differing interests in the countryside: farmers, landowners, conservationists and recreationists. Attendance by the various groups shows a marked increase in support: at the first conference in 1963, 90 groups attended; this had risen to 335 by the final conference in 1970.81 The conferences show the period to be a time when countryside issues were generating debate on a national political platform, and altering government policy. The 1968 Countryside Act reiterated the commitment to the ‘provision and improvement of facilities for the enjoyment of the countryside, the conservation and enhancement of the natural beauty and amenity of the countryside, and the need to secure public access to the countryside for the purposes of open-air recreation’ that had been established by the 1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act.82 Although not specifically addressing the military’s role in the countryside, the Act signalled that countryside stewardship was a political issue. This was reinforced by the appointment of the first environment ministers by the Labour and Conservative parties in 1969 and 1970, and the publication by the Labour government of a White Paper, ‘The Protection of the Environment’ – the first to be written from an ecological standpoint.83 With the environment now on the national political agenda, and greater organization of environmental pressure groups, combined with a wave of popular anti-establishmentarianism and peace movements, the military was forced to defend its estates. Public criticism of military use of land, from noise pollution to nuclear weapons storage, showed that the military were not beyond accountability on such issues, and questioned their right to train on land to which other groups – farmers, conservationists, recreationists – also laid claim. On 28 October 1970, the Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath instructed Lord Carrington, Secretary of State for

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Defence, to hold a review of Armed Forces landholdings, with a view to releasing some areas (particularly those in national parks).84 The Defence Lands Committee began its assessment in 1971 and reported its findings in 1973. The impact of the Nugent Report on Sennybridge was immediate. Published in 1973, by 1974 the first amenity plantations of mainly soft woods (larch, spruce) to provide cover for troops and vehicles were underway; in 1975 the first assessment of the environmental state of the site by its Commandant, Lt Col W R Corbould was presented and showed how training would be degraded if immediate action to stem the deterioration of trees, hedgerows and farms was not taken.85 By the early 1980s environmental studies by outside bodies were underway.86 The Report had emphasized that the best way to achieve effective training within a well-maintained training environment was through greater sensitivity to the environment of the site, with a view to long-term projects and benefits. At Sennybridge, a visit by Lt Col Norman Clayden, the first Conservation Officer, resulted in a plan to coordinate the field studies and research that had, up to that point, taken place discretely. Although Corbould responded quickly to Nugent’s recommendations, other changes – most notably the foundation of the conservation group in 1984 – happened at a much slower pace, indicating that it took some time at individual sites to act upon Nugent’s 1973 recommendations. Chaired by the Sennybridge Commandant, the group was peopled by interested military personnel and numerous environmental, archaeological, heritage and scientific bodies with interests in the site. The group, like other military conservation groups emerging at this time, was to act as a forum to discuss research, compare data and debate changes. The conservation group enabled the compilation of field studies and data that form the SENTA site dossier, a comprehensive source of information about the site and a resource for the military, scientists and academics alike. The site dossier remains the central record of SENTA’s conservation works to this day. It provides an archive of past information and a deposit for up-to-date findings. From site expenditures to conservation group meeting minutes, bird counts to sheep casualty data, the dossier is the comprehensive record of military-environmentalism as it manifests itself on the ground. It shows that military-environmentalism did not peak as a reaction to Nugent’s recommendations. Rather, the 1973 report started a change within the military – a movement, even – that has grown steadily ever since. Now military-environmentalism has evolved from a concern extra to the training of troops. It has become central to the MoD’s knowledge and

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management of its training areas, even, in some cases, overriding training needs. The dossier is largely comprised of conservation group meeting minutes and ecological surveys. In the years after the Nugent report this was largely the scope of military environmental efforts, alongside projects such as bracken clearance and hedge laying, which were necessary for effective training. From these, however, a picture of the ecological health of the site could be drawn. The training area is approximately 12,000 hectares in size consisting of mainly upland areas lying above 380m, with some river valleys that are lowland in character. It is mainly unenclosed acidic grassland and blanket mire, dominated by purple moor grass, with some enclosed but unimproved fields on the periphery.87 The Cilieni Valley supports one of the largest and most diverse areas of fen-meadow in Powys. The good water quality of the area is presented in chemical detail, supported by fish and odonata surveys that reveal healthy stocks of brown trout and a thriving dragonfly population.88 Birds have been counted and recorded, from common ravens and starlings to larger birds of prey such as owls and merlin, and the best known inhabitant of the area, the red kite.89 Data such as this – compiled by non-military experts – support the argument that the military presence has protected the ecology of the area. In his environmental history of the moorlands of England and Wales, I. G. Simmons shows a 28 per cent decrease in Mid-Wales uplands between 1948 and 1983, the greatest decrease out of six upland areas studied.90 In the Brecon Beacons, just to the south of Mynyyd Epynt, the primary reclamation of moorland was by farming, although afforestation schemes also account for large conversions of rough moorland pasture.91 As a landowner with an interest in maintaining its land, the MoD has preserved habitats such as rough pasture and blanket bog that would otherwise have been lost to better drainage and more productive farming methods. However, Simmons also identifies what is for many a major problem of the military presence: the visibility of that presence. The fences, signs, red flags, live firing and tank movements that demarcate a military area not only signal potential dangers, but impose a military presence on the landscape. For many, such symbols render it impossible to appreciate the landscape. With vedette points dotting the entry ways on to the training area, abandoned tanks peppering the ground and red flags flying high on any given horizon, SENTA is an inescapably military environment. The Defence Lands Committee, in their review of military land holdings, ‘recognised the importance of this major training camp’, and recommended

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that the site be retained.92 Sennybridge is not a training area under consideration for return to other land uses. However, the Report recommended that ‘consideration should be given to making it easier for the public to obtain up-to-date information on access to the site’ and that the red flags were removed as promptly as possible after receiving complaints that they were left up long after exercises had finished. Now the internet allows real time relay of access information via the DEs website.93 But at Sennybridge there have been other efforts to bridge the military/civilian divide and appease the sense of restriction and danger that so many warning signs inevitably promote. SENTA had already received an award from the Council for the Protection of Rural Wales (CPRW) in 1994 for their conservation efforts, in particular for setting up a conservation office in Sennybridge camp (Figure 6.1). However, Commandant Lt Col Stafford Tolley admitted to Col Baker at the DEs Conservation office that the office was used infrequently by students, and never by the public, ‘who are no doubt discouraged by the presence of security fences and guards’.94 Not to be defeated, Stafford Tolley writes that, space permitting, he has decided to ‘take our displays to the public – to be more proactive about our work to care for the environment on which

Figure 6.1. Welsh mountain sheep to the foreground, and the FIBUA village in the background, of the training landscape at SENTA. Patches of blanket forestation provide troop cover during training exercises. Photo: M. Dudley (2009).

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we train’. The Conservation Centre, duly constructed in a renovated farm house and opened on 9 June 1997, provided information about the site’s flora and fauna as well as safety advice for visitors. Stafford-Tolley’s memo reveals a genuine enthusiasm for conservation work on the base. It was not edited for public view, but spoke directly from one military man to another. The choice of words like ‘our work’ and the ‘environment on which we train’ denotes, not only a sense of possession of the land but also a pride and duty towards it. The importance of individual base commanders was key in the proactive (or otherwise) adoption of military-environmentalism at training areas. This was not a factor discussed by Nugent or Sharp in their reports, nor is it directly referenced in the pages of Sanctuary or MoD literature. But it can be ascertained through a sustained reading of site dossiers, as certain periods provide an abundance of data and documentation detailing environmental activities while others are comparatively bare. The commander, heading the conservation group, liaising with outside organizations and dispersing the site budget, is ultimately responsible for these fluctuations, potentially promoting an active military-environmentalism or neglecting conservation concerns. StaffordTolley seems to have been a particularly active commandant, taking a keen interest in the environmental status of his training area.95 At SENTA, the staff were perhaps encouraged by the positive feedback of the CPRW award, which stated the ‘Army has a high level of commitment to environmental matters and conservation issues on its training areas.’ This was encouraged by MoD press releases, which emphasized the good relations between SENTA and Powys County Council, which supported the centre.96 The positive press coverage further promoted better relations with the public, which Stafford-Tolley hoped the centre would foster. While not ridding Sennybridge barracks of its forbidding security fencing, a positive public image in the local press focusing on work out on the range repositions the MoD away from the prohibitive access and signage that often accompanies discussion of a military presence out into the open spaces of the uplands. The Conservation Centre was followed by another significant scheme that aimed to minimize the perception of a military landscape as ‘out of bounds’: the ‘Epynt Way’. The Epynt Way is a circular bridle path, cycle way and walking path that traces the interior boundaries of the entire training area. Laid out and maintained by the MoD, it is dotted with information points, parking and unloading areas, and viewing positions. Having walked some of its length I can attest to its magnificent views of the training area and surrounding countryside. It allows visitors to experience the ‘wildness’ of the area and

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the exhilaration of the upland landscape. Although roughly tracing the boundaries of the training area, the path does not hug outer fencing, and often diverts quite far inside. Walking the path between Receptor Points One and Two on a damp October day, I felt not at all restricted but free to roam.97 Occasional corrals for horses at points on the Way are gravelled and wood-fenced but for the most part the path is traced very lightly on the grass. Distant gunfire gave away the presence of troops, somewhere, out there, beyond visibility. The only encounter was a cheery hello from two ‘Epynteers’, local residents and regular walkers of the Way who look out for maintenance issues and talk to new users about their experience of walking the Epynt Way. Duty done, they rambled on after their lively terrier, and we continued walking through a terrain in whose broad swathes of earthy browns and greens were tucked, after a warm autumn, little jewels of red, purple, grey and yellow fungi. If the main objection by ramblers and riders to a military presence on the land is the proliferation of military signs, then the Epynt Way succeeds, dotted with unobtrusive wooden marker posts. Tracing the edges of the training area, it is open year round, uninterrupted by training exercises. It is a work of beautiful simplicity: the Epynt Way allows people onto Epynt, but keeps them safely away from the central impact zone. It gives a sense of access to the entire military landscape, while in fact limiting it to the edges. The Epynt Way creates an illusion held in the view, from horizon to unblemished horizon. Mynydd Epynt remains a military landscape, but one that the civilian is welcomed in, and allowed access to. Among the UK DEs, this makes it rather special. The Epynt Way and Conservation Centre show an investment by the MoD (with EU funding and local county council support) in recreation and conservation. The Epynt Way alone cost £57,706, and requires continued maintenance.98 Both projects demonstrate a creative approach to conservation on the base, with those at SENTA setting the agenda and acquiring funds to sustain a conservation effort. Between them they solve a problem for military training areas, of not wanting the public roaming across danger areas, but also not wanting to appear uninviting. They encourage public engagement with the site and its nature, but at prescribed points. Although it has been applauded for introducing imaginative responses to the environmental responsibilities of land ownership, SENTA has also sidestepped issues of public access. The Epynt Way and the Conservation Centre play central roles in the MoD’s attempts to engage with the public at SENTA. The information they provide at specific points at these places shapes the way the public sees

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the site, as a military landscape, a recreational landscape and a heritage landscape. The Conservation Centre, as it was, is the focal point, purposely built as an information centre. It was revamped, renamed and reopened as a Visitor Centre, in July 2009. Returning to my notes on the Conservation Centre after a recent trip to the new visitor centre, the reasons for the revamp became clear. I had felt, as had others, that the emphasis on conservation had deliberately obscured the story of the evictions on the Epynt. The signs emphasize the ‘natural depopulation’ of the area in the years leading up to its requisition and the ‘preservation of an extraordinarily rich deserted landscape, untouched by modern agriculture’ by the military presence, I had written. The conservation and archaeological information given presents the viewer with a version of Epynt’s history that is (unsurprisingly) pro-military, but (less forgivably) unrepresentative of the area’s rich pre-military history, and problems that the military arrival brought, I had continued. The signs at the Conservation Centre and Epynt Way are one visible result of the MoD’s attempts to engage and inform the public, and succeed in doing so, but with one particular telling of the area’s history and one that is unavoidably viewed by the public through the military ‘greenwash’. While the conservation centre had been a successful initiative for MoD to engage with the public on their own terms, it wasn’t complete, and its transformation into a visitor centre demonstrates an admirable commitment by SENTA staff to get it right. The MoD at SENTA’s visitor centre has moved beyond the tendency in military-environmentalism to enact a double erasure of the social history of the landscape and the military presence within it.99 It presents instead a narrative of the landscape that is more receptive to multiple uses of the land and acknowledges a premilitary past. Military activity is reinstated as the primary function of the training area, but infused with wildlife imagery and language, reasserting the military role in military-environmentalism. The new centre (housed in the same former farmhouse) has ‘Epynt’ spelled out in big green letters on the whitewashed outside wall. The sole narrative of the conservation centre, military-environmentalism, has been amended, its scope widened to include other narratives contained within Epynt. Inside the former farmhouse is a more balanced display that includes information panels on the evicted community, and the military and its machines. As the big green letters indicate, military-environmentalism remains at the heart of the display: upon entering the centre, the visitor is greeted by a two-storey full-wall-hanging that occupies the entire interior side wall of the building. A larger-than-life soldier is shown peering into a viewfinder

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out on the range, while a red kite hovers above him. He is named ‘Warrior in the Wilderness’. Nestled down among the foliage, camouflaged, he is part of his environment. It is only after some moments that I realized he was staring down a sniper rifle, not a long-lens camera. By far the largest display in the centre, the wall hanging keeps ‘khaki conservation’ at the forefront of the military’s role on the range. It blurs the lines between training and conservation. The accompanying text reads: ‘In World War II soldiers first trained here to protect the nation. Seventy years of priming troops for combat worldwide has protected Epynt’s historic and natural legacy for us all to enjoy.’ The protective role of the military is emphasized, its presence on the Epynt presented as unequivocally beneficial for both the good of the nation, and its environments. Military-environmentalism remains the first port of call in assuring the visitor of the importance of the military’s right to train. The phrase ‘Warrior in the Wilderness’ recalls the early accusations against the military at Sennybridge of ‘blasting’ the mountainside from its domesticated, agricultural state back to a state of ‘wilderness’ in which soldiers could train. The images update the ‘wilderness’ theme, which has run throughout the development of military-environmentalism. The management of the training estate to maintain a landscape suitably challenging and open for training manoeuvres and artillery fire had had beneficial side effects for rarer species of mosses, fungi and birds.100 As the organization ‘greened’, the wilderness narrative was used by the military to defend its own presence in the landscape, the rarity of an unimproved and largely inaccessible (and therefore, although carefully managed, ‘wild’) expanse of upland dominating publicity about the site. The military presence was also protecting ‘wilderness’ from modern agriculture and its use of chemicals, and afforestation. Commercial timber plantations – dense green blankets of pine on the upland landscape – are prolific in the Sennybridge area, and are visible from the Epynt plateau. Of little value for biodiversity or habitat creation, forestry plantations are not favoured by environmentalists. The military positioned itself as a landowner able to ‘save’ (some) of the upland landscape from such ‘unnatural’ planting.101 This understanding of the wilderness of SENTA rested on habitat, wildlife and landscape only. There was no place for military activities or visible humans in this presentation of the landscape. But at the visitor centre, the ‘Warrior in the Wilderness’ re-peoples the landscape of Epynt, restoring the soldier to the environment. This new understanding of military-environmentalism, and the military environment, is less apologetic about the training activities that have created the landscape; confident of the mutually beneficial

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relationship between military training and environmental protection, the soldier occupies a prominent position in the terrain. But the additional wall panels acknowledge that the impact of the military on the range extends beyond the environment. While a solely conservation-focused centre smacked of ‘greenwash’ – the deliberate presentation of military-environmentalism at the expense of other, equally valid, stories of military occupation – the new visitor centre achieves a more balanced telling. ‘The Military’s Spotter’s Guide’ encourages visitors to look for signs of the military presence in the countryside and celebrates the power and force of modern military weaponry. While some (myself included) may question the celebration of machinery made to kill, the display nonetheless recognizes that military training forms the daily reality of the site. Although, for the military, training has always taken precedence and remains the primary activity on its training estates, in information presented about those estates with an environmental focus, realistic portrayals and documentation of training have often been conspicuously absent. Another notably more visible presence in the new visitor centre is the evicted community that once inhabited the site. ‘Until 1940, the Epynt was sparsely dotted with small farms and villages’, we are informed. A display board with old photographs of the farms and their inhabitants describes the process that led to the evictions, the progress of the war and the need for training lands. While there is no reference to any protests against the evictions, an individual testimony remembers the shock of hearing of the notice to quit, recalling the immediate stop in ploughing, and the desperate search for new accommodation. The next board shows more photographs of the farmhouses, but now with tanks rolling between them and the heading, ‘The Army moves in’. Carefully worded text on the wall hanging that greets the visitor sets the tone for the discussion of the evictions: ‘As with many, the War reached out and changed their lives. They left their homes and livelihoods behind. This centre remembers their sacrifice.’ The former inhabitants of Epynt are not singled out for victimhood, but placed instead within the wider context of wartime sacrifice. The texts add a memorial dimension to the visitor centre, instigated by the military. It adds to the renaming of the former homes and farms of the area, which was requested by the Fellowship for Reconciliation, and the memorial plaques erected at the site of the Cilieni Valley schoolhouse and the Babell Chapel ruins. When the military discussed plans to partially rebuild the chapel in the mid-1990, local chapel congregations preferred to ‘keep it as a stabilised ruin, both as a monument to the community that used to live in the Cilieni Valley and as a reminder of the price that the

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community had had to pay for their part in the war effort.’102 The visitor centre text fulfils both roles by remembering those evicted and the extent of their loss. In his comparative essay on Epynt and Tyneham, Cole discusses a ‘dominant mode of narrating the militarized landscapes’ at the two sites that ‘positions them within a broader narrative of “birth, death and redemption”. Military discourses of “khaki conservation” offer a view of the . . . military redemption of the land’ via environmental protection and conservation success.103 But the visitor centre text goes beyond the ‘khaki conservation’ narrative to recognize the less celebrated history of the Epynt community, addressing the evictions and loss that occurred as a result of the military requisition. As if to balance the greater inclusion of materials depicting the eviction of the Epynt community, there is more use of the word ‘sacrifice’. Not only is the ‘sacrifice’ of the Epynt community noted (and, whether intentionally or not, thus suggestive of a voluntary exodus), the sacrifice of soldiers for the nation is also stressed. A new notion has been added to the idea of ‘protection’, a term equally noble and unimpeachable: sacrifice. By redefining the eviction of the Epynt community as a sacrifice for the war effort, the military neatly evades possible criticism or protest: who would wish to downgrade those evicted from the status of heroes who sacrificed their homes for the greater good, to unwilling pawns in the game of war? Furthermore, suggestion of some cooperative spirit among the Epynt people in the decision of the military to move in to Epynt is erroneous and troubling. It should be noted that the community had no choice in the matter of eviction by the War Office. By using the same word to describe the soldiers training on the range today, and those fighting in current conflicts (Afghanistan and Iraq), a neat link between past and present Epynt is created. The ‘sacrifice’ of the former inhabitants is honoured by the ‘sacrifice’ of current soldiers. And with this suggestion comes the unspoken expectation of the visitor to support the military presence rather than protest it, to offer gratitude rather than ask questions. The new information given to visitors to the Epynt visitor centre offers better opportunities for the understanding of military training’s full range of meanings and consequences of military training. The training that takes place is given space, as is the pre-military past. Thanks to the wildlife and weaponry panels, the visitor can embark on a walk along the Epynt Way better prepared for what they might encounter on the range, be it high-flying red kites or high-calibre machine guns. As a visitor centre, in this sense it succeeds. But what has emerged in the presentation of some of the other narratives of the range is a development of the tendency of the military to

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use the environmental narrative of their estates to justify their presence in the landscape. The inclusion of the recent human history of the range enables links to be made between past and present, subtlely aligning the past victories of the military (Second World War) with present conflicts.

Operation Red Kite A well-documented project in the site dossier that reveals much about the military’s attitude to conservation, is Operation Red Kite. Asked by RSPB to help protect a vulnerable nest site on Epynt, and supported by the MoD Conservation Officer, Commander 160 (Wales) Brigade responded with the organization and manpower of a full military operation. The Operation Order of 1993 set out the mission to troops, describing the bird and its value: ‘The Red Kite is the most beautiful bird in Britain . . . approximately 70 breeding pairs are thought to exist . . . The greatest threat to survival is that posed as [sic] egg collectors’.104 Hides were constructed and soldiers posted around the clock to keep watch over the nests, ready to apprehend ‘enemy forces’, or ‘nest site raiders intent on removing eggs . . . several “regulars” are known’.105 The Operation was used as training for surveillance duties in Northern Ireland.106 As well as offering a unique training opportunity for troops, it succeeded in its mission to protect the birds. In a letter of thanks the RSPB say that all three of the guarded nests hatched successfully, ‘and thanks to the presence of the Army, we have only lost one nest to egg thieves in the whole of Wales to date’.107 Much organization and many soldier hours were given to the Operation, and the RSPB note of thanks denotes a successful completion. But alongside it in the site dossier, among the press releases that succeeded in making it a high profile and newsworthy story in Wales, lies a congratulatory internal memo to those involved. ‘Exercise Red Kite has been a tremendous success, and all those who participated are to be congratulated’, enthuses Rt Officer Arnold, MoD Conservation Officer. ‘Not only was RSPB Wales delighted with our involvement’, he continues, ‘but the Territorial Army in Wales has received some excellent positive media coverage, both at local and national level . . . Translated into advertising costs, we have received in excess of £20K coverage.’108 This note, slipped in among the press coverage Arnold values so greatly, reveals the real value for the MoD of successful conservation schemes.

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Over the course of the MoD’s time at Epynt, environmental awareness has become part of the day-to-day running of the base. Range officers police the area looking for poachers and trespassers, and academics are welcomed to study the site. Members of the public with an interest in the wildlife of the area have been provided for, as have the walkers and riders who are drawn to the rugged topography. But, having invested in environmental schemes, the military has learnt to reap the benefits. It has become, over time, highly aware of the value of sound environmental practices, not only for the condition of the site, but also to maintain a secure presence, uncontested by civilians, on the land. Stories such as Operation Red Kite that enter the public domain strengthen the military’s argument that they protect the landscape as they do the nation, and that no other organization has the resources or manpower to match them. Arnold’s revelation shows that the MoD is so highly aware of the value of a good public image, and so keen to generate positive publicity, that they are able to translate the value of a conservation scheme directly into advertising pounds. In the early years of the military presence at Epynt, the Welsh Nationalists feared the site would be ‘blasted into wilderness’. It was held up as an example of an undeveloped, traditional Welsh landscape. High and remote, it was a cradle of Welsh culture and language, protected from outside influences. The incoming military was seen to shatter the isolation of hundreds of years, and by removing the people of the mountain, wiped out the traditions and history that was tied to them. As the military had wrenched out a community, so too would they proceed to scar the land with shells and artillery. In their campaign against the British military in Wales, the Welsh nationalists were, in their eyes, protecting their nation – bound up as it was in concepts of landscape and language – from the threat of external, destructive forces. The first decades of military residence on the mountain seemed to substantiate the nationalist’s position. Buildings fell, earth was blasted, and the site was reconfigured and renamed for military purposes. But in the later decades of the twentieth century the MoD adjusted its responsibilities as a landholder. It has always sought to protect the national territorial base. Increasingly, it has worked to protect natural and archaeological features of its landholdings. This gradual greening was borne out at the Welsh site. Small successes and the resultant praise encouraged more investment in the environment, and greater conviction in the role of the MoD in environmental protection of the landscape. It also cemented the potential for matters of environment to quiet criticism and win support for the military as landowners.

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Now the MoD is the group defending Epynt. Where the nationalists’ saw a reserve of Welsh culture for all Welsh people, the MoD now encourages us to see a reserve of nature. In defending Epynt’s borders from encroaching development, the MoD has usurped the nationalist organization opposed to its presence so vehemently, which vowed to defend the area from the encroachment of the English and their destructive forces. The benefits for the MoD are many, more efficient training and a well-maintained training landscape being only two of them. In recent years, the MoD has become adept at using its environmental successes to ensure its continued presence in the landscape. By connecting with the public over the area’s exceptional ecological and landscape value it can deflect criticism that questions the validity of training on British soil. The environmental efforts made at SENTA have yielded benefits for the land and its wildlife. The Epynt Way and Conservation Centre have brought these efforts to the public, and eased tensions between military and civilian users of a military landscape. Rather than blasting away the wilderness, the military has carved out a role as defender of the landscape – the odd blast a necessary condition of a role that, they assure, extends far beyond simply exploiting the landscape for training. This position has not been an automatic development. But, now an entrenched role, the protection of nature forms a central theme in the military’s understanding and portrayal of its role and home in the Welsh countryside.

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Chapter 7

Conclusion

Having been grounded in military sites across south-west England and Wales, this book finishes at a specific place: the Epynt Visitor Centre, SENTA. It is a fitting place at which to draw some conclusions about military-environmentalism and the greening of the MoD during the twentieth century, and into the first decade of the twenty-first century. At SENTA, the Visitor presents and explains the landscape, wildlife and activities of the training area to the visitor. But it also confronts the controversial removal of the Epynt community in the Second World War to make way for training, and places military training activities prominently in the display. Military-environmentalism remains prominent in this public presentation of the MoD, but it is not as dominant a narrative as at the previous Conservation Centre. What has been so interesting to observe at Epynt has been the lessening of the use of military-environmentalism as a lone justification of the military use of the land, to incorporate other strands of the history of the military in the landscape.1 At Epynt, evictions emptied the landscape for military use. The previous civilian way of life was erased, and replaced with a military understanding of the land, manifested in the ruination of former farms and renaming of roads and landmarks.2 Restricted access disabled the memorial function of the landscapes as sites of loss, and a military silence on the subject of requisition was countered by public protest movements calling for reinstatement of lands and livelihoods to former inhabitants. Though landscapes were emptied of civilians, aspects of traditional land use such as grazing were maintained as complementary to training requirements (e.g., the provision of short grass). Between 1945 and the 1970s, however, there was little consideration of the environmental impact of training on the land. Military training was the overriding concern, and training areas were managed solely for this purpose. But as those who regularly observed training areas noticed, training conditions were inadvertently creating conditions akin to nature reserves: the strictly controlled

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boundaries of the training areas kept people, urbanization, intensive agriculture and industry out. This exclusion has been enough to preserve islands of biodiversity and create ecological havens. Civilians, including the academic community, have found it difficult to equate a military presence with a conservation function in the countryside, be it intentional or inadvertent. But, I contend, the impetus for the conscious greening of the MoD came from the contributions of civilian environmentalists. As a result of conservationists speaking in defence of the military at the Nugent Committee hearings, the military awoke to the ecological worth of its landholdings. It has subsequently developed a proactive military-environmentalism, embedded within the structure of the DEs and MoD land use policy. The MoD has used a military-environmentalist narrative to provide an alternative, positive public image of itself as an organization to justify its ownership and use of substantial areas of the United Kingdom. Academics are right to look critically at the military use of its environmental record for political purposes. Yet, though images and stories of military-environmentalism are adeptly used for public relations purposes, the military-environmentalism in place at the present day and at work on the ground of the UK DE, is structural and anchored by genuine conservation work. As the late twentieth century progressed, growing pressure on the military to relinquish many of its sites, to previous inhabitants, or for new purposes (such as recreational use, conservation work and landscape preservation) led to the reassessment of military land holdings, via the Defence Lands Committee and its 1973 Report. Those for and against the military use of land presented their arguments. The resulting recommendations of the Nugent Report drew attention to the myriad demands placed on training areas by civilian groups, bringing environmental and recreational issues to the fore and forcing the MoD to recognize the non-military value of their training areas. The conservation-by-serendipity that had previously taken place on military landholdings was considered inadequate, and the report underlined the need for an environmentally responsible approach to military land use. It provided the catalyst for the structural and policy changes that enabled a greening of the military to take place on multiple levels, from day-to-day land management, the use of public relations and involvement with national and international advisory bodies and conservation schemes. The militarization of Epynt, like that of Tyneham, Imber and Dartmoor, was protested by former inhabitants and anti-militarists. However, the later greening of this and other sites was supported by conservation

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organizations, local government and EU funding bodies. Conflict and cooperation with civilians has shaped the military’s greening. With many contentious issues outstanding, but also with increasingly well-established collaborations in place, this dynamic – central to the greening of the military – will continue to build the complex and multi-layered relationship between the military, the land on which it trains and its relation to the surrounding communities and environments. As the military became more aware of the environmental value of its landholdings, and the positive public image potential of this newly realized consequence of the military presence, a greener narrative of military training was presented to the public through Sanctuary magazine and local press coverage of conservation work. These uplifting environmental stories certainly act as a counterpoint to the more prolific accounts of environmental damage of militaries at war. As I have been keen to acknowledge (heeding the examples of Woodward, Havlick, Davis and Russell) these stories can be, and often are, deployed by the military for publicity purposes (as, like many organizations, it seeks to publicize its successes). However, I have also striven to demonstrate that tangible environmental gains, and a genuine structural military-environmentalism, underlies the public presentation of the military environmental discourse. The use of five site-based case studies, to explore the manifestations and permutations of military-environmentalism, was intended to allow for the possibility that the greening of the MoD was not a uniformly applicable phenomenon. Additionally, it recognized the possibility that place could be a defining element of military-environmentalism, at the very least shaping its interpretation and implementation at the local level. This comparative model has allowed me to reach wide-ranging conclusions about the nature of military-environmentalism, but also to make site-specific points. For example, in Chapter 4, Salisbury Plain, I suggest that the rise of environmentalism at the site has contrasted strongly with the decline of the area’s human story. At that site, the strict access restrictions and silence over the requisition of land and eviction of its inhabitants echo the experience of other sites, but stand out in their severity. The apparent reluctance of the MoD to confront the site’s recent history at Imber was made more pertinent by the local presence of the main DEs office. It is here that archaeological and environmental policies and activities across the DE are worked out, and where all training area site dossiers are archived. But the military treatment of Imber has given the village at the heart of the training area a lasting ghostliness that is in contrast to the traces of habitation at Tyneham (where information boards tell the stories of former inhabitants

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to tourists) or Epynt (where pacifists succeeded in reinstating Welsh farm names). While all three places shared common features of military-environmentalism, the outcomes have been very different, as the chapters depict, and site-based approach allowed. My assessment of military-environmentalism at SPTA finds common ground with Davis and Woodward. It speaks of a discourse of environmentalism manipulated by the military, at the cost of other narratives that reflect the complexities of a particular site’s history. At other sites, however, my research suggested a multi-layered military-environmentalism that, while perhaps not always successfully reconciling difficult periods and controversial aspects of the military presence, nonetheless went deeper than a strategy for ensuring the military ability to train, as cynics suggest. The infrastructure of conservation groups, range officers, DE archaeological and environmental experts, indicates that the greening of the military has been embedded in the management of training areas, and incorporated into the military’s mission. Nevertheless, throughout my research I have been wary of the power of the military-environmental discourse to direct attention towards the stories the military prefers to be publicized. It is hoped that critical examination of how the discourse operates, and how this has compared over time to the treatment of other histories of military training areas such as evictions and protest, has contributed to the wider body of knowledge of environmental histories of militaries, not least through an emphasis on the middle ground rather than a pro- or anti-military agenda. While referring to a wide range of sources and theories of militaries, landscapes and the environment, and the interactions between these forces, I have returned repeatedly to the work of two academics in particular. Rachel Woodward and Jeffrey Sasha Davis have provided a theoretical framework within which to situate my research. Woodward’s analysis of the construction of a recognizable discourse of military-environmentalism describes the naturalization of the military in the environment with concepts such as ‘crater-as-habitat’. She views the spread of positive stories from the military environment as fulfilling broader political aims to secure land for training and diverting attention from more troubling military activities. This work has been a response to Woodward’s call for more scholarship of military lands. Through my five case studies, I have found many parallels with Woodward’s theories, and much evidence to support her conclusions. On all five sites, the variety of conservation that Woodward cites as ‘khaki conservation’ has been at work, and with it evidence to support her

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conviction that it is used to present a more positive military presence to the wider community. But whereas Woodward remains unconvinced of the actual environmental benefits of military land use in UK training areas, at the five sites I have studied military-environmentalism has become embedded as a management practice. Securing statutory protection of valuable habitats, and through cooperation with external conservation and environmental bodies, military-environmentalism has protected some rare British habitats and species. The military presence has protected the landscape, by controlling accessibility and land use, but the training landscapes are by no means untouched. Used continuously for training purposes, for many the ‘surprise’ in the ‘surprising nature’ of military training landscapes has been the robust response by flora and fauna to seemingly damaging practices such as tank movements and artillery fire. But, while fairy shrimp thrive and natural patterns such as breeding continue uninterrupted in the training landscape, some, including Woodward, warn that the long-term effects of military use remain unknown.3 Discarded military debris – rusting tank hulks, for example, used for target practice – are visible reminders of the military use of the land. More damaging is the invisible pollution embedded in the terrain, where, in places, unexploded ordnance peppers the earth. At Sennybridge the high level of unexploded ordnance in the central impact zone has rendered the area unsafe even to military personnel. The zone is off-limits to all but wandering sheep and other errant creatures. At such places, not only are the long-term effects of ground contamination unknown, they are unquantifiable. The lack of knowledge – and lack of possibilities to acquire data – of the long-term environmental impacts of military land use, is itself indicative of the dangers of hazardous areas such as central impact zones. However, one tangible benefit of military-environmentalism and the opening-up of training areas to conservationists has been the steady compilation of data and materials charting the health of the accessible areas of the landscape and its wildlife. Much more is known now about military landscapes than before the existence of conservation groups and their regular monitoring of wildlife. I join Woodward in calling for investigation into the effects of pollution on military landscapes, to contribute to what we know about the long-term effects of military training on the landscape. In addition to being subject to ‘khaki conservation’, four of the five sites have seen the displacement of civilians to secure the land for training. In exploring the issues of loss, dislocation, memory and protest, I turned to Davis’s idea of double erasure. Although conceived in connection with his

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research on Vieques, Puerto Rico, Davis’s ideas suggested clear parallels with the evicted communities of the British sites I studied. His suggestion that militaries erase first the social history of their lands, then the military presence within them, to present a picture of a protected and biodiverse environment, offered a line of analysis that recognized the presence of evicted inhabitants in the militarized landscape as well as flora, fauna and military. Davis’s approach influenced my own readings of military lands, especially Imber, although it has had less relevance at Tyneham and the Epynt where the history of former inhabitants is much more visible, as is the military presentation of its presence. But neither Woodward or Davis thoroughly addressed a third theme, which emerged at every site: the role of access, in terms of its restriction by the MoD and the challenging of its restriction by civilians, in protecting military environments, shaping our understanding of them, and shaping military-environmentalism itself. The strict access limitation imposed by the military on its lands effectively meant a de-peopling of that landscape, insofar as its former inhabitants and users have been excluded, and, to varying extents, continue to be excluded. However, complementing this de-peopling by the military has been a re-peopling with military personnel, whether this involves those who learn from and survive in the landscape (soldiers), or those who manage the landscape (including range officers, conservationists and archaeologists). While military use has controlled the human presence in the landscape, military activity has not deterred the presence of other life-forms in the landscape. Places such as Epynt and Dartmoor were, and are, prized for their emptiness. While the military has maintained emptiness as a landscape quality, these places are far from devoid of non-human activity or inhabitants. Military-environmentalism has, as we have seen at all five sites, also helped re-populate the training areas with previously overlooked mini and mega flora and fauna. The fairy shrimp of SPTA, the choughs of Castlemartin, the kites and fungi of SENTA, are icons of military-environmentalism, and protected inhabitants of the military landscape. Thus, the absence/presence discourse of Davis and the ‘khaki conservation’ discourse of Woodward are both relevant to the study of British military training areas. Connecting these two themes is the issue of access to military lands. It is both weapon and tool for the military. Restricted access facilitates uninterrupted training, and prevents over-use or disturbance of habitats. It has been deployed against those wishing to enter military lands, for reasons of environmental protection alongside those of public safety, safeguarding military interests as well as military environments.

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However, it has also been the thorn in the military’s side, attracting public protests that, at places such as Dartmoor and Tyneham, have at times seriously threatened the future of military training. What all sites have shown to differing degrees is that the debate over access has shaped both military and civilian understandings of those landscapes and the activities that take place on them. The unresolved conflict between surfers and military (at Castlemartin and Lulworth) over access to coastal waters within the training zone echoes earlier confrontations between rock-climbers and military. The rock-climbers eventually secured improved access to Castlemartin, as well as a better appreciation of their sport and the importance of the Castlemartin cliffs by the military, to the extent that activities previously deemed ‘extreme’, such as rock-climbing and coasteering, are now part of the local military training experience. It will be interesting to see whether surfers continue this reappraisal of recreational activities, and succeed in extending access beyond terra firma to include the military seascape. At SENTA, the MoD demonstrated a willingness to address access to the site. The Epynt Way opened up the training area without compromising training capacity, satisfying the public and rewarding the MoD with plenty of positive press. This amenity recognized the landscape value of the military training area beyond its provision of a training environment, for qualities such as emptiness, wildness, expansiveness and the remarkable views from the high plateau of the surrounding Welsh countryside. The MoD at SENTA had also demonstrated a willingness to confront issues of memory, responding to calls to reinstate the original Welsh place names of former farms. In May 2007 the MoD hosted a residential workshop that explored the multiple uses and histories of the site; scholars and artists stayed in the Sennybridge barracks and explored the site, including the ruined farms, old schoolhouse, FIBUA village, (former) Conservation Centre and firing ranges.4 In August 2010, the National Theatre of Wales performed Aeschylus’s The Persians at Cilieni Village, the FIBUA village on SENTA.5 Events such as these show the MoD, at SENTA, to be engaging with questions of eviction and access that have affected so many military sites and remain issues that largely continue to be inadequately addressed by the military elsewhere. Furthermore, with the transformation of the old Conservation Centre into the Visitor Centre, as described in Chapter 6, the MoD at SENTA shows the possibility of moving beyond the single-stranded narrative of militaryenvironmentalism to extend the military definition and understanding of its training areas to include past histories, the more recent and contentious together with the ancient, and multiple uses, including recreation

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alongside conservation and military. The greening of the MoD has seen large areas of British territory protected but also removed from the public realm. The benefits for the biodiversity of those areas have been extensive. However, the military reluctance to discuss other aspects of those lands – including their human histories and controversies – has often resulted in a one-sided presentation of militarized landscapes that focuses on their conservation role. The development of military-environmentalism has the potential to reconnect the public and the landscapes used by the military, and the multiple histories, environments, memories and activities they contain. Exploration of military landscapes themselves, and the record of the MoD as land manager, can also deliver these landscapes out of scholarly obscurity to become better understood, and more open, places. My research answered a call by Woodward for more scholarship on military landscape, but in turn reiterates it. There remains much work to be done on these landscapes. While this book is, strictly speaking, a regional study, the five sites and their diverse natural and historical features have been shown to be of regional, national and international significance. However, they remain understudied by scholars, and are largely excluded from general classifications of prized landscapes. But as I have shown, military training areas form large parts of some of our most revered landscapes. The dichotomy between the publicly accessible national parks, for example, and the more exclusive military lands, has emerged in my research, and continues to engage my attention. I have placed military landscapes in historical context, examining the awakening of military environmental consciousness during the later twentieth century. The landscape context of these sites is also important. Military landscapes interact with surrounding landscapes – the complications of military training within a national park have been explored here. Multiple levels of conservation legislation, land use and history influence how landscapes are seen, used and differentiated. The complex and compelling interplay between these factors and places offers a rich topic for future research: the categories of classification into which protected landscapes are placed, that would situate military landscapes within a wider British context of formal and informal nature and scenery conservation. The study of military bases as places of nature encourages a rethinking of how we understand and classify places of natural beauty.

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Appendix

Details of site visits to military training areas, undertaken by Marianna Dudley and colleagues as part of a methodology for researching militarized landscapes. 10 February 2008, Tyneham Open-access weekend Present: Marianna Dudley, Tim Cole, Peter Coates and Chris Pearson Activities: (a) Visited Tyneham Village, including the recreated Village school, and Tyneham Church; (b) Photographed information boards; (c) Walked to Worbarrow Bay. 23 April 2008, Sennybridge Present: Marianna Dudley, Tim Cole, Peter Coates and Chris Pearson Activities: (a) Meeting with Camp Commandant Lt Col Chris Sernberg and Major Eddie Mahony, followed by tour of SENTA with Sernberg and Mahony; (b) Visited Conservation Centre. 24 April 2008, Castlemartin Present: Marianna Dudley, Tim Cole, Peter Coates and Chris Pearson Activities: (a) Meeting with Camp Commandant Lt Col Johny Rogers and his DE staff, at the Castlemartin Barracks; (b) Walk along the cliff path through the training ground; (c) Visited Stack Rocks and St Govan’s Chapel; (d) Observed tank training from public Viewing Platform; (e) Visited nearby Barafundle Bay. 16 June 2008, Salisbury Plain Present: Marianna Dudley, Tim Cole, Peter Coates and Chris Pearson Activities: (a) Attended MoD safety briefing, and upgraded to ‘Category 2’ civilians; (b) Subsequently explored the training ground unaccompanied; (c) Visit Imber village; (d) Met and talked to a Range Officer on his rounds; (e) Visit FIBUA; (f) Are apprehended by guard with dog; (g) After explaining our purpose, are allowed to continue to explore FIBUA village,

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coinciding with troops finishing training exercise, in full battle dress and stage make-up (simulating wounds). 1–2 June 2009, Castlemartin Present: Marianna Dudley Activities: (a) Revisited viewing platform, observed troop training; (b) Revisited neighbouring beaches and tourist attractions Barafundle and Freshwater West (experienced noise and vibrations from nearby shell practice). 4 September 2008, Salisbury Plain Present: Marianna Dudley, Tim Cole, Peter Coates, Chris Pearson and participants of the ‘Militarized Landscapes Conference’, Bristol University, 3–6 September 2008 Activities: (a) Bus party travels to Tilshead, where we met Richard Osgood, Defence Estates Archaeologist, who acted as our ‘tour guide’; (b) We successfully hunt for Fairy Shrimp in puddles and tanks tracks; (c) Included visit to Stonehenge. 29 October 2009, Sennybridge Present: Marianna Dudley, Tim Cole, Peter Coates and Chris Pearson Activities: (a) Give presentations to the Sennybridge Conservation Group Meeting about the work of the ‘Militarized Landscapes’ Project; (b) Walk along the Epynt Way, and encounter ‘Epynteers’; (c) Visit the Visitor Centre (formerly Conservation Centre), sign Visitor book. 19 November 2009, Bovington Camp Present: Marianna Dudley Activities: Attended the Lulworth and Bovington Conservation Group Meeting. 28 November 2009, Tyneham Present: Marianna Dudley Activities: (a) Revisited Tyneham village and church; (b) Walked to Worbarrow Bay; (c) Explored the newly restored ‘History Barn’. 11 December 2009, Sennybridge Present: Marianna Dudley, Tim Cole, Peter Coates and Josie McLellan (Senior Lecturer in Modern European History, Bristol University)

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Activities: (a) Observed troops from Queens Division, where we spent the day with soldiers preparing themselves for their Section Commander’s qualification; (b) Soldiers prepared orders for a nighttime mission, which they delivered using ground models. 26–29 April 2010, Dartmoor Present: Marianna Dudley, Tim Cole, Peter Coates and Chris Pearson Activities: (a) 3-day stay on Dartmoor working on a co-authored article about researching military landscapes; (b) Daily walks on the moor, within sight and hearing of the training area, but not within its perimeter.

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Greening, vbl.n.: ‘the process or result of making or becoming aware of ecological issues or espousing environmentalism. Freq. in political contexts’ (OED). The use of the term ‘greening’ follows the definition given above. Added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 1993, ‘greening’ in this context emerged in the 1980s in reportage of increasing emphasis on environmental matters by politicians, institutions and businesses. Encapsulating in one word an often-complex process of raising environmental awareness and instigating environmentally friendly practices, ‘greening’ as a word provides a sense of change over time, which is apt for an environmental history of the UK Defence Estate since 1945. Sir Crispin Tickell, ‘Conservation by Serendipity’, Sanctuary 24 (1995), 2–3. Greenwash, v. trans : ‘To mislead or deflect (the public, public concern etc.) by stressing the environmental credentials of a person, company, product etc., esp. when these are unfounded or irrelevant. Also: to disseminate disinformation about (a company, its operations, etc.) so as to present an environmentally responsible public image’ (OED). Like the term greening, greenwash emerged in use in reportage in the late 1980s, and came to be used by the press to convey an intentional use of environmental values to serve as a smokescreen for environmentally damaging practices particularly in industry. Sarah E. McFarland and Ryan Hediger (eds), Animals and Agency: An Interdisciplinary Exploration (Leiden 2009); H. Steward, ‘Animal Agency’, Inquiry 52/3 (June 2009), 217–31; Jason Hribal, ‘Animals, Agency and Class: Writing Histories of Animals from Below’, Human Ecology Review 41/1 (2007), 101–12; Linda Nash, ‘The Agency of Nature or the Nature of Agency?’ Environmental History 10 (January 2005), 67–9; Richard C. Foltz, ‘Does Nature Have Historical Agency? World History, Environmental History, and How Historians Can Save the Planet’, The History Teacher 37/1 (2003), 9–29; Ted Steinberg, ‘Down to Earth: Nature, Agency and Power in History’, American Historical Review 107/3 (2002), 797–82. Ellen Stroud, ‘Does Nature Always Matter? Following Dirt through History’, History and Theory Theme Issue 42 (December 2004), 75–81, 80. John Childs, ‘A Short History of the Military Use of Land in Peacetime’, War in History 4/1 (1997), 81–103; Childs, The Military Use of Land: A History of the Defence Estate (Bern, 1998); Richard P. Tucker, ‘The Impact of Warfare on the Natural World: A Historical Survey’ in Edmund Russell and Richard P. Tucker (eds), Natural Enemy, Natural Ally: Toward an Environmental History of War (Corvallis, Oregon, 2004), 15–42.

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Lisa M. Brady, ‘The Wilderness of War: Nature and Strategy in the American Civil War’, Environmental History 10/3 (2005), 421–47. Environmental historian Jack Temple Kirby quoted in Brady, ‘Wilderness of War’, 423. Brady credits Temple’s essay: ‘The American Civil War: An Environmental View’ on the National Humanities Center Website, Nature Transformed: The Environment in American History, http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/ nattrans/ntuseland/essays/amcwar.htm (revised July 2001) – as being the first to examine any war from a ‘strictly environmental point of view’ (424). Edmund Russell, War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring (Cambridge, 2001), 2. William Cronon (ed.), Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature (New York, 1995), 57–66. Russell, War and Nature , 1. The idea is raised again by Russell and Tucker in Natural Enemy, Natural Ally, 11, and in Russell’s ‘Afterword: Militarized Landscapes’ in Chris Pearson, Peter Coates and Tim Cole (eds), Militarized Landscapes: From Gettysburg to Salisbury Plain (London, 2010), 229–37. Russell, War and Nature , 1. Ralph H. Lutts, ‘Chemical Fallout: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Radioactive Fallout, and the Environmental Movement’, Environmental Review 9/3 (Autumn 1985), 210–25; Arthur Westing, Environmental Hazards of War: Releasing Dangerous Forces in an Industrialized World (London, 1990); S.D. Lanier-Graham, The Ecology of War: Environmental Impacts of Weaponry and Warfare (New York, 1993); Meredith Veldman, Fantasy, the Bomb, and the Greening of Britain: Romantic Protest 1945–1980 (Cambridge, 1994); Martin Coulson, ‘The Geography of Defence – Developing Themes of Study,’ GeoJournal 36 (1995), 371–82; Shulman, The Threat at Home; Szasz, ‘Impact of World War II on the Land’; John Wills, ‘“Welcome to the Atomic Park”: American Nuclear Landscapes and the “Unnaturally Natural”’, Environment and History 7 (2001), 449–72; Russell, War and Nature ; Russell and Tucker, Natural Enemy, Natural Ally; John Wills, Conservation Fallout: Nuclear Protest at Diablo Canyon (Reno, 2006). Many historians saw a ‘chance for moral engagement’, applying environmentalist values to reassess historical events and methods, and using historical evidence and insight to support environmentalist claims: J. R. McNeill, ‘Observations on the Nature and Culture of Environmental History’, History and Theory Theme Issues 42 (December 2003), 15. The self-consciousness of the field has remained as it has matured, producing a large number of essays examining the emergence of environmental history, its aims and issues and avenues for future development. See Foltz, ‘Does Nature Have Historical Agency?’; Steinberg, ‘Down to Earth: Nature, Agency and Power in History’; Stroud, ‘Does Nature Always Matter?’ See Brady, ‘The Wilderness of War’; Franz Joseph Brüggemeier, Mark Cioc and Thomas Zeller (eds), How Green Were the Nazis? Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich (Athens, Ohio, 2005); Rauno Lahtinen and Timo Vuorisalo, ‘“It’s War and Everyone Can Do as They Please!”: An Environmental History of a Finnish City in Wartime’, Environmental History 9/4 (October 2004), 679– 700; Chris Pearson, ‘The Age of Wood: Fuel and Fighting in French Forests, 1940–1944’, Environmental History 11/4 (October 2006), 775–804; Ferenc M. Szasz, ‘The Impact of World War II on the Land: Gruinard Island, Scotland

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and Trinity Site, New Mexico as Case Studies’, Environmental History Review 19/4 (Winter 1995), 15–30. Brady, ‘Wilderness of War’, 4–6. Pearson, ‘Age of Wood’, 5–15. Martin Coulson, ‘The Geography of Defence – Developing Themes of Study’, GeoJournal 36/4 (1995), 371–82; Nils Peter Gleditsch, ‘Armed Conflict and the Environment: A Critique of the Literature’, Journal of Peace Research (Special Issue on Environmental Conflict) 35/3 (May 1998), 381–400. Jeffrey Sasha Davis, ‘Introduction – Military Natures: Militarism and the Environment’, GeoJournal 69 (2007), 131–4. William Eugene O’Brien, ‘Continuity in a Changing Environmental Discourse: Film Depictions of Corps of Engineers Projects in South Florida’, GeoJournal 69 (2007), 135–49; David Havlick, ‘Logics of Change for Military-to-Wildlife Conversions in the United States’, GeoJournal 69 (2007), 151–64; Jeffrey Sasha Davis, Jessica S. Hayes-Conroy and Victoria M. Jones, ‘Military Pollution and Natural Purity: Seeing Nature and Knowing Contamination in Vieques, Puerto Rico’, GeoJournal 69 (2007), 165–79; Matthew John Taylor, ‘Militarism and the Environment in Guatemala’, GeoJournal 69 (2007), 181–98. Davis, ‘Military Natures’, 132. Davis, ‘Military Natures’, 131. Davis, ‘Military Natures’, 131. See Tim Cole, ‘A Picturesque Ruin? Landscapes of Loss at Tyneham and the Epynt’ in Pearson et al., Militarized Landscapes, 95–110. Since 1988, more than twenty US military bases have been re-designated as national wildlife refuges. Havlick, ‘Logics of Change’, 151. Havlick, ‘Logics of Change’, 154. Havlick, ‘Logics of Change’, 160–1. Havlick, ‘Logics of Change’, 162. Havlick, ‘Logics of Change’, 162. Havlick, ‘Logics of Change’, 157. Havlick, ‘Logics of Change’, 157. Szasz, ‘The Impact of World War II on the Land’; B. A. Woodcock, R. F. Putwell, R. J. Rose, D. Bell, ‘Grazing Management of Calcerous Grasslands and Its Implications for the Conservation of Beetle Communities’, Biological Conservation 125 (2005), 193–202. See Rachel Woodward, ‘“It’s a Man’s Life!”: Soldiers, Masculinity and the Countryside’, Gender, Place and Culture 5/3 (1998), 277–300; ‘Gunning for Rural England: the Politics of the Promotion of Military Land Use in the Northumberland National Park’, Journal of Rural Studies 15/1 (1999), 17–33; ‘Khaki Conservation: An Examination of Military Environmentalist Discourses in the British Army’, Journal of Rural Studies 17/2 (2001), 201–17; ‘Local Interests, Regional Needs or National Imperative? The Otterburn Question and the Military in Rural Areas’, in J. Tomaney and N. Ward (eds), A Region in Transition: North East England at the Millennium (Guildford, 2001), 199–217; Military Geographies (Oxford, 2004); ‘From Military Geography to Militarism’s Geographies: Disciplinary Engagements with the Geographies of Militarism and Military Activities’, Progress in Human Geography 29/6 (2005), 718–40.

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Woodward, Military Geographies, 104–25. Woodward, ‘Khaki Conservation’, 201. Woodward, ‘Khaki Conservation’, 209. Integrated Land Management Plans (ILMPs) construct training schedules that take into account ecologically sensitive areas, archeologically important sites and grazing regimes as well as training requirements, to lesson the impact of training on the site and improve conditions for troops, tenant farmers and wildlife. Peter Coates commenting on the publication of Pearson et al., Militarized Landscapes for the AHRC website, ‘AHRC project unearths the secret history of militarized landscapes’, 5 June 2010, www.ahrc.ac.uk/News/Latest/Pages/ militarizedlandscapes.aspx. Childs, Military Use of Land . B. W. Clapp, An Environmental History of Britain since the Industrial Revolution (Harlow 1994); T. C. Smout, Nature Contested: Environmental History in Scotland and Northern England since 1600 (Edinburgh, 2000). David Evans, A History of Nature Conservation in Britain (London, 1992); Nigel Cooper, ‘How Natural Is a Nature Reserve? An Ideological Study of British Nature Conservation’, Biodiversity and Conservation 9 (2000), 1131–52; Peter Marren, Nature Conservation: A Review of the Conservation of Wildlife in Britain 1950–2001 (London, 2002). Copies of Sanctuary dating back to 2001 can be accessed in pdf format: www. defence-estates.mod.uk/publications/sanctuary/index.php. David Doxford and Tony Hill, ‘Land Use for Military Training in the U.K.: The Current Situation, Likely Developments and Possible Alternatives’, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 41/3 (1998), 279–97. For the United States and Australia, see Jeffrey P. Cohn, ‘New Defenders of Wildlife’, Bioscience 46/1 (January 1996), 11–14; David Havlick, ‘Logics of Change’; J. C .Z. Woinarski and A. J. Ash, ‘Responses of Vertebrates to Pastoralism, Military Land Use and Landscape Position in an Australian Tropical Savannah’, Austral Ecology 27 (2002), 311–23. See also Marianna Dudley, ‘A Fairy (Shrimp) Tale of Military Environmentalism: The ‘Greening’ of Salisbury Plain’ in Pearson, Coates and Cole, Militarized Landscapes, 135–49. Tim Cole, ‘Commemorating “Pariah Landscapes”’: Memorialising the Budapest Ghetto, 1945–2000’, International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education 11/4 (2002), 368–71. Cole was Co-Investigator on the ‘Militarized Landscapes’ project, his interest in landscape and memory focusing on the evicted community of Mynydd Epynt. Tim Cole, ‘Military Presences, Civilian Absences: Battling Nature at the Sennybridge Training Area, 1940–2008’, Journal of War and Culture Studies 3/2 (2010), 215–35. Cole, ‘Military Presences’, 9–12. Cole, ‘Military Presences’, 7. Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (London, 1996). Schama, Landscape and Memory, 7. See also Brüggemeier et al., How Green Were the Nazis? ; Stephen Daniels, Fields of Vision: Landscape Imagery and National Identity in England and the United States

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(Princeton, NJ, 1993); John Taylor, A Dream of England: Landscape, Photography and the Tourist’s Imagination (Manchester, 1994); Thomas Lekan and Thomas Zeller, Germany’s Nature: Cultural Landscapes and Environmental History (London, 2005). Schama, Landscape and Memory, 15. Dolores Hayden, ‘Landscapes of Loss and Remembrance: The Case of Little Tokyo in Los Angeles’, in Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan (eds), War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge 1999), 142–60. Hayden, ‘Landscapes of Loss’, 142. Hayden, ‘Landscapes of Loss’, 143. Hayden, ‘Landscapes of Loss’, 143. Lilian Bond, Tyneham: A Lost Heritage (Wimborne, Dorset, 1956); Rex Sawyer, Little Imber on the Down: Salisbury Plain’s Ghost Village (Salisbury, 2001); Ronald G. Church, Sennybridge Training Area 1940–1990 (Cardiff, 1991); Herbert Hughes, An Uprooted Community: An History of Epynt (Llanysul, 1998); Shirley Jones, Etched Out (Llanhamlach, 2002). See Wright, The Village that Died , and Sawyer, Little Imber on the Down. Patrick Wright discussing his work on PatrickWright.net: www.patrickwright. net/books/the-village/about/. Patrick Wright interviewed by Susan Marling for BBC Radio 4, available as a podcast from the Open University Science Live website: www. sciencelive.org/component/option,com_mediadb/task,view/idstr,Openfeeds_a180_heritage_a180_what_is_heritage_patrick_wright_mp3/Itemid,26. Wright, The Village that Died , 30, 370. Patrick Wright: www.patrickwright.net/books/the-village/about/. Schama, Landscape and Memory, 24. McNeill, ‘Observations on the Nature and Culture of Environmental History’, 58. Sverker Sörlin, ‘Monument and Memory: Landscape Imagery and the Articulation of Territory’ in Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion 2 (1998), 269–79. Stroud, ‘Does Nature Always Matter?’ 80–1. Richard White, ‘The Nationalization of Nature’, Journal of American History (The Nation and Beyond: Transnational Perspectives on United States History: A Special Issue) 86/3 (December 1999), 976–86. J. R. McNeill, Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (New York, 2000). See also Foltz, ‘Does Nature Have Historical Agency’, in which he profiles three major works representing emerging models of environmental history: Alon Tal’s Pollution in a Promised Land: An Environmental History of Israel as a model for national environmental history; Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire for a co-evolutionary perspective on the development of humans and plants, and McNeill, above, for emphasizing resource availability and interplay between social and environmental change. Dan Flores, ‘Place: An Argument for Bioregional History’, Environmental History Review 18/4 (Winter 1994), 12–13. ‘Castlemartin training areas and ranges,’ DTE Pembrokeshire website: www. pembrokeshireranges.com/castlemartin_home.html.

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‘Salisbury Plain’, Defence Estates website: www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/ AboutDefence/WhatWeDo/DefenceEstateandEnvironment/AccessRecreation/ SouthWest/SalisburyPlain.htm, accessed 24 June 2010. Patrick Wright, The Village that Died for England: The Strange Story of Tyneham (London, 1995).

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Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles: Another Adventure of Sherlock Holmes (1902) (Cornwall, New York, 1968 edition), 90. ‘Dartmoor and Its Military Use: 2005 Status’, Dartmoor National Park Authority online publication: www.dartmoor-npa.gov.uk/military_factsheet.pdf, updated 14 February 2007, accessed 12 March 2010. Report of the Defence Lands Committee , 1971–73 (hereafter ‘the Nugent Report’), (HMSO, 1973), 100. The study of Dartmoor calls for an extension of the stated period of study of the thesis as a whole, 1945–present. First, the military presence long predates this, which is important in contextualizing the debate over the military presence in the national park. Secondly, much of the conceptualization of national parks took place pre–Second World War. Ideas formed in this period helped shape national park policy, which in turn informed relations between military and the National Park Authority. Thus, where relevant, such material will be included. Lt Col Tony Clark (Rtd), ‘The Military on Dartmoor’, Widdecombe-in-themoor History Group website: www.widecombe-in-the-moor.com/history/ minutes/2003/army_on_dartmoor.php, last modified 29 September 2005, accessed 12 March 2010; ‘B (Queen’s Regiment) Company History: www.army. mod.uk/infantry/regiments/6788.aspx, accessed 12 March 2010. ‘Dartmoor and Its Military Use’. The National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act, 1949 (London, 1950), 3. Dower Report. Report of the Committee on Land Utilisation in Rural Areas (HMSO, 1942). ‘Historical Background to the Act’, National Parks Act , 1–2. John Sheail, Nature in Trust: The History of Nature Conservation in Britain (Glasgow, 1976), 71. David Matless, Landscape and Englishness (London, 1998), 70–1. Matless, Landscape and Englishness, 71. Matless, Landscape and Englishness, 71. This had the effect of reducing the total acreage of land available to agriculture. In 1939 the amount of land in agricultural production stood at 24.6 million acres. In 1945 it was 24.3 acres. Gordon Cherry and Alan Rogers, Rural Change and Planning – England and Wales in the Twentieth Century (London, 1996), 74–5. The first year of the war saw the target set of 2 million acres to be ploughed, and subsequent years saw additional acreages of 2.25 million acres (1940/41), 1.25 million acres (1941/42) and 1 million acres (1942/43). Cherry and Rogers, Rural Change , 75.

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John Sheail, ‘The National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act of 1949 – Its Origins and Significance’, in Nature, Landscape and People since the Second World War in T. C. Smout (ed.)(East Linton, 2001), 1–12. David Matless argues that this manipulation of rural imagery for propaganda was in place during the First World War, and in the inter-war years was developed by preservationist societies who campaigned against change and urban development. If ‘a sense of Englishness as being essentially rural was the basis for many formulations of national identity in the 1914–18 war’, Matless argues that for these groups, ‘the patriot and his landscape have been betrayed by vested interest.’ David Matless, Landscape and Englishness, 25. Dower Report, 13. Dower Report, 13–14. Report of the Committee on Land Utilisation in Rural Areas (hereafter, Scott Report) (HMSO, 1942). Scott Report, v. Dower Report, 16. Dower Report, 16–17. Cherry and Rogers, Rural Change , 132. Both installations remain in place today, significant presences in the landscape. Cherry and Rogers, Rural Change, 132. Dartmoor: A Report by Lady Sharp G.B.E. (hereafter, Sharp Report)(HMSO, 1977), ‘Background to the Inquiry’, 4. In the years intervening 1952 and 1975, the entire training area was reduced by 5,000 acres. Sharp Report, 4. The National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act . National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act , Part III ‘Nature Conservation’, Section 20. Dartmoor National Park (National Park Guides Number One) (hereafter, Dartmoor National Park) (HMSO, 1957). Dartmoor National Park, xi. Dartmoor National Park , 39. Dartmoor National Park, 39. National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act , 3. See Woodward, Military Geographies, 108–11; Ann and Malcolm MacEwen, National Parks: Conservation or Cosmetics? (London, 1982), 238–9; Dartmoor Preservation Association, Misuse of a National Park: Military Training on Dartmoor (hereafter, DPA, Misuse) (Widecombe-in-the-moor, Devon, 1963). DPA, Misuse , 6. Marjorie K. Taylor, The Dartmoor Preservation Association: A Brief Outline of Its Work from 1883 – 1937 (Underhill, Plymouth, 1953), 3; A Dartmoor Century, 1883–1983: One Hundred Years of the Dartmoor Preservation Association (Dartmoor Preservation Association, Yelverton, Devon, 1983), 7. Taylor, Dartmoor Preservation Association , 7. Dartmoor Preservation Association Newsletter 53 (August 1970). Sylvia Sayer was the chairperson of the DPA from 1959 until 1973. The granddaughter of founder-member and secretary, Robert Burnard, her committed

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and relentless pursuit of the preservation of Dartmoor guided the DPA through its key years of opposition to the military after the Second World War. Dartmoor Preservation Association Newsletter 53 (August 1970). The London branch of the DPA was initiated by Dr Michael Caxton of Upminster, Essex. At its inaugural meeting at Caxton Hall, Westminster, ‘over thirty enthusiastic members’ heard Lady Sayer, DPA chair, speak of issues affecting Dartmoor. Dartmoor Preservation Association Newsletter 54 (December 1970). Taylor, Dartmoor Preservation Association , 10. John Bainbridge, Wild and Free: Fifty Years of the Dartmoor National Park (Dartmoor Preservation Association, 2001), 23. 4 July, 1963. DPA, Misuse, 16. As the authors of the pamphlet note, Tavy Cleave had in fact been in Willsworthy Range for many years, but they contend that ‘this letter shows how an intelligent person very familiar with Dartmoor can be confused by the warning system’. DPA, Misuse , 16. DPA, Misuse , 6. W. G. Hoskins, The Making of the English Landscape (London, 1955) in Matless, Landscape and Englishness, 275. DPA, Misuse , 6. DPA, Misuse, 16. DPA, Misuse , 19. DPA, Misuse , 2. DPA, Misuse , 5. Similar sentiments were expressed (with reference to US national parks) by Edward Abbey in a 1968 diatribe against ‘industrial tourism’. Abbey, Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness (New York, 1990 [1968]). Dower Report, 7. The Romantic relationship with landscape and nature went beyond aesthetic appreciation, as James Winter reminds us in Secure from Rash Assault: Sustaining the Victorian Environment (Berkeley, 1999). Wordsworth spoke out early in the nineteenth century against vulgar villa builders and later against railway promoters, fearing their constructions would spoil the solitude of a ‘wilderness ‘rich with liberty’ (176). Victorian middle-class travellers, influenced by Wordsworth, Coleridge and Ruskin, sought out the ‘beautiful, the picturesque and the harmonious’. When this was seen to be threatened, as at the proposed flooding of Thirlmere to provide a reservoir for Manchester, an articulate and impassioned preservationist movement grew (176–88); see also Harriet Ritvo, The Dawn of Green: Manchester, Thirlmere and Modern Environmentalism (Chicago, 2009). T. C. Smout, Exploring Environmental History: Selected Essays (Edinburgh, 2009), 199. Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (Yale, 1967), 1. The largest US national park is Wrangell-St Elias (Alaska) at 8,000,000 acres (32,000 sq km). In comparison, the largest British national park is the Cairngorms National Park (designated in 2003), at 4,528 sq km. National Parks Service (US), ‘Wrangell-St Elias’: www.nps.gov/wrst/index.htm; National Parks (UK) ‘Facts and Figures’: www.nationalparks.gov.uk/press/factsandfigures.htm.

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Smout, Exploring Environmental History, 199. Smout, Exploring Environmental History, 199. Prominent among them is William Cronon. In Uncommon Ground he sought to rethink the meaning of nature in the modern world, working from two key insights: (1) The natural world is far more dynamic, changeable and entangled with human history than popularly acknowledged. The lingering conviction that nature is a stable, holistic, homeostatic community capable of preserving its natural balance if humans cease ‘disturbing’ it is a ‘deeply problematic assumption’ for Cronon. (2) Nature is a profoundly human construction. Cronon, Uncommon Ground, 24–5. This meaning is drawn from the German translation of the word. Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind , 4. Robert Macfarlane, The Wild Places (London, 2007), 8–11. Macfarlane, The Wild Places, 16. Macfarlane, The Wild Places, 3–5. Macfarlane, The Wild Places, 78–9. Macfarlane notes that the military effectively ‘sealed off’ much of Salisbury Plain, thereby protecting its heath land. See Dower Report, 23–9. Nugent Report, 1. Nugent Report, 30. Nugent Report, 2. Nugent Report, 2. Nugent Report, 44. Nugent Report 53. Nugent Report, 100. Nugent Report 102. Nugent Report, 101–4. Nugent Report, 107. Nugent Report, 107. DPA, Misuse , 1. Nugent Report, 30. Nugent Report, 30. Nugent Report, 51. Nugent Report, 51. Nugent Report, 111. DPA, Misuse , 2. Nugent Report, 111. Nugent Report, 112. Nugent Report, 119. Nugent Report, 119. Nugent Report, 118. Sharp Report, 1. Sharp Report, 1. Sharp Report, 71. Sharp Report, 72.

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The two suggested alternatives, Davidstow and Hawkstor in Cornwall, were much smaller sites. Additionally, Cornwall County Council warned that any military use would be subject to strong objections, on multiple grounds. The county already had scarce land resources, which saw the moors heavily farmed, and resulted in a need to conserve the few beauty spots in the interior, which took some strain off crowded coastal areas.1 The sites were close to tourist attractions (Jamaica Inn) and recreational developments (Colliford reservoir), and ‘already had its share of trouble’: china clay working, a trunk road cutting it in two, granite quarrying, and reservoirs existing and projected. Sharp Report, 64. Territorial Army Volunteer Reserve. Sharp Report, 73. The Sharp Report also confirmed that the Prince of Wales’ Council had agreed that it would be their policy to go on renewing the licence to the Ministry of Defence for further seven-year periods, so long as it was government policy that Dartmoor should be used for training. Sharp Report, 5. Sharp Report, 40. Sharp Report, 40–1. Sharp Report, 41. Sharp Report, 78. Sharp Report, 77. Woodward, Military Geographies, 128–37; ‘Gunning for Rural England: The Politics of the Promotion of Military Land Use in the Northumberland National Park.’ See Pearson, Coates and Cole, Militarized Landscapes. Nigel Hoskin, ‘Military Training on Dartmoor’, Dartmoor National Park Authority website: www.dartmoor-npa.gov.uk/au_militarypr0109, published 28 January 2009, accessed 19 March 2010. Dartmoor Preservation Association remains opposed to live firing by the military on Dartmoor, and maintains the view that military training is inconsistent with its status as a national park. ‘Policies’, Dartmoor Preservation Association website: www.dartmoorpreservation.com/policies.htm, updated 19 March 2010, accessed 19 March 2010. Ten Tors 2010 website: http://events.exeter.ac.uk/tentors/. Jonathan Brook, ‘Ten Tors Death: Teacher “Ignored Pleas”’, The Independent 8 December 2009: www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/ten-torsdeath-teacher-ignored-pleas-1836037.html, accessed 23 March 2010; ‘Charges could follow Tors Death’, BBC News 17 December 2009: http://news.bbc. co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/devon/8418907.stm, accessed 23 March 2010. John Levack Drever, ‘Sounding Dartmoor: A Case Study of the Soundscapes of Rural England at the Opening of the 21st Century’ (Goldsmiths, University of London, 2002), available online as a PDF at http://interact.uoregon.edu/ MediaLit/WFAE/library/articles/drever_SndDart.pdf and as a CD publication, Sounding Dartmoor (Space X and Liquid Press, 2002). Henry Slesser, ‘Introduction’, Dartmoor National Park , x.

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Woodward, Military Geographies, 103. ‘Access Opportunities on the Defence Estate – Castlemartin, Pembrokeshire’, MOD Scenic Walk guide online: www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/7E093806-7E86-4BE7-B89F-7A79D4E8A255/0/Castlemartin.pdf. DTE Pembrokeshire also includes Manorbier, Penally Templeton and Pembry. ‘Castlemartin Training Areas and Ranges’, Defence Estates website: www.pembrokeshireranges.com/castlemartin_home.html. ‘Pembrokeshire Coast National Park: Aims and Purposes’ webpage: www.pcnpa. org.uk/website/default.asp?SID=120&SkinID=5. Ann and Malcolm MacEwen, National Parks: Conservation or Cosmetics? (London 1982); Mark Blacksell and Fiona Reynolds, ‘Military Training in National Parks: A Question of Land Use Conflict and National Priorities’ in Michael Bateman and Raymond Riley, The Geography of Defence (Beckenham, 1987); Susan Owens, ‘Defence and the Environment: The Impact of Military Live Firing in National Parks’, Cambridge Journal of Economics 14 (1990), 497–505. ‘Natural England – Sites of Special Scientific Interest’ webpage: www.sssi.naturalengland.org.uk/Special/sssi/index.cfm. SSSI flora and fauna information kindly provided by Bob Haycock of Countryside Council for Wales, in the pamphlet ‘Castlemartin Cliffs and Dunes Site of Special Scientific Interest: Your Special Site and Its Future’, CCW, 2009. In a recollection of the first signs that the military were interested in taking over the area, a sudden rumbling into view of tanks at a farm sale startled a shire horse, which reared on its hind legs and snatched its halter from its handler. The horse, ‘its ears pricked, eyes blazing and flanks quivering with fear, was calmed by a group of weathered, experienced carters. The tanks’ sudden appearance at the sale had frightened everyone.’ In Denis Alderman (ed.), Castlemartina . . . Chuckle and a Cackle (Pembroke, 2000), 53. Alderman, Castlemartin , 56. See Sawyer, Little Imber on the Down; Davies, Epynt without People ; Hughes, An Uprooted Community; Lilian Bond, Tyneham: A Lost Heritage (Wimborne, Dorset, 1956). H. Whitby James, ‘The Arrival of the British Army in Castlemartin’, in Alderman, Castlemartin , 53. At its height in the nineteenth century, Stackpole Estate stretched from Freshwater East to Freshwater West, covering 7,000 ha. The twentieth century saw the decline of the estate. Land was sold off and the house, Stackpole Court, was demolished in 1963. The estate was finally sold by the Cawdor family in 1976, with the 800 ha historic core passing to the National Trust. The estate’s lily ponds have survived, and along with Barafundle Bay (voted ‘Best Beach in Britain’ Good Holiday Guide 2004; ‘Best Spot for a Picnic,’ Country Life 2006; ‘Barafundle UK’s best picnic spot’, BBC News, 12 May 2006: http://news. bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_west/4761873.stm) and Broad Haven harbour

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(complete with tearoom) form a popular and picturesque National Trust 6-mile circular walk. Alderman, Castlemartin, 63. The funds were distributed at a party held in the Church Room for those returned to their homes, on 6 January 1946. Ditton Park is a manor house near Slough that between 1924 and 1979 was the home of the Radio Research Board. Pioneering radio science research – and the invention of radar by Robert Watson-Watt in 1935 – took place here. (At the last count) Sanctuary 39 (2010). Recent issues dating back to 2001 are available online at the Defence Estates website: www.defence-estates.mod.uk/publications/sanctuary/index.php. Sanctuary 1 (1976). Sanctuary 1 (1976), 2–3. ‘The Flora of Castlemartin’, Sanctuary 21 (1992); ‘Dragonflies at Castlemartin’, Sanctuary 25 (1995); ‘Greater Horseshoe Bats and the Castlemartin Range’, and ‘Castlemartin Cliffs and Coastal Birds’, Sanctuary 28 (1999); ‘Grasshoppers at Castlemartin’ and ‘The Castlemartin Sea Shores’ Sanctuary 29 (2000); ‘Bumblebees at Castlemartin’, Sanctuary 30 (2001). Woodward, Military Geographies, 93–4. Stephen Evans and Peter Rhind, ‘The Flora of the Castlemartin Range’, Sanctuary 21 (1992), 21–3. Evans and Rhind, ‘The Flora of the Castlemartin Range’, 21. Rachel Woodward, ‘Discourses of Military Environmentalism’, Working Paper no. 48, University of Newcastle upon Tyne Centre for Rural Economy (September 1996), 1–46, 5. Woodward, ‘Discourses’, 16, 19, 22. Woodward, ‘Discourses’, 21. Woodward, ‘Discourses’, 22. Lt Col J. J. Rogers, ‘Around the Regions: Pembrokeshire’, Sanctuary 37 (2008), 77. Nell Duffie, ‘Around the Regions: Wiltshire’, Sanctuary 37 (2008), 81. Lt Col (Rtd) Mike Jelf and the Sub-Group Leaders, ‘Around the Regions: Wiltshire’, Sanctuary 37 (2008), 84. Bob Haycock and Jack Donovan, ‘Choughs on the Castlemartin RAC Range, Pembrokeshire’, Sanctuary 23 (1994), 10–11; Bob Haycock, ‘Greater Horseshoe Bats and the Castlemartin Range’, Sanctuary 28 (1999), 42–3. Haycock, ‘Greater Horseshoe Bats’, 43. Haycock and Donovan, ‘Choughs’, 10. Woodward, ‘Khaki Conservation’, 209. Duncan Glen, ‘The Best of Both Worlds: A Sustainable Approach to Military Training’, Sanctuary 37 (2008), 24. Woodward, ‘Khaki Conservation’, 209. Evans and Rhind, ‘Flora’, 22. Evans and Rhind, ‘Flora’, 23. Evans and Rhind, ‘Flora’, 23. Evans and Rhind, ‘Flora’, 23. Woodward, Military Geographies, 89. It opens: “I stood at the fence and looked in through the wire . . .” Woodward, Military Geographies, 1.

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Woodward, Military Geographies, 104–25. Woodward, ‘Discourses’, 22. Debbie James, ‘On the Range’, Pembrokeshire County Living 14 (Winter 2007), 6–7. James, ‘On the Range’, 6. James, ‘On the Range’. 7. James, ‘On the Range’, 7. Tickell, ‘Conservation by Serendipity’, 2–3. Cole, ‘Military Presences’, 215–35. Cole, ‘Military Presences’, 14–15. See Peter Jones, ‘Flying Away From It All to a Tank Range – Rare Birds Have a New Ally in Battle for Survival’, Western Mail 27 December 1975; ‘Forces Help in Coastal Survey’, South Wales Evening Post 7 June 1979; Tom Bedford, ‘Battle of the Surf for Boffins – Coastal Survey Undertaken’, Western Telegraph 14 June 1979. Capt. Doug McArthur, ‘At Home on the Range for the Great Round-up’, Western Telegraph 27 April 1988. Woodward, ‘Khaki Conservation’, 207. See Woodward, ‘Khaki Conservation’, 209–11, for discussion of paternalism in land management as a discourse. Nugent Report, 44. Nugent Report, 44. Nugent Report, 30. Nugent Report, 2. Nugent Report, 43. Nugent Report, 53. Interview conducted by phone with Guy Keating, Access and Conservation Officer (Regions), BMC, 25 June 2009. Dave Cook, ‘Free Range Rocks’, Guardian , 4 September 1992. Alison Williams, ‘Army Criticises Climbers over Access Protests’, Western Telegraph 23 October 1991. Cook, ‘Free Range Rocks’. ‘Beach Incident Lulworth on 27 July 69: Verbal Report by Commandant RAC Centre’, E 25/A (July 1969) in ‘Tyneham Action Group: Policy’, WO 32/21725, The National Archive (hereafter, NA). ‘Confidential: Tyneham’, E27 (July 1969), in ‘Tyneham Action Group: Policy’ WO 32/21725, NA. ‘Confidential: Tyneham’. See BMC website for more information: www.thebmc.co.uk/Feature.aspx?id=1364. Williams, ‘Army Criticises Climbers over Access’. Emma Alsford, ‘Climbers Need Access Agreement to Range’, letter to Western Telegraph 30 October 1991. Alistair Milburn, ‘Climbers Win Victory in Cliffs Battle’, Western Mail, 5 September 1992. Interview with Guy Keating. Harry Cromwell recounting his encounter with the military for Carve surfing magazine. Will Bailey, ‘The Passion, the Obsession, the Desperation’, Carve 106 (May 2009), 42–52.

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Interview with Seren Essex and Ned Gill (Swansea), 26 June 2009. TYF Adventure Company takes MOD troops out on adventure training and coasteering days. Interview with Alice (TYF), 22 June 2009. ‘Explore Pembrokeshire 2009’ pamphlet (Pembrokeshire Council, 2009). ‘Activity Pembrokeshire – Space for Adventure’ pamphlet (Pembrokeshire Council, 2009). ‘Pembrokeshire 2009’ brochure (Pembrokeshire Holidays, 2009). Davis et al., ‘Military Pollution and Natural Purity’, 165–79. Davis et al., ‘Military Pollution and Natural Purity’, 165. Davis et al., ‘Military Pollution and Natural Purity’, 169. Davis et al., ‘Military Pollution and Natural Purity’, 173. Davis et al., ‘Military Pollution and Natural Purity’, 173. See Woodward, ‘Khaki Conservation’; Havlick, ‘Logics of Change’; Cole, ‘A Picturesque Ruin?’; Dudley, ‘A Fairy (Shrimp) Tale of Military Environmentalism’; Sam Edwards, ‘Ruins, Relics and Restoration: The Afterlife of World War Two American Airfields in England, 1945–2005’, in Pearson et al., Militarized Landscapes, 209–28. Davis et al., ‘Military Pollution and Natural Purity’, 169. Davis, ‘Introduction’, 131, and Davis et al., ‘Military Pollution and Natural Purity’, 173. German Panzer battalions used the Castlemartin Training Area from 1961 to 1996. ‘Panzers in Pembrokeshire’, Soldier (undated, circa 1981; author unknown); David Fielding, ‘Tanks for the Memories – Press Photographer Ken Davies Talks to David Fielding About the Arrival of Panzers at Castelmartin’, Pembrokeshire Life (September 2006), 4–7; ‘Panzer “Battle” to Mark Big Date’, Western Mail , 11 September 1990; ‘Castlemartin’s Pub Closure Signals the End of Old Community Life,’ Western Mail , 12 June 2002 – with the withdrawal of German troops training at Castlemartin, the local pub lost its regulars and closed. In February 1996, over a seven-day period, 72,000 tonnes of light crude oil leaked into the sea from the Sea Empress tanker at the mouth of Milford Haven (just north of Castlemartin). The spill badly affected sea- and bird life. Three years later, recovery was still not complete. Ron Edwards and Ian White, ‘The Sea Empress Oil Spill: Environmental Impact and Recovery’ (1999); David Little, Peter Rhind, Rod Jones, Ian Bennett and Jon Moore, ‘CCW’S Shoreline Oil Distribution Surveys following the Sea Empress Oil Spill’ paper 1036, 1997 International Oil Spill Conference (1997). The Defence Estates website misses no opportunity to publicize details of the environmental schemes and awards of training areas and defence estates. For example, in 2007, SENTA was presented with an award by the British Horse Society for the public agency which has done most for equestrian access, in recognition of the development of the bridleway as part of the Epynt Way. Waste management at the MOD site at St Athan’s, Wales, won the 2008 National Recycling and Sustainability Champions Award. The most commonly awarded recognition comes from the (Defence Estates-run) annual Sanctuary awards. Handed out since 1991 for individual and group projects on defence estates in the United Kingdom and overseas, they are in-house awards that are

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nonetheless highly prized (and subsequently publicized), as the Silver Otter awards on prominent display in the Defence Estates offices SENTA, SPTA and Lulworth attest.

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This chapter draws upon material from my essay, ‘A Fairy (Shrimp) Tale of Military Environmentalism: The ‘Greening of Salisbury Plain’, in Pearson et al., Militarized Landscapes, 135–49. By the British Red Data Book, which lists species whose continued existence is threatened. Woodward, Military Geographies. OED, 285. ‘British Army’s Protection of Fairy Shrimps . . .’ online article, Environment Times, author unknown: www.environmenttimes.co.uk/news_detail.aspx?news_ id=602, accessed 12 July 2008. Ministry of Defence, Defence News: ‘Military Vehicles Create Fairies’ Homes’, w w w.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/EstateA ndEnvironment/ MilitaryVehiclesCreateFairiesHomes.htm, 4 January 2008. After the sharp fall in grain prices from the 1870s onwards, largely due to the increased output of grain from the American prairies, farmers on Salisbury Plain could not afford to sustain the fertility of their fields, and large areas were abandoned to grass. The grassland has been preserved by the military use of the land since 1897. Not having been fertilized or sprayed, and remaining unploughed for decades, the area is now ‘in a sense museum pieces, which retain maximum information content, and their value for the ecologist cannot be overstated’. T. C. E. Wells, J. Sheail, D. F. Ball and L. K. Ward, ‘Ecological Studies on the Porton Ranges: Relationships between Vegetation, Soils and Land-Use History’, Journal of Ecology 64 (July 1976), 589–626. For further studies of the effects of military disturbance on Salisbury Plain see: R. A. Hirst, ‘Ecological and Socio-Economic Impacts of Military Training on Salisbury Plain’, Thesis, University of Liverpool (December 2000); R. A. Hirst, R. F. Pywell and P. D. Putwain, ‘Assessing Habitat Disturbance Using a Historical Perspective: The Case of the Salisbury Plain Military Training Area’, Journal of Environmental Management (2000) 60, 181–93; B. A. Woodcock, R. F. Pywell, D. B. Roy, R. J. Rose and D. Bell, ‘Grazing Management of Calcerous Grasslands and Its Implications for the Conservation of Beetle Communities’, Biological Conservation (2005) 125, 193–202. A. M. Mannion, ‘The Environmental Impact of War & Terrorism’, Geographical Paper No. 169 (June 2003), University of Reading, 1–22, 9. SPTA (East) Natural History Conservation Group Information Sheet, 4–1–2, Defence Estates archive, Tilshead Barracks. SPTA (East) Natural History Conservation Group Record of Events, 4–4–3. B. Gillam and J. Pile, ‘The Fairy Shrimp on SPTA’, Sanctuary 21 (1992). ‘Army Stands Guard over Wildlife Rarities’, Wiltshire Gazette , 13 January 1994.

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‘Green Pack Raises Awareness of Environmental Issues’, Defence Estates Conservation Group and Environmental PR Office, Press Release DE 10/09, 2004. Interview with Guy Hagg, Senior Environmental Advisor (Conservation), Defence Estates, Tilshead Barracks, Salisbury Plain, 16 June 2008. ‘Survey Undertaken in Bid to Protect Rare Fairy Shrimp’, Defence Estates Press Release DE/18/07, December 2007. MOD website, ‘Defence News’, ‘Estate and Environment’, ‘Military Vehicles Create Fairies’ Homes’: www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/EstateAndEnvironment/MilitaryVehiclesCreateFairiesHomes.htm 4 January 2008. www.environmenttimes.co.uk/news_detail.aspx?news_id=602, 13 May 2008. ‘Birds Nests Stop Vehicle in Its Tracks’, MOD Defence News online, 17 July 2007: www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/EstateAndEnvironment/ BirdsNestStopsVehicleInItsTracks.htm.A Pied Wagtail nested and hatched chicks in a MOD patrol vehicle at Bickleigh Barracks in Plymouth. On Salisbury Plain, numerous abandoned tanks provide shelter for bird species, and bird boxes are maintained by the Salisbury Plain Conservation Group. Duncan Coe, ‘Salisbury Plain Training Area: Archaeological Conservation in a Changing Military and Political Environment’ Landscape Research 22/2 (1997), 157–74; David Goulson, ‘The Demise of the Bumblebee in Britain’, Biologist 53/1 (February 2006); Hirst, Pywell and Putwain, ‘Assessing Habitat Disturbance Using a Historical Perspective’. Woodward, Military Geographies, 96. Woodward, Military Geographies, 96. European Commission, LIFE Focus: Life, Natura 2000 and the Military (Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2005), 4. European Commission, LIFE Focus, 24. European Commission, LIFE Focus, 5. ‘In the 19th century and before, carts and livestock etched out sandy tracks across the heath, while areas were regularly burned for cropping and grazing’. European Commission, LIFE Focus, 12. European Commission, LIFE Focus, 12. European Commission, LIFE Focus, 23. European Commission, LIFE Focus, 23 Woodward, Military Geographies, 95. The Natura 2000 website details the habitats and species that were primary reasons for the selection of the SPTA site. Juniper ( Juniperus communis) is found on the southern edge of the site, on chalk, which is particularly rare, and is the best remaining example of juniper scrub in the United Kingdom. The majority of the site is the largest surviving area of semi-natural dry grassland in the EU. It contains important orchid sites (a ‘priority feature’), including the largest UK population of the nationally scarce burnt orchid (Orchis ustulata), together with significant populations of green-winged orchid (Orchis morio) and frog orchid (coelglossum vinde), both uncommon on calcerous grassland. The marsh fritillary butterfly (Euphydryas aurinia) added a rare species to the numerous habitats identified as reasons for selection. Joint Nature Conservation Committee website,

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‘UK Special Areas of Conservation site list’: www.jncc.gov.uk/ProtectedSites/ SACselection/sac.asp?EUCode=UK0012683, accessed 9 August 2010. Devizes Gazette , 22 December 1900, Wiltshire County Museum, Devizes. Devizes Gazette , 22 December 1900, Wiltshire County Museum, Devizes. Wiltshire Times, 22 November 1900, Wiltshire County Museum, Devizes. Wiltshire Times, 22 November 1900, Wiltshire County Museum, Devizes. Illustration, ‘The War Office Purchases on Salisbury Plain’, The Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette, 26 May 1898, Wiltshire County Museum ‘Salisbury Plain’ archive. Fundraising letter, W. H. Kewley and C. F. Randolph, 11 July 1899, Wiltshire County Museum, Devizes. Letter, Kewley and Randolph. Letter from L. Harcourt to Earl Kitchener, Criticism of Conditions for Canadian Forces on Salisbury Plain. As to Separation of Newfoundland Contingent from Main Canadian Force, 16 December 1914, PR0 30/57/56, NA. Wells et al., ‘Ecological Studies of the Porton Ranges’. William Wordsworth, Salisbury Plain , 1793–4. The poem, at 61 stanzas, was inspired by Wordsworth’s journey on foot from the Isle of Wight to Northern Wales, passing across the Plain. The great bustard is a large ground-dwelling bird. Standing at 3 ft tall, weighing up to 40 lb and with an 8 ft wingspan it is the heaviest bird capable of flight. It was a regular inhabitant of Salisbury Plain until the 1820s. Prized game birds, they were hunted to extinction in Britain by the 1830s, when the last great bustard was reputedly killed in Norfolk. In 2004 the Great Bustard Group reintroduced the species to Salisbury Plain, releasing birds brought over from Saratov in the Russian Steppes to a prepared site on the margins of the active training area, on ‘buffer zone’ farmland. The reintroduction project (a private initiative) aims to create a sustainable population of great bustards on Salisbury Plain over the next ten years. Nigel Williams, ‘Back to the Future’, Current Biology 14/17 (2004), R690–1. See also Paul Toynton, ‘The Return of the Great Bustard: Flying High over Salisbury Plain’, Sanctuary 34 (2005), 14–17. The Dead Drummer: A Legend of Salisbury Plain available at: www.exclassics.com/ ingold/ing42.htm. H. J. Massingham, English Downland (London, 3rd edn, 1949). Massingham continued the metaphor to lyrical effect: ‘the Wiltshire summits, though unnatural, are the plumes and flourishes of its austere wilderness, as though the surges of the sealike expanses had broken into a green foam, all curdled in the sunlight.’ Massingham, English Downland , 16–17. Massingham, English Downland , 33. Massingham, English Downland , preface vi, 7. Roy Canham and Christopher Chippendale, ‘Managing for Effective Archaeological Conservation: The Example of Salisbury Plain Military Training Area, England’, Journal of Field Archaeology 15 (1988), 53–65, 53. Canham and Chippendale, ‘Managing for Effective Archaeological Conservation’, 53. Coe, ‘Salisbury Plain Training Area’, 158. Canham and Chippendale, ‘Managing for Effective Archaeological Conservation’, 55.

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Canham and Chippendale, ‘Managing for Effective Archaeological Conservation’; Coe, ‘Salisbury Plain Training Area’; Ian Barnes, ‘The Management of an Archaeological Landscape on the Army’s Training Area on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire’ in Jane Grenville (ed.), Managing the Historic Rural Landscape (London, 1999), 87–99; David McOmish, ‘Landscapes Preserved by Men of War’, British Archaeology 34 (May 1998), 12–13. McOmish, ‘Landscapes Preserved By Men of War’, 12–13. McOmish, ‘Landscapes Preserved By Men of War’, 12–13. Barnes, ‘Management of an Archaeological Landscape’, 88. Barnes, ‘Management of an Archaeological Landscape’, 90. Barnes, ‘Management of an Archaeological Landscape’, 90. The blueprints can be seen at The National Archive, fi le 5456/5. Barnes, ‘Management of an Archaeological Landscape’, 88. Barnes, ‘Management of an Archaeological Landscape’, 90. Barnes, ‘Management of an Archaeological Landscape’, 90. Canham and Chippendale, ‘Managing for Effective Archaeological Conservation’, 57. Barnes, ‘Management of an Archaeological Landscape’, 90. Davis, ‘Military Natures’, GeoJournal , 131. Woodward, Military Geographies, 102–3. The use of Dartmoor (National Park, AONB, SSSI) as a training area, for example, is not secured. The MOD has use of some 13,000 ha of Dartmoor, 9,808 ha of which are leased from the Duchy of Cornwall. The current 21-year lease expires in 2012. (See Chapter 2.) See John Childs, The Military Use of Land , 216–21. Childs discusses conservation and access issues with specific reference to the perceived and actual intensity of land use for training by the military, and the changing needs of a modern mechanized military. Sawyer, Little Imber, 22. Facsimile reproduced in Sawyer, Little Imber, 158. Austin Underwood, the Secretary of the Association for the Restoration of Imber, went on to become involved in the anti-nuclear and peace movements, working for the CND and contributing to the Peace News. He brought attention to Imber in these wider fields, aligning the campaign for the restoration of the village to its former inhabitants with other anti-military protests. His personal papers (documenting his long involvement with Imber and other campaigns) are located at the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre, Chippenham. Sawyer, Little Imber, 116. MOD Defence Estate, Environment Support Team is ‘Project Partner’ to the AHRC-funded ‘Militarized Landscapes in the Twentieth Century: Britain, France and the United States’ project of which this doctoral thesis is a part. They granted special status to the project team members including myself, which allowed us to explore SPTA unaccompanied, as long as we were known to be there (for our own safety). Notable ruins include the former manor house (now barricaded by barbed wire), the pub and farm buildings on the western edge of the village. Bevan, The Destruction of Memory, 7–8.

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Papers of Austin Underwood, Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre, Chippenham. Correspondence between Austin Underwood and War Department State Office, 1–16/01/1961, Underwood’s papers, Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre. ‘For Ever Imber, Say Village Demonstrators’, The Times, 23 January 1961; ‘Under Fire on the Plain’, Guardian , 28 January 1961. Sawyer, Little Imber, 123. Sawyer, Little Imber, 123. ‘Proceedings of the Public Inquiry held by the War Works Commission in to the Proposed Permanent Closure of Highways in the Imber Danger Area, 3rd and 4th October, 1961’, DEFE 51/103, NA. ‘Public Inquiry’, 12. Mr Cripps’ argument was borne out in July 1975 when four boys were found on SPTA attempting to take shells dropped during a live-fi re exercise between British troops and American helicopters. They were caught, unharmed. The incident was reported in the national press. ‘In Brief. Boys in Firing Area Had Shells’, The Times, 23 July 1975; ‘Army Alert After Boys Grab Ammo’, Daily Telegraph , 23 July 1975. ‘Public Inquiry’, 89. ‘Public Inquiry’, 89. Confidential letter from Brig. G. L. Body, CBE to G. G. Way, Esq., 16 December 1981, ‘Larkhill – Closure of Footpaths’ File, opened 5 August 1980 DEFE 57/38, NA. Loose Minute A. J. Fuller 15 December 1981, ‘Larkhill – Closure of Footpaths’ File, opened 5 August 1980 DEFE 57/38, NA. ‘Walkers on Warparth Over Plan for Plain’, Southern Evening Echo, 10 November 1981; ‘New Bid to Close Salisbury Plain Footpaths’, Salisbury Journal , 12 November 1981; ‘Row Brewing Over Path Closures’, Western Gazette , 13 November 1981; ‘Walkers Beware’, Western Daily Press, 16 November 1981; ‘Paths Peril’, Southern Evening Echo, 13 November 1981. Loose Minute from A. F. Bone to M. D. Lands, August 1981, ‘Larkhill – Closure of Footpaths’ File, opened 5 August 1980 DEFE 57/38, NA. Country Life article, undated, found amongst Underwood’s papers; ‘The Murdered Village’, Peace News 1/281 (13 December 1961), Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre, Chippenham. Cole, ‘A Picturesque Ruin?’ Militarized Landscapes, 110. In The Art of Forgetting, Adrian Forty and Susanna Küchler discuss the Western tradition of memory and its relationship to material objects, in which memories are ‘transferred to solid material objects, which can come to stand for memories and, by virtue of their durability, either prolong or preserve them indefi nitely beyond their purely mental existence.’ Forty, ‘Introduction’, Art of Forgetting (Oxford, 1999), 1–18, 2. Patrick Wright, in his excavation of the history and ‘afterlife’ of another ‘lost’ village, Tyneham in Dorset (also evacuated by the MOD during the Second World War), describes the genesis of an anti-military rural action group (the Tyneham Action Group). Parallels between Tyneham and Imber were drawn by members of each action group – some campaigned on behalf of both causes. Wright, The Village that Died for England , 256–84. European Commission, LIFE Focus, 19.

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In an interview with Manfred Pfister, ‘“Writing the Obituaries”: An Interview with Patrick Wright’, published in ‘The Discovery of Britain’, a special issue of The Journal for the Study of British Cultures (Tübingen, Germany, July 1997). Also in Soundings; A Journal of Politics and Culture 8 (1998), 14–48. Charles G. Harper, The Dorset Coast (London, 1905), 1. Harper, Dorset Coast , 2. Sidney Heath, The County Coast Series: The South Devon and Dorset Coast (Illustrated) (London, 1910), 358–9. Heath, The Country Coast, 357. Geoffrey Clarke and William Harding Thompson, The Dorset Landscape (County Landscape Series), (London, 1935) 74. Clarke and Thompson, Dorset Landscape , vii. ‘Military and Lands History of the RAC Gunnery Ranges Lulworth Dorset – World War I,’ Section Five of Lulworth Range Dossier (MOD, Tilshead). ‘Lulworth Ranges’ (undated) WO 32/21725, NA. ‘Walks on the Lulworth Ranges’, MOD guide (MOD, undated). Geoffrey Clark and William Harding Thompson, The County Landscapes Series: The Dorset Landscape (London, 1935), 74. Clark and Thompson, Dorset Landscape, vii, 1. Ralph Pite, Hardy’s Geography: Wessex and the Regional Novel (Basingstoke, 2002), 1. Pite, Hardy’s Geography, 2. Heath, The Country Coast , 347. Tyneham itself does not relate directly to a Hardy setting, although Lulworth Cove was marked on his maps of Wessex as ‘Lulstead’, or occasionally ‘Lullwind’ Cove. It is the scene of the Napoeonic sketch in Life’s Little Ironies entitled ‘A Tradition of 1804’. It is also the place in Far from the Madding Crowd where Troy, bathing on the beach, gets swept out by a current but is rescued by a passing fishing boat. Hermann Lea, A Handbook to the Wessex Country of Thomas Hardy’s Novels and Poems (reprint of the 1906 ed., Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, London, 1974), 15. Heath, The Country Coast, 358. Pite, Hardy’s Geography, 3. R. J. Saville, Tyneham in Purbeck (A Short History of the Parish) (Langton Malravers Local History and Preservation Society 2009), 33. Saville, Tyneham in Purbeck, 34. Patrick Wright, The Village that Died for England, 243. ‘Schedule of Condition, Cottage Nearest Church in Row containing Post Office, Tyneham’ (5 December 1943), in ‘Dorset Coast Path: Ministry of Defence Holdings (Lulworth and Tyneham) COU 1/1464 (TNA). Ralph Wightman, Portrait of Dorset, 28. Wightman also follows Heath’s, Clark’s and Thompson’s method of tracing Hardy’s work in the landscape. Wightman, Portrait of Dorset , 29. Robert Macfarlane, The Wild Places (London, 2007); Sophia Davis, ‘Military Landscapes and Secret Science: The Case of Orford Ness’, Cultural Geographies (2008), 15: 143–9; Jenny Price, ‘13 Ways of Seeing Nature in LA,’ in William

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Deverell and Greg Hise (eds), Land of Sunshine: An Environmental History of Metropolitan Los Angeles (Pittsburgh, 2005), 220–44. Participation in two reading groups at Bristol university, both part of its interdisciplinary ‘Place and Space’ University Research Theme, have confirmed the productive potential of actively engaging in site visits as a research tool. Both teamed structured reading and discussions with group visits to places connecting with wider themes – for example, the Garden/City/Wild programme was structured around visits to and readings of a garden, an urban place, and a wild place. Individual and group responses to the visits became a starting point for further discussions, readings and outputs. Site visits were more than welcome punctuation and illustration for readings. They were repositioned as readings themselves. Garden/City/Wild (September 2008–June 2009); B(reakfast)/ L(unch)/T(ea) (September 2009 –11) University of Bristol. Wright, The Village that Died for England . The book, well-received critically, has done much to keep Tyneham in the public eye. A slew of accompanying articles in the national press informed readers that Tyneham was accessible, subject to firing days and training requirements. This increased its profile as a military training area, a heritage destination and place of natural beauty. ‘Village in the Firing Line’, The Times, 2 January 1995; ‘Village Frozen in Time’, Sunday Express, 19 February 1995; ‘Our Rustic Rot’, Guardian, 14 March 1995; ‘The Countryside Preserved by Disgraceful Occupation’, Spectator, 25 March 1995; ‘This Other Eden’, Times Literary Supplement, 29 March 1995; ‘The Lost Horizon’, Guardian , weekend supplement 25 March 1996; ‘Rip Van Winkle Village Wakes Up’, Sunday Telegraph , 7 July 1996; ‘My Blighted Pilgrimage to Worbarrow Bay’, Observer, 27 July 1997; ‘Eerie Village that Time Forgot’, The Times weekend supplement 19 December 1998; ‘The Village that Died for D-Day Welcomes Last Exile’, Daily Telegraph , 18 May 1999; ‘Paperback Writer – Patrick Wright on the Dorset Village that Became an Ideological Mirror for England’, Guardian , 30 November 2002. Pfister, ‘Writing the Obituaries’, 10. Pfister, ‘Writing the Obituaries’, 1. Wright, The Village that Died for England, 422. Wright’s time spent at the tank training area, and the Tank Museum at Bovington, sparked an interest that he followed for his next book, Tank: The Progress of a Monstrous War Machine (London, 2000). Wright, The Village that Died for England, 245–6. Wright, The Village that Died for England, 244. Pat Evans, ‘War-Time Memories 1942–1943’ (circa 1987) A typescript is held at Dorset County Museum. Evans was posted as a nineteen-year old WAAF radar operator to RAF Brandy Bay and billeted in Tyneham House. She revisited the village in circa 1985, which prompted this memoir. Wright, The Village that Died for England, 244. Evans, ‘War-Time Memories’, 1. John Sweeney, ‘My Blighted Pilgrimage to Worbarrow Bay’, The Observer, 27 July 1997. John Gould, born at Gardener’s Cottage, Tyneham, in 1912. He lived and worked in Tyneham until joining the army in the war. He received a letter from his mother notifying him of the eviction from his home whilst he served with

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the Devonshire Regiment in India. “Gardeners Cottage’ Information Board, Tyneham. The War Department supposed the widespread assumption of return to have derived from a letter sent by the War Department land agent to displaced tenants in December 1943. It ‘was not an outright undertaking, and seems to have been intended solely to explain the effect of requisitioning. Nevertheless, because of the widespread local belief, it was decided to work on the assumption that a pledge had been given, and this decision was publicly announced in paragraph 48 of the 1947 White Paper on “The Needs of the Armed Forces for Land for Training and Other Purposes.”’ Tyneham Training Ranges’ internal memo by D. J. Griffiths, 4 July 1969, ref: LM to D/Min (A) GR 1556, WO 32/21725 (NA). Stanford Training Area (STANTA), Norfolk, was requisitioned in 1942 for infantry training exercises. Six villages – Buckenham Tofts, Langford, Stanford, Strurston, Tottington and West Tofts – were evacuated. STANTA was also used as a film location for the television series ‘Dad’s Army’. ‘Extract from Command White Paper 7278’ (December 1947) WO 32/21725 (NA). Letter from Ralph Bond to unknown recipient, dated 11 November (year illegible due to tearing but thought to be 1943), DEFE 51/9 (NA). Internal War Department correspondence from Lands Branch (Salisbury) to Ministry of Works (London) 25 November 1944, DEFE 51/9 (NA). Report to EHT Wiltshire, Ministry of Housing and Local Government by N. Digney, Ministry of Works, 17 December 1958, WORK 14/2158 (NA). Letter from EHT Wiltshire to N Digney, 20 January 1959, WORK 14/2158 (NA). ‘Spoiled Beauty Spot: Devastation in the Lulworth Area’, The Times 24 September 1949. ‘Tyneham Training Ranges’ D. J. Griffiths 4 July 1969, WO 32/21725 (NA). Gardener’s Cottage information board, Tyneham. They are certainly enough to fill a book – Wright’s Village that Died ably dissects the internal workings of the individuals and groups concerned. See Legg, Tyneham , for an extensive collection of photographs depicting Tyneham village before and after requisition. Rampant vegetation among decaying and ruined buildings can be seen on pages 24, 32, 51, 55, 61, 69 and 71. Wright, Village that Died, 293. Wright, Village that Died , 295. Michael Frenchman for Town magazine (December 1966), quoted in Wright, Village that Died, 300. Wright, Village that Died, 302. A phrase used by Rachel Woodward (2004), originating from Mary Douglass (1966), to define pollution. ‘Schedule of Conditon of Timber principally on lands in hand, the property of W.R.G. BOND Esq., of Tyneham House near Corfer Castle, Dorset’, DEFE 51/9 (NA). ‘Schedule of Condition of Timber’, DEFE 51/9 (NA). ‘Schedule of Condition of Timber’, DEFE 51/9 (NA). ‘Schedule of Condition. Cottage nearest Church in Row containing Post Office, Tyneham’, 5 December 1943, DEFE 51/9 (NA).

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Tim Edensor, Industrial Ruins: Space, Aesthetics and Materiality (Oxford, 2005), 42–51. Wright, The Village that Died for England , 305. The split by Legg et al. to form Friends of Tyneham happened in November 1969, when in response to a visit by Ivor Richards (Labour Under-Secretary for Defence), Tyneham Action Group called for the release of Tyneham valley rather than the whole of Lulworth Range. Legg viewed this as a betrayal of the Tyenahm cause, and vowed to fight for the withdrawal of the military from the whole area (Wright, The Village that Died for England , 342). Where their campaigns diverge in beliefs, actions and publications, TAG and FoT will be referred to by name, separately. Otherwise, both are included when discussing the anti-military campaign. Rodney Legg and D. E. Wells-Furby, both quoted in Wright, The Village that Died for England , 304, 306. Front cover of ‘Friends of Tyneham Work to Save Dorset’s Greatest Natural Wilderness’ pamphlet (undated, circa 1973) Dorset County Museum, Dorchester. ‘Friends of Tyneham work to save Dorset’s greatest natural wilderness’ pamphlet, and ‘Join the Tyneham Action Group if you are concerned about the following:-’ pamphlet, Tyneham Action Group (1973) Dorset County Museum. Wright, The Village that Died for England , 319. Friends of Tyneham went one step further in August 1973. They cut the barbed wire to enter the site and open up the range to visitors, then ‘reopened’ the derelict Post Office where they sold and franked souvenir postcards. The protest was in response to the retention of the area for training despite the Nugent Committee’s recommendation to release it. ‘Demonstrators Open Up Army Ranges’, Dorset Evening Echo, 28 August 1973. ‘Join the Tyneham Action Group’ pamphlet, Dorset County Museum. This chapter goes on to discuss the various futures imagined for Tyneham in the event of its release, one of which included reinstating remaining villagers in their former homes. Philip Lowe and Jane Goyder, Environmental Groups in Politics (London, 1983), 16–17. Robert Lamb (in collaboration with Friends of the Earth), Promising the Earth (London, 1996), 32. Lamb, Promising the Earth , 35. ‘Friends of Tyneham’ pamphlet, Dorset County Museum. ‘Friends of Tyneham’ pamphlet, Dorset County Museum. ‘Friends of Tyneham’ pamphlet, Dorset County Museum. Letter by Margaret Grout of Christchurch, Hampshire, 20 April 1969, WO 32/21725 (NA). Letter from Michael Hamilton, MP, to David Owen, MP, 21 April 1969, WO 32/21725 (NA). Nugent Report, 137. Nugent Report, 149. Nugent Report, 147. Nugent Report, 144.

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Nugent Report, 158. ‘Speaking Notes for Meeting at Lulworth’, 22 November 1974, DEFE 57/53 (NA). ‘Speaking Notes for Meeting at Lulworth’, 22 November 1974, DEFE 57/53 (NA). Loose Minute ‘Lulworth – Improved Public Acces’, 25 October 1974, DEFE 57/53 (NA). Loose Minute ‘Lulworth – Improved Public Acces’, 25 October 1974, DEFE 57/53 (NA). ‘Speaking Notes for Meeting at Lulworth’, 22 November 1974, DEFE 57/53 (NA). ‘The Assessment of a chartered engineer of the more realistic means for training British army tank gunners by employing modern techniques at acceptable national expenditure’ (Tyneham Action Group, undated) Dorset County Museum. He was encouraged to do this in a correspondence with John Cripps, who wrote to him ‘as a member of the Nugent Committee, not as chairman of the [Countryside} Commission’ and provided some notes to aid his proposal. Cripps’ support of Brockway shows that members of the Nugent Committee, having carefully considered the evidence and concluded that the military should leave, felt let down by their insistence on remaining, but had not given up hope for an alternative use of the land in the future. Letter from John Cripps to Lord Brockway, 24 January 1975, DEFE 57/53 (NA); ‘Purbeck v Army Scene Two’, The Sunday Times, 26 January 1975. ‘Lulworth Ranges Public Access’, MOD 30 April 1974, DEFE 57/53 (NA). Jim Durkin, ‘Wave of Protest over MOD’s Bench Ruling’, Daily Echo (Bournemouth), 14 October 2008. James Morton, ‘Surfers Plan Wave of Protest to Access to Monster Tube at Kimmeridge Bay’, Daily Echo, 13 July 2009. Morton, ‘Surfers Plan Wave of Access’. ‘Surfers Protest over MOD Wave Ban’, BBC news online, 20 June 2009. Durkin, ‘Wave of Protest’. ‘Lulworth Ranges Public Access’ date unknown, circa 1973–4, DEFE 57/53, 9. Bovington Camp, 7 miles up the road from the Lulworth Ranges and the home of the Tank Museum, draws a more military-weaponry-friendly crowd, and provides several viewing places for the public to watch training in action. ‘Row as Era Ends’, Dorset Evening Echo, 18 November 1974. ‘Row as Era Ends’, Dorset Evening Echo, 18 November 1974. Rodney Legg, Tyneham (Wincanton, Somerset, 2002), 139. Wright, The Village that Died for England , 429. Item 17 of Lulworth/Bovington Conservation Committee Meeting minutes, 19 November 2009 (personal copy). Col EDV Prendergast, ‘Povington Ranges. Dragonflies on the new ponds. 1989’, 14 May1990, Tyneham Dossier, Tilshead; Prendergast, ‘The Southern Damselfly Coenagrion mercuriale (Charpentier) on the Ministry of Defence Ranges, Lulworth, Dorset’, The Journal of the British Dragonfly Society 12/1 (April 1996), 2–7.

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Cole, ‘Military Presences’, 217, 220–3. In her memoir of growing up at Tyneham House, Lilian Bond talks of staging plays in the Barn: ‘my father let us use the barn for our plays and pantomimes when we were raising money to build a village hall. He built a rough stage for us in the northern bay . . . one of our butlers who, in a “previous incarnation”, had worked as a stage hand in a Liverpool theatre made us four sets of scenery . . . the audience was accommodated in the long south bay, seating about 160 people comfortably.’ Lilian Bond, Tyneham: A Lost Heritage (Winborne, Dorset, 1984), 81. The conservation group were aware of this link, and credited it for inspiration (19 November 2009). This scheme was discussed at the Conservation Group meeting I attended at Lulworth 19 November 2009. It was a source of some excitement for both MOD and Natural England representatives, who saw it as an opportunity to engage with farmers on a conservation level, offer support and encouragement. Woodward, Military Geographies, 102. Woodward, Military Geographies, 102. Woodward, Military Geographies, 86. Woodward, Military Geographies, 89. ‘The Army Gives In on Tyneham’, Dorset County Magazine : ‘The army is leaving Tyneham. The pledge of Churchill’s cabinet, ignored for 27 years, is finally honoured. The ghost valley of Tyneham and the miles of country around it are at last coming back to us’ undated (circa 1974) Dorset County Museum. Letter from Roy Mason (Ministry of Defence) to Lord Brockway, 27 September 1974, DEFE 57/53 (NA). House of Lords, 11 July 1973, DEFE 57/53 (TNA); ‘Make Tyneham Valley a Nature Reserve – Says Peer’, Dorset Evening Echo, 13 July 1973. ‘Friends of Tyneham’ pamphlet, Dorset County Museum. ‘Tyneham Nature Reserve Plan Impractical?’ Western Gazette , 29 June 1973. ‘A programme about the possible uses of Lulworth and Bovington Army ranges’ (Architectural Association Diploma School, 1973–4), Dorset County Museum. If the imagined futures of Tyneham seem far-fetched, you only have to look a few miles up the road to Poundbury, Dorset. It is Prince Charles’ model town, and is a village conceived in the imagination that has taken form in bricks and mortar. See ‘A Winner: The Town that Charles Built’, The Times, 4 April 2003; ‘Poundbury: A Town Fit for a Prince’, Independent , 16 July 2008.

Chapter 6 1

Mynydd Epynt, the Welsh name for the mountains, is often used to describe the military training area too. In this book, both SENTA and Epynt refer to the military training area. This is in part recognition of a military and a Welsh identity, and a military and pre-military upland landscape. It also reflects the common usage by military and local civilians, who use both terms.

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Wright, The Village that Died. Gwynfor Evans, Havoc in Wales (Cardiff, 1947), 14, trans. Joseph Badman. In their pamphlet protesting against the requisition of Mynydd Epynt, Welsh nationalists reprinted this old Welsh poem to inspire a defence of Welsh lands against the incoming British military. Ronald Davies, Epynt without People . . . and Much More (Talybont, Ceredigion, 1984: reissue of Epynt without People 1971), 136. Davies was born at Glandwr, Pentretwyn, in 1927. His family farmed the area, and he grew up as part of the community of Mynyyd Epynt. Later in life he wrote a personal history of life on the Epynt before and after the evictions. ‘The main reason I have written this book’, he explains, ‘is that I feel that the names of the farms and houses that are by now in ruins or have disappeared completely and the names of all those persons that lived in these properties in 1940 be recorded so that future generations can read about the wonderful community that once lived on the slopes of Mynydd Epynt’ (132). Davies, Epynt without People, 136. The roots of the tradition of the Welsh gwerin have been traced by historians to Medieval Wales, early Christianity and ancient legends and myths; see Prys Morgan, ‘From Death to a View: The Hunt for the Welsh Past in the Romantic Period’ in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1992), 43–100. The geographer Pyrs Gruffudd, who has written extensively on historiography and nationality in Wales, makes a persuasive link much closer temporally of the role of the gwerin in Welsh Nationalist ideologies of ‘Welshness’, and the Aberystwyth School of academics, whose intellectual and social vitality initiated a ‘rebirth of the nation’ in the early twentieth century (Gruffudd, ‘Back to the Land’, 68). The Welsh National Party, or Plaid Cymru, was founded in 1925, in the wake of Labour electoral success and the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922. These events, along with widespread disillusionment with the political performance of the Liberal Party, stimulated nationalists to found a party that would defend Welsh interests. However, it is suggested that in its first twenty years, Plaid Cymru was not a political party at all, but ‘a cultural and educational movement seeking to elicit a sense of common ethnic identity and “resist and reverse those trends that were assimilating Wales into England”’ D. H. Davies in Pyrs Gruffudd, ‘Back to the Land: Historiography, Rurality and the Nation in Interwar Wales’, Transaction of the Royal Institute of British Geographers 19/1 (March 1994), 61–77, 69. Certainly the differing political views brought together under the nationalist cause appear to support this. Two leading Welsh nationalists, Saunders Lewis (president of Plaid Cymru 1926–39) and Iorwerth Peate, held different political views. Lewis was critical of Labour and Liberal politics, seeing the Conservatives as the English nationalist equivalent to Plaid, whereas Peate was a socialist (Gruffudd, ‘Back to the Land’, 69). But they were united in their devotion to the Welsh nationalist cause. The early disputations Plaid became involved in had issues of land, ownership, resources and rights to sovereignty at their core. Pyrs Gruffudd, ‘Remaking Wales: Nation-Building and the geographical Imagination, 1925–50’, Political Geography 14/3 (1995), 219–39, 227, 231). It fought the Liverpool Corporation at Tryweryn, and hydroelectric

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companies in Snowdonia (Owen G. Roberts, ‘Developing the Untapped Wealth of Britain’s ‘Celtic Fringe’: Walter Engineering and the Welsh Landscape 1870–1960’, Landscape Research 31/2 (April 2006), 121–33, 129, 130). Whilst not a united front politically, Plaid was driven by common ideologies of land and nationality. Gruffudd, ‘Remaking Wales’, 224. Rona Campbell, ‘Plaid Optimism with Image Change’, BBC News online, 25 February 2006: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/4745006.stm. Pre-Enlightenment, Welsh was a language in decline, mocked by the English as the ‘gibberish’ of ‘Taphydom’ spoken only by the lower orders, and referred to by some Welsh as heniath , an ‘old language’. However, by the eighteenth century scholars set about preserving it. Moreover, they created a new Welsh literature of moral and religious tracts, works of history, grammar and dictionaries, which in turn encouraged reading and speaking, kept the language vital and gave it a literary foundation. Herbert Hughes, An Uprooted Community: An History of Epynt (Llandysul, 1998), 47–8. The Aberystwyth School used geography and anthropology to develop a position that the people of rural, and especially upland, Wales embodied a storehouse of culture, values and spirituality that had been lost from urban areas. Prominent among them was H. J. Fleure, a geographer who mapped Wales to show regional differentiation among human ‘types’. Treading close to theories of biological determinism, Fleure thought the Welsh people represented different types of humankind, regionally distinctive and (to other Welshmen) instantly recognizable. Fleure’s opinions did not degenerate into crude racial theories like the ones that National Socialists promoted. He attacked the idea of national types and racial purity, and was active in anti-racist campaigns. Fleure wanted to show that communities should be studied in relation to natural regions rather than administrative units, constructing Welshness as an ‘organic unity between humans and environment’ (Gruffudd, ‘Back to the Land’, 63). The Aberystwyth School had a direct route of influence to Plaid Cymru through Iorweth Peate, who had been one of Fleure’s first students of geography and anthropology.1 As one of the movement’s few prominent members in its infancy, Peate’s opinions helped shape the values of the party, and through him the ideas of Fleure and Stapledon ‘were incorporated into broader political discourse on Wales and Welshness’ (Gruffudd, ‘Back to the Land’, 68). Morgan, ‘From Death to a View’, 86. Morgan, ‘From Death to a View’, 88. Morgan, ‘From Death to a View’, 87. Quoted in Gruffudd, ‘Remaking Wales’, 227. Gruffudd, ‘Remaking Wales’, 227. ‘War Office Land Grab: Wales Protests’, Picture Post 34/4 (25 January 1947). After the arson attack, 2,000 new people subscribed to Y Draig Goch , a Welsh nationalist publication, and a crowd estimated at between twelve and seventeen thousand people greeted the arsonists on their return from jail to Caernarfon. Gruffudd, ‘Remaking Wales’, 230.

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Between 1979 and the mid-1990s, splinter Welsh Nationalist groups set fi re to up to 220 English-owned holiday homes, in response to a housing crisis in Wales precipitated by large numbers of second-home ownership. Hughes, An Uprooted Community, 95. Gruffudd, ‘Remaking Wales’, 225. Transcripts held in the archives of the Museum of Welsh Life, and quoted in Hughes, An Uprooted Community, 23–33. Roberts, ‘Developing the Untapped Wealth of Britain’s “Celtic Fringe” ’, 123. Croston, in Roberts, ‘Developing the Untapped Wealth of Britain’s “Celtic Fringe”’, 123. H. T. McCormack, ‘The Haunt of the Horse’ (1966), Defence Estates Document D4–04, SENTA Site Dossier (Tilshead, Wiltshire); Hughes, An Uprooted Community, 18. ‘Haunt of the Horse’ refers to the Epynt’s reputation as a favoured grazing area of mountain ponies, which inhabited the mountains until the military removed them in 1940. See Paul Readman, Land and Nation in England: Patriotism, National Identity and the Politics of Land, 1880–1914 (Woodbridge, Suffolk 2008); M. Cragoe, Culture, Politics and Identity in Wales, 1832–1886 (Oxford, 2004); E. A. Cameron, Land for the People? The British People and the Scottish Highlands, c.1880–1925 (East Linton, 1996). Hughes, An Uprooted Community, 70–1. Hughes, An Uprooted Community, 54. Davies, Epynt without People , 135. Davies, Epynt without People , 136. ‘Farmers Alarmed at Requisition of Common Land; Sheep Industry Affected’, Brecon and Radnorshire Express (hereafter B&RE) 14 March 1940. ‘Farmers Alarmed’, B&RE , 14 March 1940. ‘Farmers Alarmed’; ‘Welsh MP’s Support Breconshire Farmers’, 21 March 1940; Welsh Farmers. Removal of Flocks. Questions of Serious Hardship’, 28 March 1940; ‘Meeting of the Executive Committee of the Brecon and Radnor Counties’ Branch of NFU’, B&RE , 2 May 1940. ‘To the Editor: Common Requisition. Mr TI Ellis and Reason for the Delay of Decision’, 18 April 1940; ‘To the Editor: Obliged to Quit. Their Homes and Farm. General Appeal to Public’, B&RE , 30 May1940. Hughes, An Uprooted Community, 94. Hughes, An Uprooted Community, 94. Saunders Lewis to J. E. Jones, 28 March 1940, in Hughes, An Uprooted Community, 96. Hughes, An Uprooted Community, 96. Hughes, An Uprooted Community, 105. Dr Gwynfor Evans: ‘It was Pwyllgor Diogelu Diwylliant Cymru (the Committee for the Defence of Welsh Culture) which led the protests’ – in Hughes, An Uprooted Community, 94. Hughes, An Uprooted Community, 100. Hughes, An Uprooted Community, 101. Saunders Lewis, ‘Cwys y Byd’ in Y Faner, 13 March 1940, in Hughes, An Uprooted Community, 95.

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In The Welsh Nation , June 1940, in Hughes, An Uprooted Community, 103. J. E. Jones in Hughes, An Uprooted Community, 106. Glyn Jones, in Hughes, An Uprooted Community, 106. Hughes, An Uprooted Community, 94. For more on the politics, geography, environmental and social history of reservoirs see Harriet Ritvo, The Dawn of Green: Manchester, Thirlmere and Modern Environmentalism (Chicago, 2009). See Roberts, ‘Developing the Untapped Wealth of Britain’s “Celtic Fringe”’. Gruffudd, ‘Remaking Wales’, 226. Roberts, ‘Developing the Untapped Wealth of Britain’s “Celtic Fringe”’, 129. Welsh Nationalist Party, ‘Plan Electricity for Wales’ (1944) in Gruffudd, ‘Uncivil Engineering’, 170. Gruffudds ‘Uncivil Engineering’, 170. Gruffudd, ‘Remaking Wales’, 230. Jones-Davies (1972) quoted in Cole, ‘Military Presences’, 227. Shirley Toulson, The Drovers’ Roads of Wales (London, 1977). David Jones, ‘Recollections of Sheep Droving Over the Epynt’, in Hughes, An Uprooted Community, 19–20. Jones in Hughes, An Uprooted Community, 20. Hughes, ,An Uprooted Community, 22. Cole, ‘Military Presences’, 227. Cole, ‘Military Presences,’ 227. Ronald Church, Sennybridge Training Area, 1940–1990 (Cardiff, 1991), preface, x. SENTA Site Dossier, ‘Annual Report of Forestry and Environmental Projects, Defence Estates Wales 2005–2006’, 2 January 1916. Ronald G. Church, Sennybridge Training Area 1940–1990. Church’s work was not written for the MOD (it was published privately) but was produced with the cooperation of SENTA, and carries a foreword by Lt Col JPR Hayes (Camp Commandant 1985–92) praising its achievements. Church, Sennybridge , 1. Church, Sennybridge , 6. McCormack, ‘The Haunt of the Horse’, 13. Woodward, Military Geographies, 17. Davies, Epynt without People , 8–13; Shirley Jones, Etched Out (Llanhamlach, 2002), 1–7. see also Cole, ‘A Picturesque Ruin?’ 98–101; Coates, Cole, Dudley and Pearson, ‘Defending Nation, Defending Nature? Militarized Landscapes and Military Environmentalism in Britain, France and the US’, Environmental History 16 (July 2011), 456–91. Gwynfor Evans, Havoc in Wales (Cardiff, 1947), 1–14, 12. Evans, Havoc in Wales, 12. ‘Wales and the War: According to Winston Churchill, Neville Chamberlain, D. Lloyd George and Others’ (J. E. Jones, Swyddfa ‘r Blaid, Caernarfon, 1943) – from the collection Welsh Nationalist Pamphlets (University of St Andrews). Although the farms on Epynt were emptied, the War Department did allow nearby farmers to graze sheep on the mountain, on a reduced scale, and at the risk of some livestock casualties, altering the tradition of hundreds of years of

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common grazing. The removal of the ponies led to the demise of the annual Llangammarch Wells horse fair nearby. However, the playwright T. C. Thomas wrote a play in 1959 inspired by the events at Mynydd Epynt called ‘The Sound of Stillness’. It imagined a scenario in which two Epynt farmers, Rhys and Wil, are evicted from their farm and return a year later on the night that their farmhouse is to be destroyed by the army for use as target practice. Church, Sennybridge , 13. Silver Dragons! Online archive: www.silverdragons.co.uk/ ‘Epynt history 7’, Accessed March 2009. M. Leonard and M. Griffin, Epynt: A Stage Rallying History (Wales Rally GB: Menter Moduro Motorsports Initiative, 2006). Ann and Malcolm McEwen, National Parks: Conservation or Cosmetics? (London, 1982), 23. Philip Lowe and Jane Goyder, Environmental Groups in Politics (London, 1983), 9. Countryside Act of 1968 , available online: www.defra.gov.uk/rural/pdfs/ruraldelivery/bill/ca-1968.pdf, 3. David Evans, A History of Nature Conservation in Britain (London, 1992), 128. John Childs, The Military Use of Land: A History of the Defence Estates (Bern, 1998), 204. Church, Sennybridge , 45. In August 1981 a University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology flora study found 173 species of birds and plants in the Cilieni and Bran valleys. In 1982 Martin Rees, a local amateur ornithologist, counted 90 species of birds on Epynt on behalf of the British Trust for Ornithology. In 1983 a rare marsh plant, Thelypteris palustris, was found by Ray Woods of the Nature Conservancy Council (Church, Sennybridge , 48.) SENTA Site Dossier, 7U–60A–Lands3. SENTA Site Dossier, D4–08.DOC; Correspondence by Rhys Williams, Llysdinam Field Centre data (University of Wales) August 1995, SENTA Site Dossier. SENTA Site Dossier, D4–09.DOC. Mid Wales uplands, North York Moors NP, Northumberland NP, Brecon Beacons NP, Dartmoor NP. I. G. Simmons, The Moorlands of England and Wales: An Environmental History 8000BC–AD2000 (Edinburgh, 2003), 147. Simmons, The Moorlands of England and Wales, 144–5. Nugent Report, 331. www.dtewalesandwest.co.uk/. MOD correspondence re: ‘Conservation Office-SENTA’, 27 March 1997, SENTA Site Dossier. Rtd Col Chris Sernberg, who enabled the Militarized Landscapes site visits and presentations to Sennybridge conservation group, was another commander who actively engaged with and promoted military environmentalism. MOD press release: ‘Army News in Wales – Army Opens New Conservation Centre at Sennybridge’, W/027/97 (MOD, June 1997). On 29 October 2009 Peter Coates, Tim Cole, Chris Pearson and I visited SENTA to give a presentation about the ‘Militarized Landscapes’ project to the Sennybridge Conservation Group. It was a good opportunity to visit the new visitor centre and walk part of the Epynt Way.

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238 98 99 100

101 102 103 104

105 106 107

108

Notes

‘Cost Benefit Analysis Rees FY 05/06’, SENTA Site Dossier. Davis, ‘Introduction – Military Natures’. M Griffith, ‘The Countryside Council for Wales and the Ministry of Defence. Working in Partnership,’ Sanctuary 25 (1996); R. G. Woods, ‘Epynt – Land of Fantastic Fungi,’ Sanctuary 28 (1999), 3, 8; J. A. Jackson, ‘Powys, Sennybridge Training Area,’ Sanctuary 30 (2001), 96–7. MOD literature informs that SENTA is home to ‘204 species of mosses and liverworts, 300 higher plants and 100 lichens’ as well as ‘twenty different species of colourful waxcap toadstools and huge number of fairy club fungi’ (Griffiths, 1996; Jackson, 2001). See also Cole, ‘Military Presences’, 220. See also Cole, ‘Military Presences’, 226. Cole, ‘A Picturesque Ruin?’ 101. Cole, ‘A Picturesque Ruin?’ 109. ‘Operation Order – Exercise Red Kite 5 April–4 May 93’, HQ 160 (Wales) Brigade 001141 G3 LTAR dated 11 January 1993, SENTA Site Dossier. ‘Operation Order – Exercise Red Kite’. Patrick Wright, The Village that Died for England, 417. Correspondence from RSPB (Wales) to HQ 160 (Wales) Brigade, SENTA Site Dossier. Internal memo 001141G3 LATR, SENTA site dossier.

Chapter 7 1

2

3 4

5

This is discussed further in Coates, Cole, Pearson and Dudley, ‘Defending Nation, Defending Nature?’. Although, as Chapter 5 discusses, the original Welsh names have been reerected at the ruins. See also Cole, ‘A Picturesque Ruin?’ 100. Woodward, Military Geographies, 77–83. ‘Living in a Material World: A Cross-Disciplinary Location-Based Enquiry into the Performativity of Emptiness’ (Principle Investigator: Dr Angela Piccini, University of Bristol) (2006–8), part of the AHRC Landscape and Environment Research Network: www.landscape.ac.uk/research/networksworkshops/living_ in_a_material_world.htm. Charles Spencer, ‘The Persians, National Theatre of Wales, Review’, The Telegraph , 13 August 2010. Spencer described the play as ‘extraordinary, one of the most imaginative, powerful and haunting theatrical events of the year’. Charlotte Higgins, ‘The National Theatre of Wales does battle with Aeschylus’s The Persians’, Guardian , 14 August 2010. The director, Mike Pearson, had attended the residential workshop in 2007 and returned to SENTA to stage the tragedy.

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Index

Note: Page numbers in bold refer to chapter ranges while those in italics refer to figures access 18–20, 35, 37–40, 43–4, 46, 48–51, 56–7, 62, 70–1, 91–100, 120–9, 121, 134, 142–3, 145, 149–55, 153, 161, 179, 183, 188–9, 202–4, 205–7 rallies and protests 92, 124–5, 153–4 Afghanistan 1, 21, 193

Ten Tors Challenge 68 Davis, Jeffrey Sasha 6, 97–8, 200–2 double erasure 6–7, 118–19, 130, 166, 201–2 Defence Lands Committee see Nugent Committee Dower, John 37–42, 53 Duchy of Cornwall 36, 42, 232n.116

British Mountaineering Council 91–3 Castlemartin 1, 13, 18, 20, 35, 70–100, 202–3 Pembrokeshire National Park 70, 73, 96 Cold War 20, 41, 118, 141 Cole, Tim 22–3, 128, 193 Conservation Groups 2, 8, 14, 32, 59–60, 104, 116, 132, 150, 151, 155–60, 185 Conservation Officer (MOD) 19, 55, 59, 68, 104, 150, 185 Cronon, William 4 Council for the Protection of Rural England 37, 40, 159 Council for Protection of Rural Wales 187–8 Dartmoor 1, 12, 18, 30, 34–69, 70, 117, 198, 202–3 National Park 35–44, 48–53, 65 National Park Committee (DNPC) 43, 54, 58, 60 Preservation Association (DPA) 45–51, 54, 58, 60, 65 prison 36

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Edmund Russell 3 emptiness 17–18, 51–3, 73, 114, 167 Epynt Way 33, 165, 188–90, 196, 197, 203 eviction 21–7, 75, 120, 123–4, 131, 139–42, 146, 165–7, 171, 174, 190, 192–3 fairy shrimp 2, 31, 101, 102–7, 118, 130, 201–2 Fellowship of Reconciliation in Wales 181 FIBUA 20–1, 187, 203 First World War 1, 111, 116, 134 GeoJournal 5–6 ghost villages 2, 22, 119, 128, 131, 165, 199 great bustard 27, 113 greening 1, 1n. 1, 101, 130 greenwash 1n. 3, 2, 101, 119–20, 130 Gulf War 1, 21 Hardy, Thomas 131, 135–6, 160 Havlick, David 7–9

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Imber 2, 20, 22, 24, 102, 114, 119–30, 140, 198 Association for the Restoration of Imber 124–8 Integrated Land Management Plan 68, 108, 110, 211n. 37 Lulworth see Tyneham maps 13–14 military history 3 MynyddEpynt see Sennybridge Training Area National Farmers Union 167, 173 National Parks 18, 38–44, 48–53, 65–6, 70, 73 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act (1949) 36, 40, 184 National Trust 37, 162 Natura2000 108–10, 130 Nugent Committee (1971-73) 19, 35, 54–8, 61, 89–91, 139, 149, 185, 198 Nugent Report 2, 35, 37, 55, 58–9, 61–2, 89, 116, 131, 150–2, 154, 158, 184–7, 198 Ramblers Association 37, 56, 149 Report of the Committee on Land Utilisation in Rural Areas (1942) see Scott Report requisition 6, 20, 32, 73, 139–41, 165, 166–75 rock-climbers 91–3, 154, 203 Royal Marines 60–3 Salisbury Plain Training Area (SPTA) 1, 2, 6, 11, 15, 22, 31, 35, 61, 101–30, 199–200, 202 Sanctuary magazine 2, 16, 19, 68, 70–1, 76–89, 100, 105, 107, 109, 118, 165, 199

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Scott Report (1942) 37, 40, 53 Second World War 18, 20, 39, 114, 119–20, 122, 126, 134, 139, 145, 166–7, 174–5 ‘Plough-Up campaign’ 38 Sennybridge Training Area (SENTA) 6, 12, 13, 15, 20, 32, 45, 53, 61, 75, 88, 128, 145, 157, 165–97, 201–3 Conservation Centre see Visitor Centre motor racing 183–4 red kites 193–5, 202 sheep 177–9, 183, 187 Visitor Center 166 , 187–94 , 196 , 197 Sharp Inquiry (1975-76) 19, 62–6 Silent Spring 4–5 surfers 94–5, 152–3, 153, 203 Tyneham 1, 6, 13, 22, 25–6, 31, 35, 45, 117, 128, 131–64, 198, 203 Friends of Tyneham (FoT) 144–9, 155, 161 Tyneham Action Group (TAG) 144–9, 151, 155 war and the environment 3–6, 38 Welsh nationalism 32, 167–77, 181–2, 195 direct action 169–70, 177 wilderness 47, 51–3, 143–7, 165 wildness 52–3, 96–8, 112, 131 ‘blasted into wilderness’ 182, 195 Woodward, Rachel 9–11, 72, 78–80, 82, 84–5, 100, 101, 108, 119, 130, 159–60, 200–2 khaki conservation 10, 166, 201 Military Geographies 10, 84 Wordsworth, William 15, 112–13 Wright, Patrick 25–6, 32, 132, 138–9, 165

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