Guild vice president ROLY SMITH, formerly Head of Information at the Peak District National Park and aka“ Mr Peak District”, celebrates the 75th birthday of Britain’ s first National Park
The People’ s Park
Guild vice president ROLY SMITH, formerly Head of Information at the Peak District National Park and aka“ Mr Peak District”, celebrates the 75th birthday of Britain’ s first National Park
The headline to the article in the Yorkshire Telegraph and Star of March 7, 1930, was unequivocal.“ On Kinder Scout Yesterday. Why it is Unsuitable for a National Park” it shouted.
It went on to describe a walk full of“ thrills and dangers” the author took with two companions through a raging blizzard from the Snake Inn along Kinder’ s northern edges. The walk from Seal Edge to Fairbrook Naze, during which the party had“ adventures sufficient to last all of us for many years”, convinced the author“ that as a National Park, we do not think Kinder Scout will fit the bill.”
In sharp contrast at the same time at the southern end of the Peak, the national and local press, supported by such dignitaries as George Bernard Shaw, were campaigning just as vigorously for Dovedale to become a National Park. Backing the campaign by FA Holmes of Buxton for its recognition as a National Park in the Coronation Year of King George VI, GBS apparently compared Dovedale with the view from the Mount of Olives in Palestine.
The Peak District National Park, which was formally designated as Britain’ s first National Park exactly 75 years ago on April 17, 1951, has often polarised opinion. There are those such as the indefatigable fell-wanderer Alfred Wainwright, who was glad to see the back of Kinder’ s“ glutinous peatbogs” when he was writing his classic Pennine Way Companion in 1968.
Earlier still, Daniel Defoe had memorably described the Peak as“ the most desolate, wild, and abandoned country in all England,” in his Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain( 1726).
But to the teeming populations of the surrounding towns and cities of northern England – half the population live within 60 miles of its centre – it was, in the words of broadcaster Brian Redhead,“ The Great Escape.” When Sir Arthur Hobhouse proposed the Peak as a National Park in his 1947 report, he stated:“… beyond its intrinsic qualities, the Peak has a unique value as a National Park, surrounded as it is on all sides by industrial towns and cities.
“ There is no other area which has evoked more strenuous public effort to safeguard its beauty. Its very proximity to the industrial towns renders it as vulnerable as it is valuable,” he added.
This fact is vividly illustrated by a look at a satellite photograph of Britain at night. With only the streetlights of the surrounding towns and cities visible, the distinctive, cupped-hand shape of the National Park stands out as an island of darkness amid the glowing ocean of the industrial conurbations of northern England and the Midlands.
8 OUTDOOR FOCUS Spring 2025