THE DESTRUCTION OF BEAUTY.
THE writer of a letter in the Nation of March 18th says that the beauty of a part of Kent is threatened by the development of collieries. " There are already," he says, " three existing collieries: Tilmanstone, Snowdown, and Guildford ; and three others are being started between Dover and Sandwich, and other parts of Kent are threatened. The Act for a Light Railway from Dover to Sandwich, connecting up these various collieries, has been passed, and its construction has already commenced, so that in a short time this beautiful neighbourhood will equal in hideousness the blackest portion of the Black Country." The prediction of the blackness is, no doubt, an exaggeration, but, assuming that the writer of the letter is right in believing that the Kent coal-field is going to be developed, the prospect is serious enough, and something ought to be done at once to prevent the appearance of an ordinary colliery district, with all its familiar hugger-mugger characteristics and blatant ugliness.
First of all we ought to say that we do not take the im- possible view that coal seams ought not to be worked merely because they happen to exist in a beautiful district. Those who urge an excessive idealism of this sort co-operate very ill with the moderate people who could very likely get reason- able safeguarding proposals accepted were it not for the heroic futility of the cranks who estrange both the investor and the practical man of business.
We remember the case of a beautiful and not unimportant
town in the North to which it was proposed to build a railway. Instantly there was an outcry that the railway would ruin the scenery of the lake at the head of which the town is placed. "But," said most of the leading residents, "are we to be cut off from the ordinary means of communication with the world because we live in a beautiful place ? For years we have depended on a maddeningly slow service of coaches to the next town. We do not intend to be sacrificed permanently to this beauty of which we are the unfortunate custodians. We have business and commerce like other towns of similar size, and we carry on our daily work at a great disadvantage?' There were severe critics of this plan, we must admit, who were not immoderate persons at all. They said, " You forget that our town is important simply because it is one of the most convenient centres in a district famous for its beauty. If you destroy the beauty you will destroy the importance of the town. It will be useless to have convenient means of communication when our business has left us. Therefore we had better make the best of a dilemma from which we cannot escape." It is not for one who is not a resident of that town to balance such delicate considerations. Enough to say that if it could be proved that the inconvenience of inadequate communication was out of proportion to the value of preserving the amenities of the place, the residents should not be deprived of a railway if they urgently wished for it. After all a railway is not necessarily an ugly thing. We have seen railways attractively engineered, with agreeable stations and pleasing bridges, and we think no one could be much
offended by such sights—provided a railway was really necessary—unless he were reactionary enough to be blind to the romantic side of modern mechanical progress. The principle which we have described applies no less to
collieries. Of all the necessaries of man, coal is one of the most necessary. It is also expensive. We cannot object, therefore, to coal being dug out wherever it may be found hidden, even though its hiding place be in the " Garden of England." All we have a right to ask —and it is a very clear right—is that the collieries should be developed with as little injury to the scenery as possible. What is wanted is not expenditure but forethought. As the writer of the letter in the Nation says, much can be done by screening the works by plantations as is done now at some collieries in the Midlands. There is, indeed, an almost infinite number of ways in which ugliness can be avoided or overcome. The Black Country is what it is chiefly because it was allowed to grow up without thought or design of any kind. An engineer who is choosing a site for sinking a shaft does not generally trouble to think how the superstructure will look from the neighbouring hill, valley, or village, because the idea has never so much as presented itself, to his mind. Often there are alternative sites available and what is required is that some planning brain should be in authority to recommend or insist on the choice of the site which will cause least offence to the eye. A few yards often make all the difference. The height of buildings should be adjusted as far as may be to the possibility of screening them by woods. Then the miners' cottages should not be thrown together as though it mattered nothing what they look like. A colliery is not necessarily an inferno. Here, again, it is no question of expense but only of fore- thought and a designing head.
Plantations, it is true, take years to grow into satisfactory screens. But much may be done by the use of quick-growing trees. For this purpose we know of nothing better than the hardy gum of Tasmania, which grows very rapidly and is, of course, evergreen. The dusky green of the leaves is very attractive to an eye which has once acquired this slightly exotic taste, and the red and yellow tints of young stems and the very pale green of the leaves of saplings are curiously effective. Many people who have tried to grow gums in England, we believe, have been disappointed. This is in most cases because they have tried the wrong kind. The Eucalyptus globutus, which is spoken of as a hardy gnm, and is as often as not supplied by seedsmen, succumbs to the rigours of our climate ; but the Eucalyptus Gunnii scorns wind and despises frost. We know of a place in Essex where, by the enterprise of a landowner, tall and handsome plantationi have been raised within a few years.
• The whole difficulty when an industrial development takes place in a rural district is that there is no one to step in and map out the new colony in advance. When once the population is housed and established it is too late. Yet, for want of forethought, ruin has been brought to some of the most charming places in England, and one has the bitterness of reflecting that it could all have been avoided. Why should it not be practicable for every County Council to have an Amenities Committee to watch schemes which might cause the disfiguration of beautiful districts, and to insist that they shall be guided within reason by someone vested with the necessary authority The prospect of a disfigurement of Kent is as good an opportunity as there could be for calling such a committee into existence. We plead for an insignificant expenditure and the avoidance of merely gratuitous offences. To secure these it might be necessary- to increase the existing statutory powers of county councils, but only in a slight degree. We want colliery-planning as much as town- planning and garden mines as well as garden cities. Man- made ugliness can largely be corrected by human ingenuity.
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