THE THREATENED MOOR
By R. A. J. WALLING
DARTMOOR has " high priority " in the outlined plans for National Parks. It is the most clearly suitable compact piece of country in Southern England for preservation in its pristine state, one of the most beautiful and impressive, a unique granite massif, with all the magnificent scenic qualities of such a region. If we are to have National Parks, to leave Dartmoor out of the system will be to omit the Prince of Denmark from the play of Hamlet. Give the War Office its head and this will be done. Its scheme will not only prevent the creation of a National Park, but also extinguish the public franchise in large parts of the moor.
Apparently the Prime Minister has not realised the heat of public indignation fired by these proposals, not alone in the West of England. It extends to many thousands of people who go every year to Dart- moor to enjoy its freedom and its loveliness. As for the West, it is thoroughly aroused. Every section of society, from the County Council to the youthful " hikers " who flock to the moor, is up in arms. The farmers' organisations, the water authorities, the archae- ologists, the city and borough councils of a large area look upon the alienation of Dartmoor as an immitigable disaster.
Even if we never have a National Park in England there are many reasons why the War Office should aggress no further on Dartmoor than it has already done at Okehampton and Willsworthy on the northern and western borders. Overwhelming objections come in on behalf of agriculture, hygiene, history and amenity. All over the moor are valuable, immemorial grazing rights. It supports innumer- able animals—cattle, sheep, ponies, many of which live all the year round in the open and get their sustenance from the moor. Cattle and sheep cannot graze where shells and machine-gun bullets are flying and tanks are roaring. Dartmoor is a rich treasure-house of archaeology. It contains the most numerous and the oldest vestiges of the prehistoric ages above ground in England. That these famous rude stone monuments cannot long exist where mimic warfare goes on is proved by what happened to several of them while the moor was given over to battle-practice during the war.
But one of the most important consequences of the War Office proposals would be to imperil the water-supplies of nearly half a million people living in the cities and towns of Devon. Dartmoor is their natural storage reservoir. The rivers Teign, Dart, Avon, Erme, Yealm, Plym and Tavy take their rise in the moor and flow through it down to the English Channel ; the Taw finds its way to the Atlantic. The very life of the South Devon coast towns, including Torquay and Paignton, the City of Plymouth, and a great number of smaller places, depends upon the undisturbed purity of these rivers. There are four storage reservoirs in the moor, and others are projected. Obviously, purity cannot be guaranteed if large parts of the moor become per- manent military camps. The aqueduct from Dartmoor to Plymouth, made 35o years ago, originated in the needs of the Queen's ships at Plymouth. In 1946 the Admiralty is the Corporation's biggest customer for water, supplied to its great shore establishments and warships. The Ministry of Health should have views on this matter, just as the Ministry of Agriculture should not be blind to a threat to a section of the great livestock industry of Devon.
Aesthetic arguments, e.g., that the public would lose freedom of access to fine scenery of a kind to be seen nowhere else in the country, may not count for much in the decision of the question, though it should. Purely economic considerations may weigh more heavily. Popular resorts in every part of the county of Devon feel deeply alarmed by the possibility of losing one of the major attractions for visitors. The Government has made no clear statement of the areas which it proposes to monopolise, but only a general one which adds to the already great area of the artillery ranges at Okehampton the ground used in half-a-dozen other parts of the moor for military purposes in war-time. At a recent large meeting, however, Mr. Hayter-Hames, chairman of the Devon Planning Committee, said the scheme was understood to involve the whole moor north of the Princetown to Moretonhampstead road and half of the area to the south, and its use five days a week for practice with live ammunition. The northern half contains the highest tors on Dartmoor, including High Wilihays and Yes Tor, and half-a-dozen more above 1,70o feet. There are seven above r,5oo feet in the southern half. Together they give the moor its character.
The Prime Minister has promised an enquiry. If it resembles the enquiry held in North Devon about the Taw estuary, which resolved itself into a statement by War Office representatives of its intentions, that will not satisfy the objectors. They want a local, public enquiry with all cards on the table.
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