How two Yorkshire men helped create national parks in the UK - thanks to their love of the Dales

John Dower, a keen rambler and angler living in the Yorkshire Dales, was the secretary of the Standing Committee on National Parks set up to campaign on the issue in 1936 although pressure for access to the country’s green spaces dated back much further.

His visionary White Paper in 1945, part of plans for postwar reconstruction, was pivotal in laying down the principles behind national parks to protect wildlife and landscapes and allow people access to the outdoors.

Or as he wrote: “National parks are not for any privileged or otherwise restricted section of the population but for all who come to refresh their minds and spirit and to exercise their bodies in a peaceful setting of natural beauty.”

Despite his worsening health, which led to his death in 1947 from tuberculosis, he was part of a committee which endorsed all his key recommendations and laid the foundations for the creation of the national parks agreed by MPs 75 years ago.

Five years later, it led to the designation of the Yorkshire Dales national park which marks its 70th anniversary this year.

John Dower was often visited in his cottage in Kirkby Malham by scientist Arthur Raistrick who walked the nine miles from his home in Linton, near Grassington, to discuss their ideas for the parks.

Dr Raistrick, a polymath and prolific author whose interests included geology and archaeology, was a key figure in the national parks movement and became a founding member of the old West Riding national park committee.

He wrote at the time: “It offers all that we want, country for the walkers, ranging from the wildest fell tops to the pleasant riverside walks of the lower dales.

“It is a paradise for the naturalist and geologist, and we who live in it and know it, believe that any right-minded person, whatever his country taste, can find satisfaction within its bounds.”

The Dales landscape – perhaps the defining image of Yorkshire to people around the world who have never visited the region popularised in particular on TV and film by James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small books - was shaped over thousands of years by ice.

Later, it was changed by man with the clearance of woodland for farming, the building of drystone walls and field barns, the impact of industry including quarrying, lead mining and shooting, and more recently by visitors and tourists drawn to limestone features like Malham Cove, waterfalls at Aysgarth and ruins of Bolton Priory as well as its network of 1,600 miles of footpaths.

Fewer than 25,000 people live in the park but more than five million tourists visit each year generating more than £400m in revenue and supporting more than 5,000 jobs. Visitor numbers are rising, with footfall up seven per cent in the national park’s four visitor centres in the year to March compared to the previous 12 months.

Nevertheless, the creation of the park was not without its opponents. One town clerk in the North Riding said: “National parks are not greatly desired. It is a scheme of fantasies, idealists and those out of touch with life in the countryside.”

Author and Dales campaigner Colin Speakman first fell in love with the area on cycle rides across the Pennines from his home in Salford in the years after the park was founded.

He wrote his first book on the Dales in 1967 and soon afterwards played a joint role in devising the 80-mile Dales Way route from Ilkley to the shores of Windermere.

He describes the earliest organisations involved in running the park as “pretty feeble”.

It was administratively split between two committees of the old West Riding and North Riding councils with the boundary at Kidstones Pass connecting Wharfedale with Bishopdale and Wensleydale.

“It was two separate sub-committees of two separate county councils both of which were lukewarm about the park and one of them, the North Riding, was quite hostile,” he said.

“They did an absolute minimal amount of work.”

The attitude was typified by one of the earliest successes of campaigners to block plans to turn the ancient Mastiles Lane linking Wharfedale and Malhamdale into a road.

Following the abolition of the ridings in 1974, the organisation came under North Yorkshire County Council although Mr Speakman said the park remained a poor relation.

He was employed by the park authority for six years in work to improve access but left feeling not enough was being done over conservation.

“I thought it was still under the thumb of North Yorkshire and not really achieving what it should do,” he said.

The park did back efforts by campaigners to stop the closure of the historic Settle and Carlisle railway line during the 1980s and retain its “green corridor” over the spine of the Pennines.

But he said it was only really when the park authority gained independence from council control in 1997 that it began delivering on its major objectives.

“It’s a long and complicated story and it’s only relatively recently that the park’s been working on all cylinders but even then with money they’ve been constrained by central government,” he said.

He believes the foot-and-mouth outbreak in 2001 was a seminal moment for the park which was closed to visitors. This led to a collapse in the Dales economy, underlining how dependent it was on visitors including walkers.

The park was extended by nearly a quarter in 2016 into the Howgills and Westmorland and to include even a small part of Lancashire.

Mr Speakman said: “It was quite interesting that the local communities there, particularly the farmers, were much happier to join the Yorkshire Dales national park than they were the Lake District because they thought the Yorkshire Dales was much more pro-farmer and pro-conservation than the Lakes that tends to be dominated by the tourist interests.”

He praises the park for preventing the march of suburbia into the area, particularly at its southern end, which is within commuting distance of big cities, however there remained a significant issue with the lack of social housing.

“That’s creating all kinds of problems for local communities and the park is becoming a kind of rest home for the elderly and affluent and house prices are going through the roof.”

He now feels the authority has got to grips with conservation although the impact of climate change would be a huge problem.

“We are facing massive climate challenges and looking at the hills, particularly the problems of water flows and looking after the peat, these are critical areas where the national park has a hugely important role so it’s not just about recreation, it’s about managing very very sensitive and important ecosystems,” he said.

Looking ahead, the national park is drawing up its new five-year management plan following a public survey which said nature recovery should be its number one priority followed by protecting rare and threatened species and improving river quality. Local people also want action to help younger people live and work in the park and reduce the impact of second homes and holiday lets which now account for around one in four of its properties.

The priority for conservation was underlined by the Campaign for National Park’s health check report of habitats and species published last month which found progress was being made but the scale and pace of initiatives was behind the rate of biodiversity decline.

It said a number of policy changes were needed to support nature recovery in the parks particularly on issues including water pollution, raptor persecution and peatland burning.

A key challenge involved managing land in the parks to provide for wildlife, storing carbon, catchment management and health and wellbeing as it called for a rapid expansion of regenerative agriculture and land management.

It pointed to significant problems for parks in delivering nature recovery with available funding only a fraction of the cash required, with most park authority income now dependent on external sources in the wake of austerity cuts in taxpayer funding of 40 per cent in the last decade.

In the Dales, Mr Speakman said: “I think looking back over 70 years, it was a rather passive outfit and it was all about responding to other people and generally saying no.

“That has changed, and I think the park has probably achieved a lot in partnership with funding bodies way above its actual budget and it has been able to punch above its weight.

“All in all, it’s been quite an achievement particularly in the last couple of decades.”

Events to mark the legacy of Arthur Raistrick will be held in Grassington from July 20-21 organised by the Yorkshire Geological Society with partners. A tribute to John Dower is being planned for November - the month marking the anniversary of the park’s designation order - with the unveiling of a blue plaque in Malham where he lived.