Gerald Smart and Peter Brandon, Editors

Synopsis: The South Downs are among the best loved landscapes in southern England. The beauty of their rolling chalk hills and steep escarpments, open river valleys, dramatic sea cliffs, sandy wealden ridges and woodlands, and colourful wildlife, has been an inspiration to writers and artists for centuries. The beauty is enjoyed daily by the 120,000 residents of local towns and villages, and the area attracts nearly 40 million visits a year, a total which is more than for any existing National Park.

The Downs are, nevertheless, essentially working countryside, landscapes that have changed, and are still changing, in response to farming and forestry practice. It is those activities that inhibited early planners and government from designating the South Downs as a National Park in 1949 along with the perceived wilder, sometimes mountainous, areas such Dartmoor, the Lake District or Snowdonia. Recently the Government proposed that the area should at last become a National Park and lengthy public inquiries have taken place.

The area the Park may cover encompasses the familiar chalk escarpments that stretch from Winchester in the west to the coast at Eastbourne in the east, and also includes the greensand areas to the north near Alresford and Alton, over to Blackdown south of Haslemere, and then on to Petworth, Steyning and to the country north of Lewes.

As with all such inquiries there are strong whiffs of self-interest and ‘nimbyism’ evident: local authorities fear their control over planning matters will become over-complicated; others dislike what they see as a further layer of bureaucracy from a National Park Authority; house prices usually are higher in National Parks; some farms and private estates do not like further control and possibly increased recreational access; and the Department of Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (defra) – the statutory sponsor of any National Park – is scared that it will attract boundary law-suits such as the one it lost in the recently designated New Forest Park.

This book describes in a readable way the local, national and international value of the Downs, the problems arising from their multiple use, and the steps that have been, and can be, taken to conserve them. It provides all the necessary background for understanding the
history, aesthetics, economics, land use and conservation of the area, which can inform any debate about its future.

It is published at a critical time for yet another public inquiry will take place in February 2008 to decide whether those northerly, wealden areas with their small towns, such as Petersfield, Liss, Midhurst, Steyning and Lewes, should be excluded once and for all, though the Inspector recommended last June that there should indeed be a Park, but confined to the chalk.

Contents & Authors:
Foreword, LORD SELBORNE; Introduction, GERALD SMART & PETER BRANDON; The South Downs before and after 1939, PETER BRANDON; Rocks and Relief, RENDEL WILLIAMS; The Archaeology of the South Downs, DAVID McOMISH & PETER TOPPING; The History of the South Downs Landscape, PETER BRANDON; Habitats and their Importance, TONY WHITBREAD; The South Downs Economy and Society, TREVOR CHERRETT; The Role of Agriculture in the South Downs Landscape, PATRICK LEONARD; Forestry in the South Downs, DONALD MACDONALD; Water Resources Management, JASON LAVENDER; Countryside Recreation in the South Downs, PAUL MILLMORE; Development Issues, MARTIN SMALL; Establishing the Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and their Management, PHIL BELDEN & ALISON TINGLEY; A South Downs National Park? GERALD SMART; Sustainability: a Vision for the South Downs, GERALD SMART & PETER BRANDON; Index.

The Editors:
Gerald Smart is Emeritus Professor of Planning at University College London and formerly County Planning Officer for Hampshire. He has been a council member of the RSPB, and is currently on the council of the Solent Protection Society. He was appointed CBE in 1991 for services to strategic planning.

Peter Brandon is a former Head of the Department of Geography at the University of North London. He is a well-known author on landscape history, and is a Vice-President of the Sussex branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) and of the Sussex Archaeological Society, and President of the South Downs Society (formerly the Society of Sussex Downsmen).

Date of Publication: 31 October 2007
Hardback ISBN: 978 185341 137 3
Pages: 252, including 42 pages of colour and black & white photos, maps and line drawings
Format:297 x 210 mm Softback only, with flaps
Price: £35.00 A special ‘pre-publication’ price of £25.00 was in operation till 31/12/07

Distribution: concentration has been in the South Downs area at such outlets as the Emsworth Bookshop, One Tree Books in Petersfield, Hidden Nature in Chichester, the West Dean Gardens Visitor Centre shop, Wheeler’s Bookshop in Midhurst, the Haslemere Bookshop, the Petworth Bookshop, the Steyning Bookshop, the Lewes Castle Museum shop (Sussex Archaeological Society), Much Ado Books in Alfriston. Branches of Waterstone’s will get the book for you but such orders have to be serviced via the wholesalers, Gardners of Eastbourne, leading to delays. Nationally, the mail-order booksellers, Natural History Book Service (NHBS) Environment Bookstore, Totnes, Devon, and Summerfield Books of Skelton, Penrith, Cumbria, stock the book. Customers may always order direct from the publisher and pay by credit/debit card or cheque, though postage and packing of £3.00 will be charged; you may care to examine the book, however, in one of the supportive shops mentioned above.