ChapTer Ten
Conclusion: Nature, history
and conservation
As many readers will be aware, the period covered by this book ends at a
crucial point in time, when another great transformation of the countryside,
more drastic than anything wrought by the ‘agricultural revolution’, was
beginning. World War II brought the long agricultural depression to an
abrupt end: the arable acreage in England and Wales rose by around five
million acres (c.2 million hectares) between 1939 and 1945 and the fabric
of the ‘traditional’ landscape was assaulted as never before.^1 One writer,
observing changes in the Essex countryside, described how:
The plough has been put into the pasture. Hedges have been cut down to
the ground and ditches opened up everywhere. Fields which the villagers
swore never had been any good, and never would be, have been coaxed
into fertility. Spruce copse and oak wood alike have been felled; and even
village commons have been ploughed and planted.^2Naturalists and conservationists, while bemoaning these changes, were not
in general unduly alarmed. Many believed that the return to agricultural
prosperity would prove short-lived, vanishing with the peace. Others, more
optimistically, thought that the widespread acceptance of state planning –
which had been steadily developing through the early twentieth century, and
was greatly encouraged by the experiences of War – would be brought to
bear on environmental as well as on economic matters. In reality, continued
food shortages ensured that the national government, and latterly the
European Economic Community, introduced a range of subsidies to further
increase production. This, moreover, came at a time when a barrage of new
technological developments was becoming available to farmers. Tractors