An Environmental History of Wildlife in England 1650-1950

The indusTrial revoluTion^87

and the garden snapdragon (Antirrhinum majus).^62 But railways were as
important for the range of new environments they provided – in terms
of the steep slopes, thin soils and well-drained conditions of cuttings and
embankments, as well as the dry ballast of the ‘permanent way’ on which
sleepers were laid – as for their role as ‘wildlife corridors’. Before the
widespread use of herbicides to control plant growth, rail tracks were often
characterized by displays of spring and summer flowers, species typical of
well-drained soil, such as lesser toadflax.^63 A variety of maritime species
was also commonly found in these locations, including sand sedge (Carex
arenaria), possibly because early railways were sometimes laid on ballast
brought from the coast, but probably because the new habitat was similar to
that favoured naturally by the plant.^64 Embankments produced particularly
striking combinations of species. Richard Jeffries described in 1883 how:

The smooth express to Brighton has scarcely, as it seems, left the metropolis

when the banks of the railway become coloured with wild flowers. Seen

for a moment in swiftly passing, they border the line like a continuous

garden. Driven from the field by plough and hoe, cast out from the

pleasure-grounds of modern houses, pulled up and hurled over the wall to

wither as accursed things, they have taken refuge on the embankment and

the cutting. There they can flourish and ripen their seeds, little harassed

even by the scythe and never by grazing cattle... Purple heathbells gleam

from shrub-like bunches dotted along the slope; purple knapweeds lower

down in the grass; blue scabious, yellow hawkweeds where the soil is

thinner, and harebells on the very summit...^65

Following the short-sighted contraction of the rail network in the 1960s,
a number of abandoned cuttings and embankments have become nature
reserves, and even Sites of Special Scientific Interest.^66

The impact of coal use

The most important impact of the industrial revolution on the environment
and wildlife in England in the period before the 1860s was almost certainly
an indirect one: the success of canals and railways in ensuring that coal
became the main form of domestic fuel in almost every corner of England.
As we have seen, before the eighteenth century, many of the key semi-natural
habitats in the countryside were in whole or part maintained by regular
cutting for firing materials: these included not only ancient woodland but
also hedges, heaths, moors and wetlands. The spread of coal use thus had
major environmental implications, although the chronology of declines in
traditional fuels (and thus of the habitats that provided them) was related
in part to their particular characteristics, in terms of calorific value and the
ease with which they could be extracted. The cutting of heaths thus declined