Wildlife in depression, C.1870–1940^157preservation as areas for healthy recreation. Its founders were motivated by
a similar concern for the moral and physical degeneration of the working
class as proponents of new urban parks. A well-connected and energetic
lobbying group, with keen legal expertise, the CPS was largely responsible
for preserving Hampstead Heath, Epping Forest and other London
commons from being built over, by persuading the Metropolitan Board of
Works and subsequently the GLC to purchase them.^110 More important
in the long run was the National Trust, founded in 1895 by Octavia Hill,
Sir Robert Hunter, and Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, a clergyman from
the Lake District, with the aim of preserving ‘for the benefit of the Nation
... lands and tenements (including buildings) of beauty or historic interest’
by outright acquisition.^111 Not surprisingly, the idea of preserving blocks
of land where wildlife, especially its rarer forms, could flourish became
increasingly popular among naturalists, especially ornithologists. And while
wildlife conservation was not its main concern the first property acquired by
the National Trust was in fact Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire, one of the last
fragments of undrained Fenland, a gift from Charles Rothschild (brother
of Lionel Walter). In 1912 the 1,335 acres of salt marsh at Blakeney Point
in Norfolk was purchased by public subscription and handed over to the
National Trust, followed by the 1,821 acres of Scolt Head in 1923.^112 By
this time that organization had acquired a number of other places because
of their wildlife importance, such as Watermeads in Surrey in 1913.
Meanwhile, Rothschild himself was responsible for the establishment,
in 1912, of the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves, which soon
produced a list of sites which it believed should be preserved for the nation.^113
Rothschild himself bought Woodwalton Fen in Huntingdonshire and gave
it to the Society as their first reserve, and soon afterwards the first of the
County Wildlife Trusts, for Norfolk, was established in 1926 in order to
save the coastal marshes at Cley from being drained for agriculture. Further
reserves were established by the Trust over the following decades: at Martham
in 1928; Alderfen Broad in 1930; Wretham Heath in 1938; and Weeting
in 1942.^114 But it was not until 1946 that the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust was
formed, initially to manage a reserve at Askam Moor, acquired by Sir Francis
Terry and Arnold Rowntree to save it from development; this was followed
by the establishment of the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust in 1948.^115
Wildlife reserves were initially viewed in essentially scientific terms, as open
air laboratories and important habitats to be protected from development and
disturbance – including disturbance by the general public. Many naturalists
regarded the increasing numbers of trippers and holidaymakers now able to
make their way far into the countryside as a major threat to wildlife. Gay
in 1944 described how improvements in transport and especially the advent
of the small car had led to:
The ever-increasing popularity of Norfolk as a holiday resort. Hitherto
summer visitors were mainly confined to the Broads and the coastal