Landscape Matters Issue 4 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 28
E T T E R S
8.
Proposal to build a United Kingdom
Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre
on Grade II listed Victoria Tower Gardens,
adjacent to Westminster WHS:
The public inquiry Inspector concluded that
the various ... public benefits the proposals
offer would demonstrably outweigh the identified harms (15.283), - which include:- VTG is
... a much-loved public park (15.74); UKHMLC
would ... alter the ambiance and mood of the
park (15.87), ... destroy Buxton Memorial’s
setting (to ending slavery throughout British territories) (15.69), and ... appear dense
and congested, and so at variance with the
greater open simple character of the park.
(15.80). VTG is ... of considerable value to the
health and wellbeing of many local residents
... many amongst the most deprived in the UK
(15.193); VTG is their only accessible open
space (15.192); perception of the park ... would
change ... local residents would be discouraged
from using the park for informal recreation
purposes, particularly at busier times. (15.211)
I commend for Parliamentary scrutiny the
attached alternative as better use of public
funding, providing a similar Learning Centre,
saving the park for public use, including its
democratic functions.
Hal Moggridge PPLI
.......
Landscape and Memory
There are those books which require two weeks
on a sun lounger or a jury summons to enable the
reader to digest the quality and quantity of the
written word. Landscape and Memory by Simon
Schama is one such book with 578 pages and 42
pages of bibliographical notes which helped me
pass my jury time in November, concurrent with
COP 26.
Schama noted that 'Landscapes are culture before they are nature: constructs of the imagination
projected onto wood and water and rock. So goes
the argument of this book'. COP 26 saw forests in
less philosophical terms. World leaders agreed to
'Emphasise the critical and interdependent roles
of forest of all types, biodiversity and sustainable land use in enabling the world to meet its
sustainable development goals'. In Landscape
and Memory it was salutary to read that in 1755
Edward Wade proposed to the Royal Society for
the Encouragement of the Arts a mass planting
program not for philosophical nor climatic considerations but due to the voracious timber demand
of the navy. Prizes were awarded and in 1761 the
Duke of Bedfont claimed a silver medal for planting eleven acres of acorns and 16 thousand Firs
across his estates. The Lord Lieutenant of Cardinganshire between 1795 and 1801 allegedly planted
over 2 million trees, and raised 922,00 Oaks. Some
of our woodland legacy today must owe a debt to
such initiatives.
It seems that mankind may value the landscape
for economic reasons or environmental reasons
or more spiritual reasons but it is all these things.
Thoreau noted that 'Mythology is the crop which
the Old World bore before its soil was exhausted'.
As Sharma notes 'It seems to me that neither the
frontiers between the wild and the cultivated nor
those that lie between the past and the present
are so easily fixed. Whether we scramble the
slopes or ramble the woods our Western sensibilities carry a bulging backpack of myth and recollection'.
So perhaps we can recognise in the future that
forests are good for the human soul as well as the
planet.
Tony Edwards FLI
