Many people will be surprised to see the Forest of Bowland featured in an article about the landscape of Yorkshire, as 90% of the 803 square kilometres of the Forest of Bowland Area of Outstanding Beauty (AONB) now lies within the County Palatine of Lancashire.
Forest of Bowland: between Lancashire and Yorkshire
It was not always so. Up until 1974 over 50% of the Forest of Bowland lay within what was the West Riding of Yorkshire. But if you take out the so-called Pendle Outlier – that Lancashire icon Pendle Hill and its surrounding villages whose history is intertwined with the tragic stories and legends of the Lancashire Witches – then around 70% of the AONB was historically in the West Riding of Yorkshire.
And as such it is one of the wildest and grandest of all Yorkshire’s many varied and beautiful landscapes. Many people have compared it with the Scottish Highlands, with its wide, open stretches of gritstone, heather, rough pasture and peat moorland, and its wild, even desolate, moorland passes such as Cross of Greet between Slaidburn and Bentham; Bowland Knotts between Bolton by Bowland and Clapham; and the better-known Trough of Bowland that links Dunsop Bridge and Quernmore on the outskirts of Lancaster.
You can still walk or take a mountain bike 15 miles along the ancient, unsurfaced track over Salter Fell known as The Hornby Road, from north of Slaidburn in the old West Riding to end at Hornby in the Lune Valley.
Few people know, for example, that the old county boundary stone between West Riding and Lancashire lies on the Lancaster side of the summit of the Trough of Bowland. Old road signs and bridges in places like Slaidburn and Dunsop Bridge still have the tell-tale letters WR carved into their stone or cast in iron. Culturally and historically, if not politically, most of the Forest of Bowland still belongs to Yorkshire.
Administratively, of course, it makes sense for the people of this beautiful area to look towards their new County City of Preston, rather than the far-off market town of Northallerton, closer to Teesside than the centre of Yorkshire. It is even claimed that in the remote valley of Whitendale, near Dunsop Bridge is a spot calculated to be the very centre of the British Isles.
History and land use
The wild, unpopulated moorlands of the Forest of Bowland reflect its long history and usage for recreation – as a Norman and Plantagenet Royal Hunting Forest or Chase, a huge area of land protected for the use of the King, where settlement and enclosure outside small defined enclaves was strictly forbidden as was taking of game.
In Medieval and Tudor times this activity was mainly the hunting of red deer and wild boar, but in more recent centuries, red grouse. Not all of Bowland was purely Royal Forest, but included smaller Forests of Quernmore, Bleasdale, Wyresdale and Pendle, owned and enjoyed by the Dukedoms and great families of Lancashire and Yorkshire and their descendants right until the present day.
This explains why even in the 21st century villages remain small without the modern peri-urban estates of modern commuter homes that blight much of rural England. Much of the land and many of the villages are still owned by great families. Much of the upland is still fiercely protected in terms of conservation, as well as being managed for grouse shooting.
Public access to the Forest of Bowland
In fact, for many decades, Abbeystead Moors, owned by the Dukes of Westminster and the Grosvenor family, was a battleground and flash point between the Ramblers, landowners and gamekeepers. During the 1960s and 1970s public access became a major issue for walkers on the estates where it was strictly forbidden. There is a famous picture of the then Secretary of the Ramblers and legendary access campaigner Tom Stephenson (1893–1987) standing beside a warning notice on his beloved Abbeystead Moors indicating there was ‘No Road’ for walkers.
Even the creation of the AONB in 1964 didn’t improve the situation, with relatively few rights of way away from the dalesides and valley bottoms. The 2000 Countryside and Rights of Way Act – generally known as CROW Act – was passed very much with the access situation in Bowland in mind.
In terms of public access, the CROW Act was a therefore a huge watershed for the Forest of Bowland. Most of the wonderful moorland with magnificent views from the summits and valley sides are now open and available to fell walkers. Not that all problems have disappeared.
Despite the area being a sanctuary for great birds of prey, hen harriers (the logo of the Forest of Bowland AONB), buzzards, peregrines, merlin, and short-eared owls continued to be persecuted, allegedly from a desire to protect the game. In more recent years this persecution is now much reduced in this particular area, and the populations of key species, such as hen harrier, are now recovering, actively encouraged by most landowners.
Water catchment is also hugely important for Bowland with many Victorian and early 20th century reservoirs serving Lancashire towns, now managed by United Utilities, who also take a strongly protective position on wildlife habitat conservation. This includes protection and restoration of the huge areas of peat moorland, now a vital source of carbon capture and storage. But United Utilities also own, and Forestry England now manage, one of the North’s finest recreational assets – Gisburn Forest, a large area of coniferous plantation now a hugely popular area for mountain biking.
Access for all?
The Forest of Bowland AONB is now managed by Lancashire County Council. It is carefully promoted as a magnificent area for walking, cycling and what is known as sustainable tourism. However, like other protected landscapes in the UK, despite the recommendations of the recent Glover Report, public transport services are limited to the boundary edges.
Shamefully, such iconic villages as Slaidburn, Newton-in-Bowland, Whitewell or Dunsop Bridge now have no public bus service, so without a car the Forest of Bowland’s wilder and higher places are inaccessible. Even the somewhat skeletal North Yorkshire County Council bus service 11 from Settle turns round at Tosside on the County boundary. Far more passengers would be carried if, as in times past, it continued to the popular tourist village of Slaidburn and even onwards to Clitheroe, a market town with frequent trains to Manchester.
As one of the last great wildernesses of Northern England, the frontier between Yorkshire and Lancashire, where the last great battle for public access to open country in England was fought and won, access for people without their own car needs to be restored. It is a battle which needs to be fought both to help reduce car dependency and to implement that simple but profound principle that access to our finest areas of English countryside should be open to and accessible for all, not just car owners.
