Firstly, the working horse has disappeared. So now oats, grown as fodder for horses, are not grown. Many features associated with horses and traditional farming have vanished, for example the fields no longer need to accommodate horse driven ploughs and turning circles.
More significantly, in the search for efficiency, with new mechanical assistance, fields have gotten bigger, where intensive arable farming has become a monoculture. This was aided by the government, which estimates that in England and Wales, 240,00 kilometers of hedgerow has been grubbed up. The loss of hedgerows in the Valley and elsewhere has created, not only a much more open landscape in arable areas, but has also contributed towards the ecological barrenness of much farmland. Hedgerows are also very important for feeding, breeding and roosting mammals, birds and insects. Some of the sights and sounds of wildlife we associate with the countryside are being lost.
Fortunately not many of the walls in the Loxley valley have suffered this fate, but as they grow useless and unwanted as boundaries, they get neglected and fall down over time, creating a ‘run down’ landscape, open, featureless and uninteresting.
This is also been caused by specialization in agricultural techniques over that past 50 years. The sowing of new strains of wheat and barley and the introduction of new crops and new land uses.
In the Loxley valley the introduction of a golf course and plant nurseries are radical changes to the land use. Other agricultural changes in the Valley are things like hay silage- new methods of cutting hay early and storing it, and new ‘Set aside’ land, which is left to overgrow with weeds, which is subsidized by the government to reduce the huge amounts of food surplus created every year. This seems to me, ridiculous. If we do not need all the agricultural land, surly that means we are spending too much money on imports. Yet this is hard to deal with, as economic studies show that import bans and subsidies to farmers in England rarely work. Set aside land now accounts for neatly 3000 hectares of farmland in South Yorkshire.
Woodland.
Most of the surviving ancient woodland on South Yorkshire was managed as coppice woodland since the medieval period until sometime in the nineteenth century. This is a traditional method of woodland management as discussed in The History of Landscape Change Section. All of the woods in the Loxley valley are non-ancient. This means they are secondary and created by re-germination of previously cleared land. They mostly exist on sites that cannot be used for agriculture, such as steep slopes (around the river) and wetlands, as around the reservoir.
Since the valley lies on the Pennine fringe its woodland has a signature, derived from the coal measures and grit tone it lies on. But these signatures have been altered with the introduction of new species, such as Hornbeams, Chestnuts and Beeches, not native trees to south Yorkshire. And this, along with the reduction of coppicing and Dutch elm disease has lead to today’s wood of Oak, Ash and Alder and many trees of the same age. More work is being done, with lottery funding to try and go back to a mix of native trees, with ancient and new.
Buildings.
Traditionally the buildings of south Yorkshire, including that of the Loxley valley have been constructed of Millstone grit, coal measure sandstone and timber. (More Magnesian Limestone and brick in the east of S.Yorkshire.) But back in medieval times many of the houses were pure or half-constructed of timber, saving stone for the richer or more important buildings. The timber used for these was mostly oak cut from many trees, using the trees natural shapes for individual parts. In the east of S.Yorkshire transporting stone to keep with vernacular style was difficult so some brick and pebbles were increasingly used. But in the Loxley valley most buildings have the character of grit millstone and sandstone, with colours ranging from dark grey to yellowish.
The Loxley valley is also home to a medieval church, in similar style, but using larger cut stone and now, even gravestones line the path, which is a very sustainable use of that material.
This picture demonstrates an average house construction in the southern Pennine fringe:
This style has remained for centuries in this area of the countryside. But in modern terms, now the simple craft skills have been lost and use of modern building techniques and designs, means that to build this house would be expensive and difficult. Hence many houses built in this area are completely different or give some vague attempt to create something similar, but fail, as with the new estates on the edge of Stannington.
Industry.
The impact of industry on The Valley and South Yorkshire as a whole has been varied and complex, sites have been introduced, re-used, abandoned and destroyed in the twentieth century. For this I’ll concentrate on the Valley only.
The first forms of industry seen within the valley are water mills. These could have been used for many things and records are sketchy, but mills were widespread by the 1700’s. The common early uses were iron smelting, cutters, corn milling, paper making and bark crushing. These mills require the water’s power to be harnessed, so weirs and reservoirs were set up along the river Loxley.
These early industries had a big effect on the shape, direction ad look of the river and therefore the landscape. The wears and reservoirs still exist today, but little is left of the mills. Although their mark is still felt through the walks along the river, seeing the great surging wears and beautiful reservoirs, but also the marshes, dams and the returning woodland along the river.
Now the industry comprises of water treatment and some timber yards. These have been masked well, by keeping them low in the valley and amongst tree coverage. Now the main impacts on the valleys' character will come from the other land uses, such as agriculture and housing. But with the use of renewable energy issues we never know when we may see that water power being harnessed again.
BIB:
An Environmental history of Britain, by I.G. Simmons.
Pages: 202-209, 218-220, 234-236, 258-270, 291, 297-299, 323-325
The Illustrated history of the countryside, by Oliver Rackham.
Chapters 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 13, 14, 16.
Pictures copied from pages 31 and 32.
Britain’s changing countryside, by Mary C Morris
Chapters 2 and 3