New Forest Notes: Profitable campsites will come at huge cost to nature
Complex negotiations over Forest campsites
When I wrote about this subject in the early summer, everything concerning the future of the Forest’s visitor camps was in a state of flux. The passage of five months has hardly lessened this uncertainty. The one thing that has become clear is that there is now a “preferred bidder” for the camping business in the shape of a branch of the New Forest Show Society operating under the name of Camping in the New Forest Ltd.
Arguments have been raging about Forestry England’s entitlement to grant leases of the camps, whether the verderers’ consent is required if such a lease is granted and as to the physical location and precise permitted use of the camps. The research into these questions has been led by the New Forest Association (Friends of the New Forest) but without, so far, any very clear outcome. It does seem to have been agreed by the Forest, but perhaps not by Forestry England, that a locally based entrepreneur operating under the wing of a “charity” is preferable to a remote and entirely commercial national holiday site operator. Suggestions that such organisations as Butlins or Center Parcs might take over have not found favour locally, although I have no idea if either would be in the least bit interested.
I fear that there may have been a certain amount of starry-eyed thinking about this locally preferred system of management. I have not the slightest doubt about the good intentions of the New Forest Show Society, but the taking on of a major business operation, requiring large capital expenditure and incurring substantial annual rent, leaves fairly limited scope for meeting the landscape, farming and conservation hopes of the Forest community. For any operator the campsites need to be made to pay well and not simply to tick over with a marginal profit. Such a need must conflict to a considerable extent with the traditional values of the Forest.
The potential new operator has applied to the verderers for the court’s consent to the proposed takeover of the camps, and the Official Verderer announced last month that such consent is likely to be given. The terms of this consent and any agreement on which it is based are still far from clear. The intention of all parties (I think) is that the lease, licence or whatever it is should run for 10 years only, and that is a vast improvement on the illegal term of 75 years which the landowner claimed to grant to earlier operators.
What remains as uncertain as ever is the immediate future of three highly controversial sites within the ancient woodland of the Forest. This was emphasised in a presentment from Richard Reeves at the November court. He pointed out to the verderers that over 20 years ago the closure of these most damaging sites was demanded on conservation grounds and that nothing whatever has been done since. That is nearly half the lifetime of the sites, during which dreadful deterioration has continued. As is now usual in Forest affairs, there has been much talk and no action. Camping in the New Forest Ltd may be sympathetic in principle to such closures, but achieving them may not be quite so easy as it looks.
The three camps are those I listed in July: Hollands Wood, Denny Wood and Longbeech. All have suffered badly from 50 years of intense use, ugly and neglected infrastructure, and safety tree fellings and mutilation; but they remain a significant source of income in the eyes of any potential operator and are not to be thrown away lightly.
Longbeech may be the least difficult of the three as I am told that it is not particularly profitable and that it has been closed for all or much of this season. Hollands Wood, an “equipped” site, is different. There are suggestions that it could simply be transferred, at considerable cost, to land on the opposite side of the A337 on property already leased by the Show Society at New Park. That assumes that there would be no problem in securing planning permission for what would be a major change of use.
Any householder trying to secure even a small bedroom extension knows how unwise such an assumption would be. Moreover, I think that little consideration has been given to the inevitable intensification of damage and disruption which would be inflicted on the Forest west of the road. Already one camp operates from New Park, and another large private site abuts on the Forest nearby at Black Knowl. A third (FE) site operates on Ober Heath outside Aldridge Hill. Four major camping operations, all within half a mile of each other, is hardly an attractive proposition for the Forest and its tranquillity.
What is needed is the closure of Hollands Wood, without relocation to an alternative site, so as to reduce the overall pressure, but as so often nowadays the demands of recreation seem to take precedence over the Forest’s protection.
Denny Wood is the smallest of the camps and, leaving aside questions of relocation, its closure has the potential for considerable advantage to the Forest. Its grazing is better than either Hollands Wood or Longbeech and although the ancient trees have been cut about or felled, with good management the woodland might be restored. Still, if I was the operator of the site, I would be seeking compensation land elsewhere, so there is no easy solution. The photograph above, taken in 1986, shows a recently mutilated and killed pollarded beech within the camp – a safety measure.
Unfortunately, the problems of allowing camping on the common land of the Forest are not limited to the open woodland sites. At Setthorns (open all year) there have been regular complaints of residential use and caravan storage, perhaps contrary to planning and other permissions. At Ashurst there have been acute conflicts between campers and grazing livestock, while the landscape in Roundhill camp has been altered beyond recognition by intense camping. The site is increasingly used during the winter months for recreational events.
The conclusion of an 1868 parliamentary select committee on the Forest was that “the interests of the Crown and of the commoners are at variance and there must be a perpetual struggle of conflicting interests”. Today the main objectives of the Crown (now FE) are no longer in timber production, but rather in promoting and profiting from recreation, while the commoners and Forest residents continue to be on the other side; but the judgement remains just as valid as 150 years ago.
Shunting
The former Deputy Surveyor, the late Mr Donn Small, was responsible for implementing the 1970 report Conservation of the New Forest. He formulated the very sensible doctrine that “the shunting effect of displaced recreational pressure” must be allowed for. This meant that when you close off one area, in order to prevent continued damage, you should already have planned for the consequences of your work by anticipating and controlling the “shunted” pressure.
He, first of all, built car parks to accommodate the visitors who would be displaced from their regular haunts by protective ditching and dragons’ teeth. Then the car-free area surrounding those car parks was built and eventually these zones spread across the Forest. It was a sound theory and it remains valid today, although the public has recently discovered an effective evasion strategy through perfectly legal verge parking – stupidly allowed by the byelaws. It is distressing to see that Forestry England seems to have completely forgotten or, worse still, decided to ignore the policies of earlier and better management.
Ashurst, on the eastern edge of the Forest, is the first major access point for Southampton and Totton residents when they come to the Forest for recreation and dog walking. There are no car parks off the main road until you reach Lyndhurst, so a turning to the north, Woodlands Road on the edge of the Forest, became a favourite target for dog walkers and verge parkers, clogging gateways, cutting up the verges and making life thoroughly difficult and disagreeable for local householders. The actual use of the Forest here (Busketts Lawn Inclosure) was perhaps not particularly an issue. The pressure was absorbed on plantation rides, without significant threats to grazing animals and with limited disturbance of wildlife because the planting here is very dense.
Without planning for the consequences of shunting, FE set about making it impossible to park in Woodlands Road north of Potternsford. The actual defensive measures were effective, but cars were all driven onwards for over a mile on unfenced roads, overrunning a small car park unusually deep in the Forest at Bartley. The shunting was even encouraged by FE notices. Instead of the original handful of chiefly local cars which formerly used the park, it is now packed out each morning and the access track has become extremely rutted.
I have observed it recently on several days. From 9-9.30am, between 20 and 30 dogs are turned loose to run in the Forest through open woodland and grazing lawns. In addition to the new private car users, at least three commercial dog exercising vans disgorge their cargos here.
With a little thought, these problems would have been so easy to avoid. A car park formed inside Busketts Lawn Inclosure near to the A35, out of sight and sound of the local residents, would have accommodated visitors at their original destination of choice and avoided the damage to the Forest which has now been done. It is yet another example of bad planning and management of public use of the Forest.
Wrong history of the Holmsley railway bridge
My knowledge of railways extends little beyond the original definition of shunting and the New Forest version described above, but last month I was sent a copy of South Western Circular, a beautifully produced specialist railway history journal. It contains an interesting and well researched paper by Mr Philip Brown describing the controversial bridge over the old Southampton and Dorchester Railway.
He points out that the national park’s website (November 2021) account of the bridge was wrong in claiming that the recently replaced steel structure was preceded by a brick arch. It seems that there never was such an arch. In 1905 a labourer named Purchase discovered a crack in the then-existing original cast iron girder structure, built probably on brick pillars. It was in one of the main girders carrying the (now) A35 over the railway on a wooden deck. It was thought that the damage had been caused by the new motor traffic. A disaster was thus averted and the observant Mr Purchase was rewarded with a payment of 10 shillings!
Temporary repairs were carried out, and in May 1908 a tender for £835 was accepted for the replacement bridge, a structure which was in turn demolished this year.
