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Conflicts of power, landscape and amenity in debates over the British Super Grid in the 1950s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 March 2019

Katrina Navickas
Katrina Navickas*
Affiliation:
University of Hertfordshire
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The ‘Super Grid’ network of high-voltage power lines transformed the landscapes of England and southern Scotland in the 1950s. This article examines debates over the siting of pylons, with a focus on the public inquiries into the proposed lines across the Pennines in Lancashire. It brings together archives on electrification from the newly nationalised British Electricity Authority, preservationist groups and local government to reveal deeper insights into processes of local and national decision-making about and popular attitudes to the rural landscape. It uncovers how the public inquiries exposed tensions and differences about the definition of amenity, not just between the electricity industry and preservationists, but also between interests representing urban industrial districts and the National Parks, northern and southern England, and within the preservationist movement. The conflicts over pylons and amenity shows how narratives of landscape preservation were contested and riven with class, region and economic differences in the postwar period.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , April 2019 , pp. 87 - 103
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Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

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References

Notes

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43 TNA COU 1/33, Duff's memorandum on meeting with the BEA, 23rd November 1950.

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51 TNA POWE 14/1016, statement by P. A. Barnes.

52 TNA POWE 14/1022, report of the public inquiry, pp. 10–11.

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63 Matless, Landscape and Englishness, p. 45.

64 TNA POWE 14/1016, statement by P. A. Barnes.

65 Lancashire Evening Post, 22nd January 1955.

66 Bolton Journal and Guardian, 5th November 1954; Bolton Evening News, 28th September, 2 and 3 November 1954; Bolton Standard; Rochdale Observer for this period do not contain any editorials or letters on the Super Grid plans.

67 TNA POWE 14/1023, minutes of the public inquiry; POWE 14/1022, report of the public inquiry, p. 25.

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73 TNA POWE 14/884, public inquiry at Cheltenham, 27th and 28th January 1954.

74 For example, letter to the editor in Birmingham Daily Post, 22nd October 1956.

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