This article in the Scotsman published on 30 March 1927 details the meeting to inaugurate APRS which was held at the Incorporation of Architects at 15 Rutland Square, Edinburgh.
RURAL SCOTLAND.
PRESERVING ITS BEAUTY.
A SCOTTISH COUNCIL.
THE movement for the formation of a Council for the Preservation of Rural Scotland was successfully inaugurated at a meeting yesterday in Edinburgh of representatives of Societies and Departments interested in rural Scotland. The meeting, which arose from a letter by Mr F. C. Mears in The Scotsman of 17th December last, was held in the hall of the Incorporation of Architects, 15 Rutland Square, and the chairman was Sir John Stirling Maxwell. Over thirty Societies and Departments were represented, including the Royal Scottish Academy, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Board of Agriculture for Scotland, the Royal Scottish Geographical Society; the Zoological Society of Scotland, the Board of Health, H.M. Office of Works, Forestry Commission, Scotland; the Convention of Royal Burghs, Scottish Housing and Town Planning Council, Regional Planning Advisory Council, Scotland; Incorporation of Architects, Institution of Municipal and County Engineers, Society of Antiquaries (Scotland), Faculty of Surveyors of Scotland, Royal Scottish Automobile Club. the Automobile Association, Scottish Women’s Rural Institutes, Scottish Rights of Way and Recreation Society, Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, Cockburn Association, Glasgow Civic Society, National Trust, Royal Scottish Arboricultural Society, Scottish Land and Property Federation, Scottish Chamber of Agriculture, Scottish Mountaineering Club, Educational Institute of Scotland, and the Royal Scottish Society of Arts.
Mr G. F. K. Young, on behalf of the Incorporation of Architects, welcomed the delegates. Alluding to a suggestion by a lady M.P. for the distribution of industries by urbanising the country and ruralising the towns, he said that if there was to be any urbanising of the country it must be on well thought-out lines, and that the amenities of the country be maintained. (Applause.)
A GLARING EVIL
Sir John Stirling Maxwell said they were there to discuss a movement which could only succeed if it was based on common-sense and generally accepted standards, avoiding individual preferences and questions of taste, on which there were as many opinions as people. He would only say this – and here he spoke for many of them who were busy men and women – that he approached the subject from the point of view of one who was extremely reluctant to see a new organisation started, but quite convinced that they were confronted with conditions which rendered concerted action of some kind absolutely necessary. The island in which they lived was richly endowed with beauty, both in its natural features and in the work of their forebears – their fields, their roads, their woods, their buildings – and all these things were stooped in precious tradition and sentiment. They were proud of their industrial development, and the riches and power it had given them, but they had to admit that it had brought many evils in its train – the slums, the smoke, the obliteration of all that was interesting and beautiful in many large cities and industrial districts. These misfortunes were due to too eager a haste to make money, and to a lamentable absence in the industrial world of the shrewd foresight and careful attention to detail which marked their rural and earlier urban development. None of them, he took it, were out to impede progress, or so foolish as to imagine they could put back the clock. But they realised that the island was small, and therefore easily spoilt. They did not want to see the trail of the town laid over the country. They did not want to see the country districts overrun, and their traditional character obliterated by the crude utilitarianism which passed for improvement in too many industrial districts. The danger was not new, but it was greatly accentuated by the urgent need for houses and the development of road transport, which together threatened to transform the landscape, especially by what was called ribbon building. That shoddy, short-sighted, and extravagant kind of lay-out destroyed the rural character of large areas without really absorbing them for urban purposes, and put the country further and further out of reach of the town dweller. It was perhaps the most glaring evil they had to meet.
A NATIONAL TRUST.
Passing over minor offences, such as advertisements, of which it ought to be possible to make short work, he would mention one other big danger with which it was more difficult to deal – he meant the breaking up of private estates. He was not pleading for private as against public ownership. Indeed, it was in public ownership that their hope seemed to lie. But they must recognise the fact that hitherto the owners of large estates had been the chief custodians of the beauty of the countryside, and that their recent disappearance had in countless cases been followed by results from this point of view disastrous. A case in Aberdeenshire came to his mind where in a district notorious for its exposure to the north and east winds, a succession of far-sighted owners had, by draining, building, and planting, created a beautiful demesne surrounded by fine farms and sheltered by noble woods. That estate, when he saw it a few months ago, was in the hands of a London speculator, whose one object was to strip it of everything worth selling and dispose of the land before the date on which the purchase price was due. The woodlands would, of course, be felled. The whole countryside was thus sacrificed to the unfortunate poverty of one man and the haste of another to make a profit out of his failure. He must not make the picture too black. Many fine estates had passed to new owners who had sustained and enhanced their good traditions. Others near populous centres had been secured as public parks. Devastated woods had in some cases been taken over by the Forestry Commission, as in the case mentioned above. But the change was widespread and rapid, and there was a real danger of whole tracts of fair country being ruthlessly exploited and subjected to a greedy and ill considered development. They were beginning to feel the need in Scotland of some body analogous to the National Trust, which now held for the nation reserves of beautiful country in almost every part of England.
TO CHECK VANDALISM.
Proceeding, the Chairman pointed out that they f were not out to attack anybody or even to repel an attack from anybody. Ignorance and lethargy were the only enemies. They recognised that the attitude of the Local Authorities, urban and rural, towards housing was marked by a real desire to do their job well in the face of great difficulties, and a determination to depart from the old laissez- faire policy which made certain districts in London and Glasgow what they were. They welcomed the Town Planning Act and the advent of the garden city and garden suburb. But mistakes were easily made. Once made, everyone regretted them. Their object was to guard against them in those districts which still deserved the name of country. He might, without offence, mention two such mistakes in Scotland, since those responsible for thom were long dead. One was in the village of Aberfoyle. There the character of a country village was completely destroyed by the building of a block of tenements near the railway station. That block might have come out of any street in Glasgow, shops and all, complete. Its intrusion there had permanently reduced the charm of a place which otherwise every one concerned had laboured to make worthy of its lovely setting. His other example was the road along Loch Katrine, which was bounded by cast-iron fences. These fences at once transported the visitor to Glasgow Green, (Laughter.) The hill above the road was covered with scrub oak which would at less expense have provided posts and rails quite as durable and efficient, but in harmony (as iron rails were not) with a scene renowned for its beauty all over the world. He did not believe that either of these mistakes would be repeated now. He mentioned them because they illustrated without treading on living toes the fact that their scenery was neither in the Lowlands nor the Highlands on a bold enough scale to stand the intrusion of alien features in the foreground – features which might pass unnoticed in the Alps or in a Norwegian Fiord. Their age had its own dangers. The widening and straightening of roads was very necessary, but it offered many opportunities for vandalism. A typical case was now under discussion in the English newspapers – a road near Guildford. In order to widen and straighten that road everything that made it beautiful and attracted people to it was to be swept away – the ancient trees, the cottages, the old inn, and he knew not what more – under a scheme prepared by the county engineer and approved by the Road Board, but, apparently, without the knowledge, much less the consent, of the inhabitants of the district. There were matters in which they should not be too proud to profit by the experience of their friends south of the Tweed. Their protest was not made till a great deal of irreparable damage had been done. Let them in Scotland follow the advice of their old proverb, and “tak tent in time. ere time be tent.” (Applause.)
NEED FOR SAFEGUARDS.
Mr F. C. Mears made a statement as to the work of the Council recently formed for the Preservation of Rural England. The three main objects of that Council were:-(1) To organise concerted action to secure the protection of rural scenery and of the amenities of country towns and villages from disfigurement or injury. (2) To act either directly or through its members as a centre for furnishing or procuring advice and information upon any matters affecting the protection of such amenities. (3) To arouse, form, and educate public opinion in order to ensure the promotion of these objects. There was no intention in the minds of those promoting the Scottish Council to try to do something better than or go independently from the English Council. The idea was to have a closer contact with the English body, and work together in every way.”
The Chairman said the English Society had the great advantage of having as chairman a good Scotsman, Lord Crawford.
Mr Victor Hodgson, Fort-William, indicated what the English Society was doing, and said Lord Crawford would be only too pleased to help in the formation of the Scottish Society.
Mr J. Wilson Paterson, H.M. Office of Works, said, the preservation of ancient cottages might well come under the scope of a Society such as was proposed.
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The Chairman formally moved that those present cordially support the proposal to form a Council for the Preservation of Rural Scotland. He said that they owed a great debt of gratitude in Scotland to the National Trust for having arranged with the Secretary for Scotland to insert a clause in the Grampian Hydro-Electric Bill, which gave him power in Bills of that kind to appoint a committee to investigate the buildings and other works proposed in relation to their sites and to make recommendations, and to reserve to the Secretary for Scotland power to enforce those recommendations where he thought fit. Hitherto there had been no safeguard in regard to works of that kind except such as might be put in by a committee of the House of Commons. This new clause had been quite effective and one committee had been already appointed in the ease of the Bill to harness the Falls of Clyde for electric purposes.
Mr George Sang, president of the Scottish Mountaineering Club, said the Club he represented would be sorry to find a second Wigan planted close to Ben Nevis. He hoped the Society would prosper.
PETROL PUMPS.
Mr J. Inglis Ker, who represented motoring interests, said one feature of the work of the Council would be to see whether anything could not be done to wipe out the awful petrol pumps on the road. The most appalling atrocity he knew was the modern petrol pump and the modern garage.
Professor Baily suggested the starting of local associations as amenity police forces.
Mr J. M. Rusk, S.S.C, gave instances of desecration by the number of temporary summer residences along the coast, and in the beauty spots of the country.
Mr James Paterson, R.S.A., said that the Royal Scottish Academy was in entire sympathy with the movement. Perhaps nobody more than they painters felt the degradation and the horror of the things that were going on all over Scotland and England at present, and if that Society could do anything – and he thought it would be able to do something – the nation should be grateful to them. The Royal Scottish Academy wished it all success. (Applause.)
The resolution was unanimously adopted, and a small acting committee was appointed to consider a form of constitution and to make arrangements for a public meeting to be held at a later date.
On the notion of Sir Henry Keith, Hamilton, a vote of thanks was accorded to the chairman.