Keswick: The Story of a Lake District Town
My story is of the past, but what of the future, of Keswick
in the third millennium? The possibilities are disturbing. The
number of cars in Britain, it has been forecast, will increase
dramatically and no doubt roads will be 'improved' to accommodate
them. Unless action is taken, the visitor invasion of Keswick
- for many people already at saturation point in 1994 - will swell
to overwhelming proportions: tourism, long regarded as the life-blood
of the town and its economy, could suffocate the facilities that
have to cope with the visitors and adversely affect the very attractions
that have brought them here. Professor C E M Joad predicted many
years ago that one day the roads of Britain will be a stationary
mass of immovable metal; motorists will crawl from traffic jams
of the towns and cities to the traffic jams of the countryside.
What was once a busy, pleasant small market town, with its distinctive
characteristics, will be in danger of becoming indistinguishable
from many another holiday centre.
Keswick's position at the heart of a unique and vulnerable countryside
calls for care and constraint rather than rampant development
and unfettered commercialism. Without strict controls, the extremes
of the entrepreneur threaten: chair lifts and a funicular to the
summit of Skiddaw; artificial snow-making machines cluttering
the mountain slopes to create a winter sports centre; fell paths
eroded, widened, smoothed and re-routed to accommodate anything
from bicycles to mini-cars capable of climbing to a fell top without
effort; a road over Styhead to Wasdale, with a roundabout by the
tarn to link with a road to Langdale; the lower fells peppered
with chalets and cottages, the second homes of the affluent; helicopters
and light aircraft buzzing round the hills, noisy intruders hopping
from landing pads and airstrips dotted liberally over the district.
The depressing catalogue could go on and on and, in any case,
it is nothing more than imaginative speculation. Other factors
- the decline of fossil fuel, for example - could weigh against
so alarming a future for places like Keswick. But so long as there
is a presumption towards more and more commercial exploitation
for its own sake, the dangers are there.
It would be a sad day if the principles of the founders of the
National Park were forgotten or ignored - and top of the list
is the responsibility of the Park Planning Authority to conserve
and enhance the landscape. Ironically, a survey of 6,000 visitors
to the Lake District in 1975 revealed that centres like Windermere,
Bowness and Keswick were no longer enjoyed by a significant proportion
of holiday-makers because they were too commercialised, too crowded
and too choked with traffic. The commitment is clear: we have
a duty to posterity. The organisations devoted to safeguarding
the district - the Special Planning Board, the National Trust,
the conservation bodies - are fully aware of their vital role
and will no doubt continue to exercise their functions of caring
for a vulnerable landscape and its special features with an unshakeable
conviction that they are the guardians of a unique and precious
heritage.
I hope that 'KESWICK: THE STORY OF A LAKE DISTRICT TOWN' will
be both a reminder of Keswick's past and a stimulus to keeping
a sharp eye on its future. It can no longer claim, as Ruskin did,
to be a place 'almost too beautiful to live in'; but for many
of us, in spite of all the pressures, frustrations and devastation,
it is still the centre of our world. We have no wish to live anywhere
else."
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