The way the wind blows

Jim Crumley, The Courier, 13 March 2001

As if the atrophy of the countryside was not comprehensive enough at the hands of the unholy alliance of weather and foot-and-mouth disease, a third source of devastation has been identified by this column.

What happens is that you hand over your most cherished heritage to a local authority, say, oh, I don’t know... Fife Council, for argument’s sake. They in turn invent a green belt for it. Devastation, it seems, is comprehensive, and only a matter of time.

Let’s pluck another name out of the air, a purely hypothetical exercise, of course - say a small town with a priceless medieval core, an old stone heartbeat that no amount of history’s travails or planning regimes has quite managed to still. Yet.

In the 21st century, the miracle of this medieval survival astounds admirers all over the world. Let’s call it, again purely for the sake of argument, St Andrews.

Surely, the world has said for some time now, especially in this column and in St Andrews itself, this little miracle in old stone should be protected, not just the stone itself, but its setting, the landscape setting of the town?

Fife Council used to think otherwise, for no good reason known to anyone not employed by Fife Council, then suddenly it thought it was a good idea.

Fair enough, everyone is entitled to change their mind, especially if it is a change for the better. If you believe, as I do, that landscape is essential to the survival of a medieval spirit, then surely going from stuff-the-green-belt to let’s-have-a-green-belt is progress.

“The survival of a medieval spirit . . .“ What on earth is the man talking about?

Consider for a moment Dundee’s one great medieval survivor, the Old Steeple. Compare the three landscape settings it has been accorded in my own lifetime.

There was first the Overgate, an echo at least of the medieval street pattern, and a warren of closes, wynds, stone walls and stairs, run down, to be sure, but restorable with care, with care for a landscape setting.

In that landscape, the great square tower could be itself and, whether we knew it or not, its medieval spirit touched all of us. It is no mean thing to be touched by the medieval spirit of a great building on a daily basis.

Then, to our shame, and the tower’s shame, for that matter, the landscape setting was changed, first to the Overgate Centre Mark I then the Mark II, in which company the Old Steeple is demeaned, the medieval spirit obliterated, and all because the crucial landscape of street and stone was removed.

The Old Steeple as it stands today has been de-landscaped and it is difficult to imagine a more thoughtless disservice to architecture, to the medieval spirit.

But this St Andrews of which I spoke earlier has rather more than a square tower to incubate a medieval spirit, and such is the compact scale of the town and the nature of long views into and out of the town that the landscape setting of the whole town assumes a primordial significance.

Modern planning principles invented the concept of the green belt to service just such a situation, and while Fife Council’s conversion to the principle of a green belt for St Andrews was as startling as it was belated (and contradicted at least by implication its every utterance that permitted the Kingask development to besmirch what in most people’s eyes is a classic piece of green belt territory), subsequent pronouncements have caused doubt and dismay about the nature of the council’s commitment to the conversion.

It has not escaped the world’s notice that (a) the conversion to the green belt principle occurred after Kingask has been done and dusted (and that by a particularly rarified variation on the planning process that raised eyebrows all across the county); (b) even as the conversion process was being contemplated, council planning officials recommended approval for a new ghastliness at Scooniehill, a sort of Kingask with knobs on.

Now consider the response to that approved development proposal from the Scottish Executive Reporter - it contravened Fife Council policies; the location was unduly prominent and conspicuous. While accepting the economic benefits, the loss of agricultural land, the principle of development in the countryside and protection of landscape are more important.

Now ask yourself why planners charged with caring for the wellbeing of the medieval spirit of St Andrews would not know that. Ask yourself why any development proposal anywhere within the natural force-field of St Andrews should not be measured by the yardstick of its impact on the medieval spirit first and foremost, and last and lastmost for that matter, and that no other consideration should be contemplated if it is shown that the spirit would be adversely affected.

The world is full of golf courses, hotel developments, conference centres, leisure centres, and getting fuller. Every new proposal is the best, comes with a higher number of £millions tagged on, and with superior job-creation figures and economic benefits. Modesty is an extinct characteristic among the leisure industry’s developers.

The world is as devoid of built excellence as it is over-provided with all of the above. In St Andrews there are survivals of built excellence. The defined nature of the townscape should make it the easiest in the land to protect, to cherish what the council calls (in a particularly hideous example of bureaucratspeak) the “intervisibility” between town and landscape setting. Meaning that the countryside should be as beautiful from the town as the town is from the countryside.

As with the Old Steeple, the landscape setting is everything, the Steeple’s was once appropriate and no longer is, and that which was cherished is irredeemably demeaned.

Even the green belt to which the council has now sworn allegiance is a perversion of the principle, a green belt with gaps, options open, just in case someone with a particularly hefty dollop of millions comes along with an offer they can’t - or don’t feel disposed to - refuse.

Suppose, for example, that when Tiger Woods eventually goes into the golf course design business - he will, he will - he decides that only St Andrews will do for his first venture, hey, we’ve got just the site in that gap in the green belt!

That is not a green belt. Green belts need defined girths, a continuous swathe that buckles surely and fits properly . . . no slack to let out to accommodate one more over-indulgence.

In St Andrews of all places, there really should be no debate. The 21st century is not the time to start trying to pretend that the worth of a medieval spirit in a lovely setting is negotiable.

It isn’t, or at least is shouldn’t be. If there are officials and councillors who think otherwise, perhaps they are working in the wrong patch.