Chapter 3 Seeing the wood for the trees: afforestation and managing water supply

Early afforestation schemes and the politics of unemployment

It is worth briefly focusing on why afforestation was taken up by municipal authorities in the early twentieth century. Although authorities would not have used the word, they recognised the ‘ecological’ benefits trees could bring to the watershed of reservoirs. The primary benefit was in creating a barrier between the edge of the watershed and the land, so that residents or visitors would find it harder to pollute the water. Trees helped to reduce the potential for bank and soil erosion, which would lead to silt and other detritus entering the water supply, thereby making the edges of reservoirs more secure. Trees also helped to mitigate the damage of flooding while also contributing to the hydrological cycle – the leaves of trees return moisture to the atmosphere through evapotranspiration. While this did not help to combat drought to the extent believed by contemporaries, they were right to recognise the link between trees and moisture.⁵ There was also a financial imperative – the planting of trees to sell in years to come was seen as prudent forward planning even before the issues encountered with timber imports during the First World War. The prioritisation of these two primary reasons for afforestation – pollution and income – were flipped during the interwar years, when the financial imperative became more important, and the benefits to combating pollution an added bonus.

While the ecological benefits of afforestation have long been recognised in an international historiographical context, work on tree planting in Britain has treated the subject somewhat unevenly.⁶ Research on afforestation before the First World War has predominantly focused on the efforts of private landowners afforesting estates, more for aesthetic than ecological reasons.⁷ In the twentieth century, historians such as John Sheail focused on the approach of central government to forestry, concentrating on the results of the Acland Report in 1917 and the subsequent establishment and work of the Forestry Commission in 1919.⁸ While an important development, the broader historiography has neglected two key issues: the efforts of municipal authorities like Liverpool and Leeds before the First World War, and the continued success of municipal tree planting initiatives after the war, key contributions of this chapter.

Afforestation became a priority for Liverpool Corporation, with work starting on the scheme in 1897. Five years later, twelve years after construction on the waterworks had been completed, 162,000 trees had been planted on the Vyrnwy estate over an area of 470 acres. The scheme was hailed as a success even at this early stage, with Parry’s expertise sought for Royal Commissions on tree planting, as well as in helping to push the schemes of other cities, such as Leeds.⁹ Afforestation also began at Birmingham’s Elan Valley scheme in 1902, with between eight hundred and nine hundred acres planted by 1916.¹⁰ It was not just municipal authorities that engaged with afforestation, with the Derwent Valley Water Board beginning planting around Derwent reservoir in 1908.¹¹

Within this context, it is no surprise that Leeds Corporation began to think seriously about an afforestation project of their own in the Washburn Valley. A suggestion by Arthur Currer Briggs, the Lord Mayor of Leeds, marked the scheme as unique: that the work should be carried out by the unemployed in order to help ‘alleviate distress’ during the winter months.¹² Unemployment had become a major issue in Britain during the 1880s, with the effects of cyclical employment resulting in the growth of trade unions and the labour movement. The first decade of the twentieth century saw the first attempts from municipal and central governments to tackle the issue, most notably David Lloyd George’s policy of unemployment insurance.¹³ Although Currer Briggs was nominally a Liberal Unionist, the desire for unemployment relief is evidence of the pressure being exerted on the corporation by the newly influential labour movement in Leeds, which wanted increased municipal expenditure on social reform.¹⁴ Moreover, as has been noted more widely of labour colonies, some Liberal and socialist reformers believed rural camps were an adequate antidote to urban unemployment.¹⁵ Even at this early stage, the politics of unemployment was becoming entwined with managing water supply. Support was offered by the Independent Labour Party for afforestation schemes organised by Liverpool and Manchester during this period, as well as the support of the politically radical John Burns MP, president of the Local Government Board from 1905 to 1914.¹⁶

The success of cities like Liverpool undoubtedly helped the afforestation cause. From 1897 until 1914, Liverpool successfully planted two and a half million trees across 884 acres.¹⁷ In 1914, Liverpool entered into an agreement with the British government to plant four thousand acres of land around Vyrnwy with the help of centralised funding, a vast scaling up of their operations that spoke to the success the corporation had experienced over the previous seventeen years.¹⁸ In contrast to Leeds, the Liverpool Corporation utilised local labour rather than the unemployed. The greater distance between Liverpool and Vyrnwy is certainly one explanation for this; however, tree planting at the waterworks was also seen as a remedy for rural depopulation. Across the Irish Sea, the editor of the Newry Reporter looked on the efforts of cities like Liverpool favourably, remarking that afforestation presented an opportunity in Ireland to stop the rural exodus and subsequent urban congestion.¹⁹ Similarly, reports on the 1909 Royal Commission into forestry noted that nearly all of the twenty-three men local to Vyrnwy working on the scheme would have ‘drifted into our large towns’ if not for the scheme.²⁰

Afforestation, then, was becoming increasingly popular with municipal authorities and commentators, and Leeds set about finalising its own scheme. The scheme would, of course, further alter the landscape, as Maps 3.1 and 3.2 highlight. Map 3.2, an Ordnance Survey map from 1910 of the area around Swinsty reservoir, shows a plantation on the banks of the reservoir, called Swinsty Moor Plantation, which is not present in Map 3.1, an Ordnance Survey map from 1893. Like other aspects of waterworks management in the Washburn Valley, the afforestation scheme was possible due to a series of compulsory land purchases that had taken place in the 1890s and early 1900s, ostensibly under the guise of pollution control.

By November 1904, the waterworks committee was putting arrangements into place to accommodate unemployed workers in the Washburn Valley. The men would be paid £1 a week, with the men themselves given one shilling, ten shillings deducted for catering, and the remaining nine shillings sent to the families of the men to be collected at the Unemployed Bureau. Accommodation for the workers was provided at a structure known as ‘the bungalow’.²¹ There was also provision for additional activities, with books available at the bungalow, accessible at a rate of two shillings per week, and piece work preparing holes for the seeds was also available at a rate of two shillings and three pence per hundred holes bored. While it was envisioned that men would stay at the bungalow for a set period of time, provision was made to allow workers to travel from Leeds via train, so long as they completed the three-hour walk to the work site from nearby Otley each Monday morning by 10.30 a.m.²²

A resolution from 1905, at the start of the scheme, noted that the men would be paid for time worked at a rate of five and a half pence per hour. If the working day described by one former worker was accurate, this would amount to four shillings a day, and therefore twenty shillings per week. The important distinction is that the men did not get paid for time they did not work, with bad weather accounting for much of this broken time. At times, then, nine shillings would not have been enough to send back to be collected by families. In the same year, the subcommittee enlisted Professor William Fisher of the University of Oxford, a leading authority on forestry, to advise on the scheme.²³ He produced a detailed report in 1905 that outlined the benefits of afforestation, particularly in helping to stop pollution of the watershed and in providing valuable timber, which he argued was ‘the duty of every Municipality’.²⁴ The planting of trees around the reservoirs, he argued, would have no deleterious effects on the water supply themselves, while they would help to reduce the evaporation of water from the reservoirs and the ground. The trees would also encourage ground percolation, which would lead to a reduction in the surface flow of rain and help to prevent the build-up of silt.²⁵ The concluding comments of the report regarded the hard nature of the labour, with Fisher warning that ‘it would not be profitable to employ any but those who are willing to face the conditions of country employment, and able to really work properly and thoroughly’.²⁶ This warning, though, was not heeded.

The subcommittee approved his plans and ordered Douglas fir, Scots pine and Corsican pine seeds. It is important to note that two of these types of trees, Douglas fir and Corsican pine, were not native to Britain. Although they were deemed to be good species for water management, this is another example of a municipal authority altering the ecology of rural areas for urban gain. The first year of the scheme, starting in the winter of 1905, passed without complaint, beginning with forty men from the Unemployed Bureau being employed in December. The subcommittee minutes, however, reveal that problems were starting to surface that hinted at the political difficulties of managing the rural landscape in such a way. In February 1906, it was reported to the subcommittee that the North Eastern Railway company was not able or willing to provide reduced rail fares for workers on the scheme travelling home from Otley to Leeds. In addition to transport issues, the subcommittee resolved that the head forester should exercise greater control on both expenditure and ‘the amount of work done by the men’, suggesting that work was not progressing as well as expected.²⁷

However, the following year the Local Government Board gave the Leeds distress committee £1,000 to assist the scheme, indicating that the scheme was seen favourably by those in Westminster.²⁸ This grant, though, brought the scheme under greater scrutiny than the previous year, with the distress committee later expressing disappointment ‘with the general character of the unemployed who have been given the opportunity of earning wages […] and the extent of their work’.²⁹ The Yorkshire Post reported that of the 203 unemployed men who had been offered the work, 139 accepted, 102 actually went, and no more than twenty or thirty worked on the scheme at any given time.³⁰ It seems that Fisher’s warning was coming to pass. The Yorkshire Evening Post covered the subject extensively: they published a special report on the scheme, with a correspondent travelling to the valley to inspect the conditions.³¹ One interviewee described the valley as ‘British Siberia’, adding that

apart from the hardships of working in so barren and bleak a locality at this season of the year, there are so many deductions of lodgings, pocket-money, and broken time, owing to the bad weather, that at the week-end there is very little, if anything, left for the wife, children, or other dependents left in Leeds.³²

The bleak conditions and lack of pay were major issues for the unemployed men, particularly given the distance between the valley and Leeds. While the corporation had built living quarters for the men, it was, according to a correspondent calling himself ‘Disgusted’, a ‘four-mile tramp’ to the work site.³³ Despite the claims of the labourers, the Evening Post continued to attack. One article quoted the chairman of the distress committee, Herbert Brown, as saying, ‘There is nothing in the nature of the work in the Washburn Valley that genuine, honest, pecunious citizens would not do. The few who have stuck to it are better in health themselves than when they went’.³⁴ Not only was their character brought into question by Brown, but the scheme was also portrayed as being able to improve these apparent deficiencies in the physical, and by extension moral, health of the unemployed men.

Criticism was not just consigned to figures of authority. In an article entitled ‘The “Work-Shy” Brigade: More replies to charges of laziness’, the secretary of the Leeds Trades and Labour Council, Councillor Owen Connellan, argued that ‘Many of these [workers …] are nothing but parasites on the community, and their conduct seriously prejudices the chances of the honest, but impecunious workers’.³⁵ The language used by Connellan, a prominent local trade unionist, was incendiary, labelling those that could not bear the harsh working conditions as parasites, once more harnessing an ‘us and them’ narrative. It also called into question the masculine identities of the unemployed men, particularly at a time when ‘national efficiency’ and urban degeneration were lingering issues. Although fears of degeneration among the urban poor were most keenly expressed in London, as Bill Luckin has highlighted, similar narratives appeared in provincial areas that castigated the urban poor for supposedly lacking the moral or intellectual tools for self-improvement.³⁶ This is an example of what has been termed ‘honest poverty’, which consisted of two factors: the willingness of men to work, and the want to responsibly provide for the family.³⁷ Both were called into question by the Evening Post, thereby questioning the masculine identities of the unemployed men, whom they saw as being neither fit nor willing to fulfil the breadwinner role.

Although some had previously sought to defend them, the criticism levelled by Brown and Connellan prompted a reaction from those who had experienced the works. Many wrote under pseudonyms that simultaneously highlighted their experience of working in the valley and their anger at the Evening Post. A letter from ‘One Who Has Tried It’ condemned the work, labelling it as ‘a form of exile and white slavery’. He concluded that if the work continued, fewer men would sign up to the Unemployed Bureau in order to avoid the afforestation scheme.³⁸ Another writer stressed the respectable nature of the men who worked on the scheme, urging readers to look not to the men’s presumed laziness but to other factors, citing the example of one man he knew who had walked all the way from Leeds because he could not afford to take public transport: ‘A lazy man would not walk 17 miles to work, and then leave, unless there were […] reasons for doing so’.³⁹

All correspondences highlighted the poor working conditions and the fact that many were inadequately prepared for such demanding labour. ‘Disgusted’ pointed to the poor weather as a reason why many left the works: ‘I am not so silly as to blame the authorities for the weather, but when the weather is bad and the men cannot work, the wives and dependents of the men in Leeds get little or nothing’.⁴⁰ A correspondent commenting on the plight of the labourers suggested that the treatment of dependents in Leeds was to blame:

In one case I know of, a wife with three children received one week, 9d., and the week following, 1s. 4d. The husband, after these two weeks, returned to Leeds. And who blames him? How could any honest man stay away from his wife and children under such conditions? Living well himself, miles away from home, those whom he hoped to benefit are left pining.⁴¹

He concluded by arguing that those men who remained at the works were to blame for reinforcing the poor treatment of dependents by the corporation, somewhat generously characterising the living arrangements for the men in the valley.⁴² The letters all pointed to the lack of provision provided, either within the valley or in terms of financial remuneration. They demonstrate a tension between the corporation providing some unemployment relief for residents of the city and not properly equipping the men to succeed.

While figures such as Connellan did not shy away from criticising the calibre of the unemployed men sent to the Washburn Valley, other parts of the labour movement sought to defend the character and integrity of the men. William Morby, the president of the Leeds Trades and Labour Council, condemned their treatment in a meeting of the distress committee in 1907, highlighting several of the issues that the unemployed men had complained about to the Evening Post, such as the long journey to the work site and the prohibitive cost of lodging and food.⁴³ Similar criticisms of the scheme were issued by trade unions in meetings of the Trades and Labour Council in 1907 and branches of the Labour party, particularly in South Leeds.⁴⁴ The issues raised by the unemployed men in the Evening Post and Morby were also raised in the House of Commons by James O’Grady, Labour MP for Leeds East in questions to John Burns. As with the distress committee, Burns dismissed concerns over pay, deductions, board, travel and the isolated nature of the area, and defended the actions of the corporation and the distress committee.⁴⁵

The Evening Post was also not swayed by the defence of the unemployed men. A special correspondent of the newspaper visited the works and delivered a damning report: ‘Not fifty per cent., but fully eighty per cent. of the men sent out to Fewston this year have been absolute wasters’, a figure apparently corroborated by the forester, Alexander Pope, and the lodging keeper, Mrs. Hodgson.⁴⁶ What constituted an ‘absolute waster’ in this context was not specified. The report focused on the living conditions at Fewston, dismissing the complaints of correspondents as having not ‘a tittle of foundation’, highlighting the selfish nature of the men themselves, who were portrayed as happy to take the food of the corporation as their dependents starved in Leeds.⁴⁷ The editor of the Evening Post further underlined this criticism, arguing that although the work was admittedly hard, many of the men who had undertaken it had little room to complain and were part of the ‘work-shy brigade’, and urged the public not to waste their sympathy on these ‘wasters’.⁴⁸ These narratives continued into the winter of 1907, with an Evening Post article drawing attention to the ‘weary willies – men whose one great aversion in life is work of any kind’ that were expected on the works, with some men having already left.⁴⁹ The second visit to the valley of John Burns underlined the failure of the scheme, which he felt did not solve the unemployment issue and had a pauperising effect.⁵⁰ Despite the efforts of former workers to more accurately portray the works in the Washburn Valley to improve conditions, the scheme was condemned by both the Evening Post and by important figures such as Burns as a failure.

Funding for the scheme supplied by the Local Government Board was withdrawn in light of this perceived failure. The scheme to utilise the unemployed men of Leeds ended in 1909, with the corporation employing workmen who were physically able to carry out the work. A special correspondent for the Yorkshire Post in 1913 wrote that more than sixty per cent of the trees planted by the unemployed failed, with ten skilled staff working to rectify the damage.⁵¹ There was progress after 1909, though, as the head forester Alexander Pope outlined in 1914. In describing the past troubles with the scheme, Pope took a more conciliatory tone, noting somewhat generously that although ‘the Waterworks Committee were forced to the conclusion that many did not want regular work’, he highlighted that the majority of the unemployed men who joined the works were ‘physically incapable’ of the tough manual work that was asked of them:

The class sent out may be taken as a fair sample of the ‘Unemployed’ in our large towns, and were of all trades, painters, bakers, clerks, ironworkers, bootmakers etc., and general labourers. Very few were accustomed to outdoor work, and numbers had never previously handled a spade or any tool used in planting.⁵²

In listing their former professions, Pope wrote of the unemployed men as respectable individuals, rather than an amorphous group with little to no moral character, finally providing some context to the debate. He continued to list the problems that had been encountered with the scheme, mainly owing ‘to the character of the land’.⁵³ He also noted the dangers posed by fire, particularly during hot, dry summers, as the trees were not yet large enough to act as fire breaks.⁵⁴

It is clear from the report, though, that progress was finally being made on the scheme. By 1917, the Evening Post praised the foresight of Currer Briggs, suggesting that the scheme was finally coming to fruition.⁵⁵ An Evening Post report from 1943 commenting on the British government’s plan to invest £40 million into afforestation at the end of the Second World War praised the Leeds Corporation for enacting this process forty years previously.⁵⁶ The scheme, therefore, became a success in the long term. It was, in some ways, a positive step in the development of unemployment relief; indeed, the failure of the scheme did not deter wider calls for the use of unemployed men on afforestation schemes, nor the publication of a Fabian tract on the same issue in 1912.⁵⁷ It both provided valuable timber for the corporation and added to the natural aesthetic of the valley, signalling the importance of amenity to these landscapes.

However, the valley became a stage for the relations between the municipal authority and its unemployed men to be played out, far enough away geographically from Leeds to be out of the public gaze. The landscape of the valley, largely controlled by a local authority, was shaped, in part, by the exercise of municipal power, reinforced by the city’s newspapers. In using unemployed men to manage the landscape, residents of Leeds were employed that were not prepared or trained to complete the necessary work. Ultimately, this lack of training allowed the blame to be passed onto the unemployed men, readily taken up by the city’s newspapers, instead of the corporation that had failed to properly provide for their workers. This highlights an aspect of the Promethean project that was noted in the previous chapter: successfully taming and utilising rural landscapes was harder and more labour intensive than realised by engineers and planners. It also helps to complicate narratives of civic pride that became associated with the valley: the valley was not just a space for positive civic engagement but also a space where urban politics failed. While afforestation was, on the surface, an exercise in landscape management, it is possible to see how power was exercised by the corporation, not just through managing its water supply but also its provision of unemployment relief and the reinforcement of social stigma by the provincial press.

Forestry in the interwar years

Leeds struggled to link its afforestation scheme to the wider civic project, largely because of how municipal authorities treated their unemployed citizens. Liverpool, on the other hand, was much more adept in this regard. Wider fears around the condition of British forestry predated the First World War, if not by much. A departmental committee appointed by the Board of Agriculture warned of wastage amid a global decline of forestry stock in 1903, while in 1909 a Royal Commission on afforestation and coastal erosion urged for government intervention in planting more trees to abate the deterioration of the nation’s stocks.⁵⁸ The war, though, brought the nation’s dependence on global stocks into sharp focus. Blockades on imports highlighted that Britain relied on other nations for ninety per cent of their timber stock.⁵⁹ This realisation prompted the government to set up a forestry subcommittee, part of a wider reconstruction committee, in 1916 under the auspices of Sir Francis Acland. A year later, Acland produced a report advocating for the government to take an active role in stimulating the country’s timber stocks. Much of the report provided the basis for the Forestry bill, 1919, which committed the government to afforest 1.7 million acres by the end of the twentieth century. To help reach this target, the government established the Forestry Commission in the same year. Despite the economic pressures of the 1920s and threat of the Geddes Axe, the commission went on to become the largest landowner in Britain, helping to replenish the country with home-grown timber.

As the first part of this chapter showed, though, municipal government had already taken steps, albeit somewhat unevenly, to help facilitate the afforestation of rural areas under their control. While they did not have the resources of the centrally funded Forestry Commission, they continued to play a positive role after the First World War – sometimes in conjunction with the commission, and sometimes on their own. Cities that had been at the forefront of afforestation before the war, most notably Liverpool, maintained their efforts, protecting their water supplies and helping to provide much-needed timber for the country. For Liverpool in particular, these efforts became intertwined with the civic project; the boons of municipal afforestation were used to promote the ability of the city to positively affect the rural hinterland, thereby strengthening the idea of the Promethean project.

The success of afforestation at Liverpool Corporation’s Lake Vyrnwy during the last years of the nineteenth century was underlined by the corporation’s commitment to further tree planting in the twentieth century. Plans to expand the project were put in place before the First World War, with 4,680 acres marked as suitable for tree planting at Vyrnwy.⁶⁰ Despite the lack of a central forestry body in 1913, the government had committed to advance £5 per acre planted up to £25,090 to help finance a scheme that would not turn a profit for decades.⁶¹ Work began during the war, with 416 acres planted by 1916. The work undertaken at Vyrnwy during the war, as the need for domestic timber supply became ever more apparent, was an important factor in the scheme’s success. Throughout the interwar period, the scheme was praised for leading the way by local newspapers within and outside of Liverpool.⁶²

The project was not without controversy, though. The initial reporting of the scheme in 1913 noted that it would involve the termination of several tenancies held by farmers in the area, a fate postponed due to the war. This was nothing new: towns and cities were able to gain powers of compulsory purchase from Parliament to tackle pollution and protect their watersheds, as occurred in the Washburn Valley in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.⁶³ The postponement in terminations lasted until 1923, when the Western Mail reported that the Llanfyllin Rural Council (LRC) had objected to a proposal to evict six farmers to make way for afforestation. While the human element was highlighted, the main objection of some critics, including the chairman of the LRC and a correspondent for the centre-right periodical Truth, was the loss of good farming land. Representation was made in Parliament by Ellis Davies, the MP for Denbigh, who questioned Acland on the legitimacy of the Liverpool Corporation’s actions given that the land claimed lay outside the watershed of Lake Vyrnwy. Acland argued that the afforestation of Vyrnwy predated the Forestry Commission, their role in the matter being to carry out the responsibilities agreed to by the Treasury in 1913.⁶⁴ Ultimately, the scheme continued unabated, a reminder of the power of municipal and central government over small rural communities, and the social impact that could be wrought by waterworks management on those communities.

The expansion of works at Vyrnwy typified approaches to afforestation around reservoirs in the interwar period. Liverpool, of course, was not the only authority to expand its tree planting efforts. In 1918, Birmingham Corporation undertook to plant 760 acres of land in the Elan Valley, in addition to the 560 acres planted since 1902.⁶⁵ The success that Liverpool and Birmingham had both before and after the First World War saw them held up as examples to follow. Reporting on the near completion of the Corby (Northants) and District Water Board’s Eye Brook dam, the Northants Evening Telegraph remarked that the planting of trees around the waterworks would follow the examples of Vyrnwy and Elan.⁶⁶ Other projects, such as Plymouth’s Burrator reservoir on Dartmoor, engaged in afforestation without the aid of the Forestry Commission, although the commission took management of the project after the Second World War.⁶⁷

Like all forestry schemes, the success of the Vyrnwy project was assessed in time. This point came in 1952 when it was announced that new roads, paid for jointly by the Liverpool Corporation and the Forestry Commission, would be constructed at the Vyrnwy plantations. These were primarily to facilitate the transport of thinnings for sale, which would help to produce a surplus profit of £7,000. On news of this profit, the Liverpool Echo praised the long work of the water committee, noting that the nation, in need of timber, would be grateful for their efforts.⁶⁸ Elsewhere, thinning began at Burrator reservoir in the 1960s, although this was firmly under the auspices of the Forestry Commission and not Plymouth Corporation. Not all schemes turned a profit, though. A. E. Fordham, the general manager and secretary of the Birmingham Water Department, noted that there was a deficit of £1,070 for the Elan Valley afforestation project by 1950, although this did not affect further plans to afforest the area due to the national need for timber.⁶⁹ Despite this, Elan continued to be held up with Vyrnwy as a success story for other towns and cities to emulate.⁷⁰ It is clear, then, that not all schemes were rampantly successful financially, but the success that Liverpool Corporation encountered before the First World War continued well into the twentieth century.

The success of the Vyrnwy scheme was not just measured in acres planted, timber produced or income generated, but in cultural capital in the form of civic identity. As has been noted, despite a perceived decline in expressions of civic identity by 1914, historians have recently pointed to the continuity of civic pride, albeit in a form adapted to time and place.⁷¹ Civic festivals held during the interwar period, such as the Civic Weeks in Manchester, helped to promote a sense of urban belonging through entertainment and education.⁷² Given the continued success of afforestation at Lake Vyrnwy, celebrated within and outside the city itself, it is no surprise that Liverpool Corporation sought to strengthen the link between the city and the waterworks through education at such events. At the 1938 Royal Lancashire Agricultural Show, Liverpool Corporation ran a stall demonstrating the uses of timber from Vyrnwy. A correspondent for the Liverpool Echo wrote:

If the average Liverpool man or woman were asked what Lake Vyrnwy is famous for he would, of course, reply ‘water,’ but if a Midlands coalminer were asked the same question he would say without hesitation ‘Why, pit props, of course.’ Few of Liverpool’s citizens can be aware of what a flourishing business the city has in its timber estate at Vyrnwy.⁷³

The purpose of the stall was to educate visitors to the show, predominantly drawn from Liverpool given that the show took place in Wavertree, East Liverpool, on the successful ways in which the corporation governed the city’s watershed. Not only did the stall seek to demonstrate the economic success of the afforestation programme but it also tied the successful management of waterworks to the economic and cultural success of Liverpool. Through careful management, the trees planted protected the water supply and provided the city with a source of income that was helping to benefit industry elsewhere. This was supported by evidence; one of the facts put forward by the corporation at the stall was that one million linear feet of timber had been supplied to Midlands collieries in the preceding twelve months.

Even around reservoirs, though, approaches to afforestation were not uniform. At the meeting of the British Waterworks Association in 1918 that started this chapter, a number of councillors and engineers expressed doubts as to the viability of afforestation. Three main criticisms were noted: first, the practicality of planting trees when most corporations did not own the land surrounding their waterworks; second, the cost of planting with no government help, thereby having to rely on the rates to fund projects; and third, the removal of potential agricultural land, particularly for sheep grazing. Indeed, the representative of Birmingham, a city largely supportive of afforestation, stated that ‘It requires a very patriotic Corporation to start and to maintain a large system of planting at the heavy cost which does at the present time fall upon them’, once again situating afforestation within a wider civic drive.⁷⁴ Although the Forestry Commission and some municipal authorities tried to boost their efforts, issues remained after the Second World War. R. M. Prothero, a geographer from the University of Edinburgh, noted in 1950 that only one authority had twenty per cent of its land afforested, and thirteen authorities had no afforested land at all. In mitigation, he pointed to issues around the cost of such schemes and land ownership that had previously been highlighted in 1918, showing that there had been little progress on this particular issue.⁷⁵

A case in point was Manchester’s efforts around Thirlmere and Haweswater reservoirs. Afforestation around Thirlmere began in 1907 and finished in 1926, with the Manchester Corporation arguing that there was little to no land around Thirlmere that could be economically afforested. This attitude extended to Haweswater, where no afforestation would take place as much of the land was owned by farms or classified as common land.⁷⁶ These were practical reasons for ceasing operations. However, it is noteworthy that the Liverpool Corporation and others, such as the Derwent Valley Water Board and the Forestry Commission on Dartmoor, were expanding their efforts at this time. Geography was an important issue here too: the Lake District was a key battleground for preservationists during the interwar period. Although the work of the Manchester Corporation around Thirlmere was pointed to by advocates of municipal afforestation, they did not seem as committed to this issue as other large cities during the 1920s.

Another key issue in debates around afforestation was amenity: in short, the idea that afforestation would damage the aesthetic of rural areas. This was due predominantly to the use of non-native monocultures, as noted earlier in the chapter in the Washburn Valley, which, it was deemed, would look unnatural. Preservationist battles took place across the country. However, the most notable was, unsurprisingly, in the Lake District. The Forestry Commission’s purchase of seven thousand acres of land in Eskdale, five thousand of which were unsuitable for silviculture, prompted opposition from the Friends of the Lake District preservationist group. After political wrangling in Westminster, which also involved representation from the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, Eskdale was classified as a ‘special area’, which meant that consultation would be required before afforestation.⁷⁷ Worries about the damage to the aesthetic of rural areas were also evoked during discussions on Haweswater. A correspondent of the Western Chronicle conjured romantic imagery in his description of Haweswater as one of the most lovely of lakes: ‘There is something primitive in it, a native wildness as a scene untouched by man’s aid, for afforestation has wrought big changes around other lakes’.⁷⁸ In planting non-native trees, the primitive wilderness of Haweswater, an area in the process of being modified by urban engineering, would be further damaged, a fate that had befallen other rural areas.

As set out in the opening chapter, amenity was an amorphous concept that could also be utilised by those in favour of afforestation. Early proponents of afforestation before the First World War cited its beautifying effects on rural areas as a reason municipal governments should plant trees around their reservoirs. While the Western Chronicle may have lamented the impact of afforestation in the interwar period, the chairman of the Manchester waterworks committee, Sir Edward Holt, claimed that, without trees, Haweswater was ‘much over-rated as a beauty spot’.⁷⁹ There is clear political motivation to this statement, but it highlights how amenity could be utilised to support tree planting. Even some preservationists were in favour of afforestation. In a discussion of the impeding construction of Ladybower reservoir, Victor Pochin, the vice-chairman of Leicestershire County Council and chairman of a Leicestershire preservationist body, stated that he had been deeply impressed by the afforestation of other areas of the Derwent Valley, despite opposition from the Council for the Preservation of Rural England. He was particularly impressed with how the cottages, made of local stone, did not clash with the newly planted trees.⁸⁰ In much the same way as reservoirs came to be seen as a feature of the romantic idyll, afforestation could positively affect the cultural landscape, the focus of the following chapter.

This conceptualisation continued after the Second World War, as rural modernism helped to link large-scale projects like afforestation to how the landscape was seen. During the second reading of the National Parks and Access to the Countryside bill in the House of Lords in 1949, the Conservative peer Lord Harlech praised the afforestation of the Elan Valley for improving the beauty of the countryside.⁸¹ Similarly, the Birmingham Gazette claimed in 1953 that the ‘Elan Valley will be beautiful again’ as afforestation sought to repopulate an area that had been stripped for mine props during the Second World War.⁸² While urban demand stripped rural areas of their aesthetic appearance, afforestation by municipal government could re-beautify the countryside, continuing the trend of urban authorities positively re-engineering the landscape. The concept of amenity was not just the preserve of the preservationists.

Like with amenity, afforestation continued to be linked with civic education after the Second World War. An afforestation display, brought from Lake Vyrnwy, was a regular feature of the Liverpool Show during the early 1950s. The 1953 show featured a warning to visitors on the potential of forest fires, with the slogan ‘One match can damage a million trees. One tree can make a million matches’ prominently displayed.⁸³ This slogan sought to educate on the uses of the city’s timber supply and reinforce the need to properly manage the area to protect Liverpool’s economic fortunes. Bringing features from Lake Vyrnwy again provided the residents of Liverpool with a tangible link to an important civic area outside the city that would, otherwise, have been out of reach for many. In providing these stalls, the Liverpool Corporation sought to educate its citizens on the use of rural space the city owned and managed around their watershed, thereby creating a tangible civic link between the city and its far-off hinterland. As seen in the discussions of civic education and amenity, the cultural aspects of afforestation were as important to maintaining a sense of civic identity as the strict management of the waterworks.

Conclusion

British forestry developed greatly over the course of the twentieth century, and this chapter has shown that waterworks management was a prominent element of that development, a factor that has been neglected in previous histories of forestry. It has also shown that tree planting, an activity somewhat removed from the provision of water to towns and cities, was deeply connected to waterworks management, as well as politics and civic identity. It is important to stress local efforts here: Liverpool very much led the way, being the first to afforest its reservoirs in a meaningful way. That success continued well into the post-Second World War period, with the product of the Vyrnwy plantations used to show citizens of Liverpool what their city could provide. Afforestation efforts, though, were not always as straightforward or successful, demonstrating the need to highlight efforts even when they went wrong. Leeds and its experiment with unemployed people was a case in point. Despite the benefits of afforestation, and the progressive nature of the city’s plans, the scheme actually revealed tensions between work, unemployment and masculinity. In not providing training, the unemployed men were set up to fail, allowing the city’s newspaper press to use divisive rhetoric that belied unease with unemployment, far from the initial intentions to protect Washburn waterworks from pollution. Analysing the responses of the unemployed men to their treatment, and taking a history-from-below approach, helps to illuminate how waterworks management shaped not only the municipally owned landscape but also the treatment of central actors employed to protect the city’s water supply. While the scheme was a failure, it brought the idea of unemployment relief to national significance, even if that history has been forgotten. Similarly, after the First World War, despite the success of Liverpool and Birmingham Corporations in afforesting Vyrnwy and Elan, their success was not replicated uniformly, as municipal authorities had to contend with the financial costs of such schemes, issues around land ownership and the potential of costly land purchases, and debates around preservation and amenity.

This chapter, then, has shown that engaging in the more environmental aspects of reservoir development beyond landscape change provides more nuance to ideas around waterworks management, as well as how, in some cases, reservoirs became sites of tension as well as sites of civic pride. Highlighting the cultural aspects of afforestation – how it was presented to urban residents – is important in showing how these rural areas continued to be linked to the city: in other words, how civic identity was reinforced beyond the construction of reservoirs and the supply of water itself. It highlights and develops the dynamic between local and national stories. It has also shown the benefits of examining municipal efforts at afforestation, an understudied aspect of forestry historiography. Not only were municipal authorities like Liverpool, Birmingham and Leeds key players in efforts to plant trees in Britain, especially before the centralised efforts of the Forestry Commission, their involvement belied a wider web of issues including politics, economics and civic identity, showing that there was much more to planting trees than putting saplings in the ground.

Notes

1. 1.  Joseph Parry, ‘Afforestation’, British Waterworks Association: Proceedings 1918–1920, volume 2 (British Waterworks Association, 1920), 121–7.

2. 2.  John Sheail, An Environmental History of Twentieth-Century Britain (Palgrave, 2002).

3. 3.  The most prominent example of this is William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (Norton, 1991).

4. 4.  Historians who have looked at forestry pre-1918 have mainly focused on efforts by the landed gentry to afforest estates. See James Winter, Secure from Rash Assault: Sustaining the Victorian Environment (University of California Press, 1999), 83–103. For key texts on post-1918 forestry, see Sheail, Environmental History; Matthew Kelly, Quartz and Feldspar: Dartmoor – A British Landscape in Modern Times (Vintage, 2016).

5. 5.  Stephen Mosley, The Environment in World History (Routledge, 2010), 34–5.

6. 6.  Richard H. Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860 (Cambridge University Press, 1995).

7. 7.  Winter, Secure from Rash Assault, 83–103.

8. 8.  Sheail, Environmental History; Kelly, Quartz and Feldspar.

9. 9.  ‘Editorial’, Yorkshire Post, 26 October 1904, 6.

10. 10.  Robin Goodfellow, ‘Birmingham Timber Growing’, Birmingham Mail, 7 October 1916, 6.

11. 11.  ‘To Be Opened by H. M. The King: Full Description of the Ladybower Reservoir’, Derbyshire Times, 21 Sept 1945, 7.

12. 12.  ‘Summary of the News’, Yorkshire Post, Editorial, 26 October 1904, 6.

13. 13.  John Field, Learning through Labour: Training, Unemployment and the State 1890–1939 (University of Leeds, 1992), 6.

14. 14.  Raymond David Dalton, ‘Labour and the Municipality: Labour Politics in Leeds 1900–1914’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Huddersfield, 2000), 117.

15. 15.  Field, Learning through Labour, 18–19.

16. 16.  Winter, Secure from Rash Assault, 99.

17. 17.  Parry, ‘Afforestation’, 122–3.

18. 18.  Parry, ‘Afforestation’, 122–3.

19. 19.  ‘Editorial’, Newry Reporter, 17 October 1905, 3.

20. 20.  ‘Afforestation: Mistakes in Our System’, Buckinghamshire Examiner, 22 June 1909, 3.

21. 21.  The precise location of the bungalow is not stated in contemporary sources, and there is no other information to inform where the structure was constructed.

22. 22.  Leeds Corporation, ‘Leeds Waterworks Sub-Committee Minutes, volume 3: 1900–1906’, West Yorkshire Archive Service (WYAS), LCC22/2/3, 117–18.

23. 23.  Leeds Corporation, ‘Leeds Waterworks Sub-Committee Minutes, volume 3: 1900–1906’, WYAS, LCC22/2/3, 105–14.

24. 24.  W. R. Fisher and Samuel Margerison, ‘Reports on the Afforestation of the Washburn Valley Estate’, City of Leeds Waterworks (1905), held at Special Collections, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds, Sheppard Pamphlets FIS, 6–7.

25. 25.  Fisher and Margerison, ‘Reports on the Afforestation of the Washburn Valley Estate’, 44.

26. 26.  Fisher and Margerison, ‘Reports on the Afforestation of the Washburn Valley Estate’, 115.

27. 27.  Leeds Corporation, ‘Leeds Waterworks Sub-Committee Minutes, volume 3: 1900–1906’, WYAS, LCC22/2/3, 124–25.

28. 28.  ‘Untitled’, Yorkshire Post, 3 December 1906, 8.

29. 29.  ‘Leeds Unemployed on Public Works’, Yorkshire Post, 20 February 1907, 9.

30. 30.  ‘Leeds Unemployed on Public Works’, Yorkshire Post.

31. 31.  Stephen Caunce, ‘Yorkshire Post Newspapers Ltd: Perseverance Rewarded’, in Leeds City Business 1893–1993: Essays Marking the Centenary of the Incorporation, ed. John Chartres and Katrina Honeyman (Leeds University Press, 1993), 30.

32. 32.  ‘Making the Leeds Forest: Lot of the Labourers in the Washburn Valley’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 17 January 1907, 4.

33. 33.  Disgusted, ‘Neither Idle Nor Work-Shy’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 22 February 1907, 4.

34. 34.  ‘Too Lazy to Work: Washburn Experiment a Complete Failure’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 20 February 1907, 4.

35. 35.  Anon, ‘The “Work-Shy” Brigade: More Replies to Charges of Laziness’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 23 February 1907, 7.

36. 36.  Bill Luckin, ‘Revisiting the Idea of Degeneration in Urban Britain, 1830–1900’, Urban History 33, no. 2 (2006): 234–52, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963926805003275.

37. 37.  Marjorie Levine-Clark, Unemployment, Welfare, and Masculine Citizenship: ‘So Much Honest Poverty’ in Britain, 1870–1930 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 2.

38. 38.  One Who Has Tried It, ‘The “Work-Shy” Brigade’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 22 February 1907, 4.

39. 39.  S. G. Macbeth, ‘Asked to Suspend Judgement’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 22 February 1907, 4.

40. 40.  Disgusted, ‘Neither Idle Nor Work-Shy’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 22 February 1907, 4.

41. 41.  W. J. M., ‘A Critic Who Thinks They Expect Too Much’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 23 February 1907, 7.

42. 42.  W. J. M., ‘Critic Who Thinks’.

43. 43.  Dalton, ‘Labour and the Municipality’, 136.

44. 44.  Dalton, ‘Labour and the Municipality’, 136–37.

45. 45.  HC Deb (4th series) 19 March 1907 vol. 171, c.662.

46. 46.  Special correspondent, ‘At “Work-Shy” Colony: A Day with the “Wasters” at Fewston’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 26 February 1907, 4.

47. 47.  Special correspondent, ‘At “Work-Shy” Colony’.

48. 48.  ‘The Ethics of Unemployment’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 7 March 1907, 4.

49. 49.  ‘Tales from Washburn Valley: The Tree-Planters at Work Again’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 14 October 1907, 5.

50. 50.  ‘The Unemployed Problem’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 11 December 1907, 3.

51. 51.  Special correspondent, ‘Leeds Afforestation: Its Bearing on the Water Supply’, Yorkshire Post, 11 January 1913, 10.

52. 52.  Alexander Pope, ‘The Washburn Valley Afforestation Scheme of the Leeds City Council’ (reprinted from the Quarterly Journal of Forestry) (Laughton and Company, 1914), 4.

53. 53.  Pope, ‘Washburn Valley Afforestation Scheme’, 5.

54. 54.  Pope, ‘Washburn Valley Afforestation Scheme’, 7.

55. 55.  ‘Leeds City’s Millions of Trees: The Scheme That Angered the Economists’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 21 September 1917, 3.

56. 56.  ‘Diary of a Yorkshireman’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 27 February 1943, 4.

57. 57.  Sheail, Environmental History, 89; Arthur P. Grenfell, ‘Afforestation and Unemployment’, Fabian Society Tracts, nos. 134–166 (Fabian Society, 1912).

58. 58.  Sheail, Environmental History, 82; Winter, Secure from Rash Assault, 99.

59. 59.  Sheail, Environmental History, 82.

60. 60.  ‘Liverpool’s Water Catchment Areas: Great Afforestation Scheme for Vyrnwy’, The Scotsman, 6 May 1913, 8.

61. 61.  ‘Afforestation at Lake Vyrnwy’, Northern Whig, 9 May 1913, 2.

62. 62.  ‘More Forests Wanted: Means of Assisting Water Storage’, Sunderland Daily Echo, 16 August 1934, 5; ‘ “Witchcraft” Fodder in Trays for Cattle at Show’, Liverpool Echo, 29 July 1938, 5.

63. 63.  Leeds Corporation, ‘Leeds Waterworks Committee Minutes, volume 7: 1896–1903’, WYAS, LLC22/1/7, 79–165; Leeds Corporation, ‘Leeds Corporation Waterworks Plans and Sections of Proposed Additional Works, November 1866’, WYAS, QE20/1/1866/6.

64. 64.  ‘Farmers’ Notice to Quit: Afforestation Schemes at Lake Vyrnwy’, Liverpool Echo, 19 May 1924, 12.

65. 65.  ‘Birmingham City Council: Revision of Tramway Fares’, Birmingham Daily Post, 10 April 1918, 3.

66. 66.  ‘Eye Brook Dam Nears Completion’, Northants Evening Telegraph, 21 August 1939, 6.

67. 67.  Kelly, Quartz and Feldspar, 172.

68. 68.  Listener, ‘Talk of the Town: Liverpool’s Trees Are Doing Nicely’, Liverpool Echo, 4 November 1952, 4.

69. 69.  ‘Elan Valley Forestry Plan May Not Pay’, Birmingham Gazette, 1 September 1950, 5.

70. 70.  ‘Great Easton Dam Nearing Completion’, Market Harborough Advertiser and Midland Mail, 25 August 1939, 2; G. B. R., ‘Down in the Forest: Drink to the Trees’, Western Mail, 2 April 1948, 2.

71. 71.  Ben Roberts, ‘Entertaining the Community: The Evolution of Civic Ritual and Public Celebration, 1860–1953’, Urban History 44, no. 3 (2017), 444–63, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963926816000511.

72. 72.  Tom Hulme, After the Shock City: Urban Culture and the Making of Modern Citizenship (Boydell Press, 2019), 73.

73. 73.  ‘ “Witchcraft” Fodder’, Liverpool Echo, 29 July 1938, 5.

74. 74.  Parry, ‘Afforestation’, 183–92.

75. 75.  ‘The Elan Valley Plantations: Not Yet a Commercial Proposition’, Birmingham Daily Post, 1 September 1950, 2.

76. 76.  ‘Tree Planting at Thirlmere and Haweswater’, Penrith Observer, 13 July 1926, 8.

77. 77.  Sheail, Environmental History, 95–7.

78. 78.  ‘A Gigantic Water Scheme: How Manchester Is to Meet Its Needs’, Western Chronicle, 27 February 1925, 2.

79. 79.  ‘Haweswater Scheme’, Lancashire Evening Post, 18 July 1925, 3.

80. 80.  ‘A Visit to Derwent Valley: Water for Leicester Will Submerge Two Villages’, Leicester Mercury, 21 July 1939, 10.

81. 81.  HL Deb (5th series) 19 October 1949 vol. 164 cc.949–1010.

82. 82.  ‘Elan Valley Will Be Beautiful Again’, Birmingham Gazette, 5 June 1953, 3.

83. 83.  ‘Liverpool Show is Getting Better and Better: Entries Up by 1,000’, Liverpool Echo, 16 July 1953, 5.