Luddism: Issues and Interpretation 2: Ecology

2] Ecology: Exploitation or Preservation?

Ecology is more an implicit than explicit theme in some of the novels.   In Shirley there may be an ironic pun in Robert’s second name: ‘Moore’ for he regards the countryside as an obstruction that has to be overcome.   Caroline is horrified when she hears Moore boast about how Shirley’s ‘romantic Hollow’ (Ch XI, p 161) will be obliterated by development: ‘the copse shall be firewood ere five years elapse; the beautiful wild ravine shall be a smooth descent,’ (Ch XXXVII, p509).   Against Caroline’s protest: ‘Horrible!  You will change our blue hill-country air into the Stillbro’ smoke atmosphere,’ he offers a learned allusion: ‘I will pour the waters of Pactolus through the valley of Briarfield,’ (Ch XXXVII, p509).   These are waters famed for washing up gold (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pactolus) but the only greenery Moore imagines are ‘rows of cottage gardens,’ (Ch XXXVII, p509).    Following the novel’s dynamic of domination and submission Caroline points out ‘Stilbro’ Moor, however, defies you, thank Heaven!’ (Ch XXXVII, p510).   Nevertheless, after this brief protest she sexually submits to Robert’s driving, destructive, masculine ‘day-dreams’: ‘she mutely offered a kiss, ’(Ch XXXVII, p510).  She has become more virgin territory for the mastery of Moore to transform.    

            The River Spen, close to the site of Rawfolds,                              In order to prevent the return of 19th century pollution 

               cleaner and greener than it would have been                              modern rivers are monitored.  River Colne checkpoint

                       in the late 19th century.                                                                                 near Dalton Works.                                                  

Daisy Baines’ ecological observations are focused on the house of Joseph Retcliffe.  The text describes the beauty of the house’s gardens and then jumps to the present of the 1880s: ‘Instead of the former verdant seclusion, the spot is surrounded by newly made roads leading to innumerable factories &tc; and the meandering stream, instead of being clear, limpid and sparkling, the home of a thousand sportive fishes, is sometimes blue as the deep ocean, or black as ink, or red as blood, according to the whim of the dyehouses and chemical works on its banks’,   (Daisy Baines, Chp III, Column 2, 23.010.1880).    A tone of uneasy humour is inserted with the word ‘whim’.

Milnsbridge House once the home of the magistrate Joseph Ratcliffe

surrounded by landscaped gardens. 

Where Caroline is indignant, Banks is mournful.   The lost landscape of the past is seen through the landscape of the present: ‘The sky was clearer; there were no tall factory chimneys belching forth smoke’ though she admits that change isn’t entirely for the worse: ‘the only sanitary commissioners were the strong mountain breezes that swept the valley from west to east,’ (Bond Slaves, Ch3, p26 ). 

A now smokeless and redundant mill close to Milnsbridge House.

Typical of the industrialisation that swallowed up Ratcliffe's grounds. 

 Bentley uses a technique equivalent to time lapse photography.  Landscapes are inserted into the narrative to show the growth of industrialisation: ‘the Ire Valley lay before them, from the round black hole which showed where the Marthwaite tunnel pierced the Pennine Range’ (Bk IV, Ch I, p344)  In keeping with the sexual dynamic of the novel the words 'hole' and 'pierced' draw attention to themselves... [view from near Moor Cock ‘putting reservoir there’]   

     Above the mill is what seems to be the remains of a village green;                        below the mill industrial cottages in Stoney Lane                                                                                                                                                vulnerable to any factory  overflows.                                                                                                                                                              

                                 This contrast between pre and post industrial landscapes is common in the South Pennines.

Looking almost anywhere in ‘The Great Towns’, Chapter 3 of Engels’ The Condition of the Working Class in England  will give an equally depressing account of pollution in the industrial towns.  This is Leeds but it could be Bradford or Manchester or Nottingham: ‘miasmatic vapours strongly impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen’, ‘ a disgusting residuum highly injurious to health,’ (p 79)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/condition-working-class-england.pdf

By the end of the century mill owners built parks in Marsden and Huddersfield to act as ‘lungs’ for the city and make some amends for the pollution that accompanied their profits.    

      An entrance lodge with a large coat of arms guards Greenhead Park, Huddersfield 1884, as if the visitor is entering a stately home.  

To the left of the lodge is an expensive and prestigious greenhouse.

At the centre an impressive fountain.

Marsden Park makes fewer bids for status; it is smaller and less grand:

      A plaque shows that the park is later than Greenhead.                         Its amenities include a bandstand and tennis courts

and an unrivaled view over the Pennines.

Intense industrialisation could only take place where it was supported by the potentials of the local geology.  Where one valley is filled with mills another, lacking suitable water power or other resources is untouched.  A good example is the landscape around Castle Hill.

To the north Castle Hill looks down on valleys dominated by the industrial sprawl of Huddersfield. 

The valleys to the north show the pattern of industrialisation that formed modern Huddersfield.  Mills were initially water powered and were located on becks or rivers with a powerful flow.  

This building in Milnsbridge stands over a channel that may once have driven a water wheel.

It may have been a small mill or a pre-industrial grain mill. 

The conversion to stream power meant a site near a canal or railway [photos Huddersfield mill near uni with Castle Hill in background] was desirable to ship in coal and transport out goods.

Even nowadays the effect of steam power can be traced on the heights above the Colne Valley; a dry stone wall on the edge of Slaithwaite Moor shows the blackening caused by factory smoke.  

Smoke-blackened stone on Slaithwaite Moor

To the south of Castle Hill there is a valley that was never industrialised.  It is a landscape Defoe would recognise: 

‘But our case was still this; that as soon as we were at the top of every hill, we had it to come down again on the other side; and as soon as we were down we had another to mount, and that immediately; for I do not remember that there was one bottom that had any considerable breadth of plain ground in it, but always a brook in the valley running from those gulls and deeps between the hills, with this remark, that they always cross'd our way in the bottoms from the right-hand to the left, the reason of which you shall see presently.’

A Tour Thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain, 1727, Vol 3, Letter VIII http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/travellers/Defoe/31

                                           The steep green valley to the south of Castle Hill that divides it from Farnley Tyas.

Nature's comment: A rowan tree grows from the top of Wood Bottom mill chimney.