Educating people about moors on the doorstep

The initial print run was funded by a grant of around £200 from the Sheffield Campaign for Access to Moorland (SCAM), of which Terry was a leading member.

“The reason for publishing it was simple really,” he explains. “SCAM had been running these trespass walks making them interesting, showing people what can be found on the moors. But we wanted to set down why people wanted to go on these voyages of exploration, looking for this or that or the other. To show the educational purpose, the reason behind the trespass.”

He wrote in the notebook: “As more people take up walking as a leisure pursuit, we have the responsibility to help educate them to enjoy the moorland in a manner that doesn't destroy what they have come to seek - the quiet and wild open spaces.”

The book is to be revised and republished this summer, with new illustrations by Sheffield artist Paul Evans, and new reflections by Terry, now that the CROW act of 20 years ago has helped opened up much of the local moorland that for over 100 years had been closed off by landowners, often for grouse shooting.

The notebook includes Terry’s research into the high landscape west and north of Sheffield, along with a series of walks that would once have involved trespassing on land owned by shooting landowners.

“Access campaigning is ongoing,” says Dan Sumption from Peakrill Press, who’ll be publishing the revised Moorland Notebook in July.

“We didn’t win with the CROW act. We didn’t win the right to roam then,” he says. “And we want to keep this in people’s minds. We wanted to republish the Moorland Notebook partly to keep on record the historical changes and injustices of the past, but also to encourage people's interest and attention, to keep the moors for future generations.”

Campaigners like Terry have long been saying the English public should have access rights similar to Scotland, where people can walk though most woods, coastlines and riversides without breaking the law, in addition to exploring the country’s moorland.

Over the years, Terry has built up a collection of stones, flint scrapers and arrowheads left or lost by the people who chose to live and hunt on the highlands around what’s now Sheffield thousands of years ago. Such ancient artefacts can still be found on local moors, he says.

The upland moors were the preferred home for ancient people, Terry explains, because the lowlands at that time were wet and boggy, and full of woodlands where predators or hostile people might be hiding. Terry writes about the old tracks on the moors that travellers used for thousands of years.

But in the local enclosure acts of the 1800s, many local moors were closed off, often to cater for the new pastime of driven grouse shooting.

Terry’s notebook was originally published when the access campaign was ongoing, but the revised version intends to renew an interest in the history of local moors, when they’re now under threat from climate change and wildfires.

“The perceived fears of landowners after the CROW act never happened,” he says. Most visitors to the moors still stick to footpaths, and any damage has been negligible, he adds. “But more recently idiots and vandals go out with their picnic barbecues and light fires. And that’s destroying everything we fought for.”

Knowing and appreciating the history of local moorland is crucially important, says Danny Udall of the Eastern Moors Partnership. Archaeologists are even now learning how people and landscape interacted many years ago, he says.

“The more we understand about how these moors were in the past, the better we’re able to plan for their future.”

The revised version of Terry Howard’s Moorland Notebook will be published by Peakrill Press. See https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dansumption/a-moorland-notebook-by-terry-howard/