It is sometimes forgotten that English people draw part of their identity from the beauty of nature. Many English counties have their own special plant or flower, for example – the white and red roses of Yorkshire and Lancashire, the oak of Surrey, the Worcestershire pear tree.
Our industrial towns also once recruited their working populations from a surrounding hinterland of farms and villages and were intimately connected with the countryside through family and cultural ties. Pride of place was central to civic identity; a connection with nature was fought for as a common good, for example in the mass hill trespasses of the 1930s and 40s.
