28 May 1998
While
reading the Garden of Cyrus atop Ilkley Moor, it struck me how
alike an early 20th Century electrical Railway telegraph (as
referred to in the Windsor magazine - 1904/5), was
to the Quincuncial Plantations of the Ancients. Though to
describe Ilkley Moor as a similar Lozenge, would be pushing things
too far. The network of plantations springing up across it’s
northern face, may in part be natural, but many are artificial. And
while those stones and boulders with cups and spirals upon their
forms are often given a mystical nature, one must consider the
effects by trees on these artefacts. Given that a majority may or
may not have been buried for over five millennia.
But, why
are we allowing such plantations to take over the near untamed
character of Ilkley Moor? Agrarians who spend their lives in close
unison with Nature know and respect her powers. Is it fear or lack
of this respect which prompts Urban Man to plant trees, in wide open
spaces? This is, after all, Yorkshire! Were it Sardis, one
could understand Xenophon’s feelings, but his treaties on the Horse
are of more importance to those people of Wharfedale who follow in
his tradition. At least try to!
Had Dr Thomas Brown visited
Ilkley he would, no doubt, view Ilkley Moor with an eye of
incredulity. For those able to see and hear, speak and think for
themselves, have often quoted how moorland for which this town became
known worldwide, is taking a downward spiral and has been for over a
quarter century. How long are you, the residents of this Town, going
to allow this spiral to continue? That which many of you moved to
this area for, is in part, fast becoming eroded, grown over and worst
of all, forgotten. Compaired to the Garden of Cyrus, your
valley is becoming lost to the humours and vapours of modernity.
For what
will Ilkley be remembered at the end of the third Millennia?
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