The Ebbsfleet elephant died about 420,000 years ago, killed by early humans with bits of flint. His substantial remains – he weighed the same as four Hondas – were uncovered in 2003, during the construction of the HS1 high-speed rail link from St Pancras to the Channel tunnel. To pay a trip to his penultimate resting place (Southampton is now home to the bones), you need to exit Ebbsfleet International, walk down Station Road, and head for the junction with the B259.
It’s unmarked. The cars roar by, past a pristine verge. Not even the place for a picnic, let alone a quiet prayer. For maximum atmosphere you’d be better off having a look at the painting that accompanies an academic report on the find. In this, our doomed elephant cheerfully waves its trunk at some deer across the swamp. Other animals wander around (also uncovered was evidence of rhinos, lions, aurochs and monkeys). All are unaware of the butt-naked hunter watching from the shore.
Little of this landscape still exists. The swamp became shells, the chalk then bulldozed into muddy plains, awaiting redevelopment. Artists’ impressions of the area now show gleaming executive culs-de-sac with an abundance of parking. Families enjoying the prestige lifestyle opportunities that accompany buying a house in Britain’s youngest garden city.
But there is trouble in paradise. Although Ebbsfleet was earmarked for major development back in 2003, and permission has been granted for 15,000 housing units, only 350 have so far been built. This is credited to a reluctance on the part of private firms to fork out for infrastructure, rather than a lack of demand. And so, accordingly, £200m of public money is being used to jumpstart the process.
Small wonder. The government cannot allow Ebbsfleet to fail. The investment already committed is enormous. HS1, too, didn’t come cheap, and public feeling about its Midlands sister depends to some extent on its success. Plus, Ebbsfleet isn’t just any old new garden city, it’s the first of three proposed. Whither Bicester (earmarked as number 2) if this one shrivels?
There is another reason, too. The project is a de facto poster child for a significant piece of policy brought in shortly after the election. This loosens planning controls and all but guarantees consent to develop any suitable brownfield sites for housing – including, where necessary, compulsory purchase orders.
Reaction at the time was positive. We need more houses, after all. But the easy ride is also a matter of rhetoric: endlessly invoked, rarely queried. Better brownfield than green, right? Obviously it’s preferable to raze wasteland than ravage undefiled countryside.
No. Not so obviously. Supposedly Arcadian greenfield Britain includes intensively farmed prairies, fields of polytunnels and industrial forestry hospitable neither to walkers nor wildlife. Indeed, it’s the destruction of much of our countryside that has made so much brownfield invaluable. The lack of human and chemical intervention in these disused quarries and rubbish dumps, railway sidings and former factories, gives nature a fighting chance of survival.
Yet even before this summer, such territory was vulnerable. In 2013, research found that over 50% of wildlife-rich brownfield in the Thames Gateway has been lost, damaged or is under threat. The fallout from the new ruling will push that figure far higher.
Caveats do still exist, if lobbying is strong enough. Just last month, the dingy skipper – our most moth-like butterfly – blocked a housing development on a former heliport in Newcastle. A similar story in Plymouth involved the horrid ground-weaver spider, a type thought dead for decades. Meanwhile, near Linlithgow, the residency of the hobo spider in a scrapyard has meant it’s to be turned into a wildflower meadow. Would-be litter-pickers have been invited to the site, with instructions to bring wellies and approach “from Pier Road off the A904” and next to the funeral parlour.
Directions like these make my heart lift. I was lucky enough to be raised by an intrepid explorer of the brownfield, and to own an audiobook of Stig of the Dump. But others, too, must know it’s the unsung wilderness which usually proves the most romantic – and the most accessible. Cars can transport you to country parks with tarmac paths and to honeypot mountains, but for many, mysterious pockets of brownfield are the natural space closest to home.
Just how close may come as a surprise, however. In a set of recommendations published in March, Lord Adonis re-emphasised the status of the land on which council estates sit, as brownfield. Technically this is correct: if it isn’t green (gardens are exempt), it is brown. Whether you are a local authority tenant or not, if you live and work in an urban area you likely do so, in theory at least, on brownfield.
What we need is a much more sophisticated approach to categorisation. The same scepticism should be extended to official use of the words green and brown, as black and white. We like to think we’re savvy enough to spot attempts to persuade us to pay more for a yoghurt by billing it as luxury or natural. So why can’t we clock spin here?
Half a million years ago our ancestors brought down a really big elephant with a few bits of rock. We ought to be able to manage this too.
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