My friend Simon Meade, who has died aged 92, was one of the fathers of the environmental movement in Wales. Eschewing his high society background, he was one of the first to espouse an alternative lifestyle, abandoning a well-paid job in the City of London to become the secretary of the Council for the Protection of Rural Wales for 22 years.
Tall and thin, with striking eyes, a gentle manner, keen sense of humour and penetrating intellect, Simon, in his CPRW-emblazoned green van bearing Thermoses and sandwiches, became known throughout the principality, spreading its his message through countless meetings of local residents and public enquiries.
The remarkably unspoilt appearance of much of the Welsh countryside today is in no small measure Simon’s achievement. Among the sites in which he played a key role were the prevention of a proposed bridge along the A55, the main four-lane tourist route from Merseyside to the north Welsh coast and Snowdonia, which would have blighted the view of and from Conway Castle. Instead a tunnel was built, thus securing this historic landscape.
I met Simon in the 1980s when I was MP for Clwyd South West and he was battling, successfully, to secure area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB) status for the Clwydian Range, and site of special scientific interest (SSSI) status for the wild Berwyn Range with its many protected species of birds. A further campaign was his opposition to the “industrial” forestry of fir trees that disfigured the rolling contours of many Welsh landscapes. Simon also fought successfully for the thousands of caravans in their parks along the north and west Wales coast to be painted green, in order to be less obtrusive and to conform to stringent environmental safeguards.
Born at Pen y Lan, Meifod, Simon was the son of the pioneering mountaineer Charlie Meade and his wife, Lady Aileen Brodrick. He inherited his father’s love for the great outdoors, accompanying him from the age of six months to the Alps and the Tyrol.
From Shrewsbury school Simon went to Cirencester agricultural college. Following a short spell of farming he took up a job with the stockbroker James Capel, which bored him intensely. Then, meeting the retiring secretary of the CPRW, and declaring “that is the job that I want to do”, he secured the post in 1966. He became its first full-time secretary and its director.
He retired from the CPRW in 1988 and moved to a spectacularly located Welsh mountain cottage, Bron Fedw, near Meifod, where he pursued his interest in forestry and conservation as well as art, architecture and travel. He fulfilled his ambition to travel to St Petersburg, where he made contact with distant cousins who had a common ancestor in Princess Yekaterina Romanovna Vorontsova-Dashkova, the closest female friend of Catherine the Great.
After a whirlwind three-month courtship, in 1957 Simon married Lady Sophie Gathorne-Hardy. He is survived by Sophie and their five children, Camilla, Jasper, Ben, Hassan and Rachel, and his 11 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
