Дартумрды сақтаған леди Сейер

British environmental conservator

Sylvia Olive Pleadwell Sayer, Lady Sayer (6 March 1904 – 4 January 2000), was a passionate conservationist and environmental campaigner on behalf of Dartmoor, an area of mostly granite moorland in Devon in the south west of England. She was chairman of the Dartmoor Preservation Association from 1951 to 1973, and remained deeply involved with the organisation until her death.

Sayer's grandfather was Robert Burnard (1848–1920), who with Sabine Baring Gould performed the first scientific excavations of ancient monuments on Dartmoor, including Grimspound; and who was one of the founding members in 1883 of the Dartmoor Preservation Association. He leased Huccaby House, on the West Dart River, near Hexworthy, from the Duchy of Cornwall and Sayer used to visit as a child. Her father was the Principal Medical Officer at the Naval Hospital School in Greenwich. She attended Princess Helena College in Ealing, and then the Central School of Art in London. In 1925 she married Guy Sayer, who was a midshipman in the Royal Navy, and they spent some time in China. Three years later they bought Old Middle Cator, a dilapidated Dartmoor longhouse about two miles west of the village of Widecombe in the Moor in Dartmoor. They had twin sons, Geoffrey and Oliver, born in 1930, and until World War Two the family travelled widely to meet the needs of Guy's navy career. After VE Day, Guy was posted to the Far East and Sylvia settled at Cator and became interested in local politics, at first as a parish councillor for Widecombe, then as a Rural District Councillor and a member of the Dartmoor Sub Committee of Devon County Council. Lady Sayer acquired her title in 1959 when her husband was knighted on his retirement as the vice admiral commanding the Reserve Fleet. After his retirement he spent much of his time helping his wife with her conservation work. She was chairman of the Dartmoor Preservation Association between 1951 and 1973, and after that, as its patron, she continued to attend virtually every meeting of its executive committee until 1999. She lived at Cator almost until her death, moving to a nursing home in Chagford two weeks before. On 10 February 2000 a service of celebration for her life was held in the parish church of Widecombe in the Moor. It was attended by over 300 people, including representatives of the Dartmoor National Park Authority, the Association of National Park Authorities, the Council for National Parks, the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), the Ramblers' Association, and the Duchy of Cornwall. Crispin Gill wrote about her in his introduction to Dartmoor – A New Study published in 1970 as having "roused the conscience of a [vast] number of people" and he described her as an indefatigable worker with an enormous knowledge; he also referred to Henry Slesser's description of her as "the shield of the moor". She regularly wrote letters to newspapers, both local and national, about matters related to Dartmoor. In her first published letter to The Times, in 1948, she expressed concerns about local authorities (specifically Devon County Council) seeking to subvert the implementation of Arthur Hobhouse's recommendations for the creation of national parks by demanding that they retain their own planning powers. She noted that local authorities had been unable to control development by Government departments in areas such as Dartmoor, referring to the 32,800 acres held by the Admiralty and War Department and the 3,763 acres that had been taken by the Forestry Commission. She also referred to Dartmoor's uniqueness in that most of it was owned by the Duchy of Cornwall which, as a department of the Crown, could basically do what it liked with its land. She urged that control of the soon to be formed National Parks should be at the highest possible level within the Government so there would be a chance of exercising control over the Duchy and other Government departments. The National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 created the National Parks Commission whose first chairman was Sir Patrick Duff. Ten National Parks were created in the 1950s under this Act – Dartmoor National Park was the fourth to be created, in October 1951. It was administered by Dartmoor National Park Authority which was a special committee of Devon County Council and subsidiary to the County Planning Committee which could veto its recommendations. Sayer was a member of the committee from its formation, but she resigned in 1957 in protest at its failure to protect the moor as she would wish.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s she was involved, as DPA chairman, with the disputes over the proposed construction of two new reservoirs on Dartmoor. The largest, which was to supply Plymouth, was known as "Swincombe" after the small River Swincombe that flows through Foxtor Mires, the proposed site of the reservoir. The proposal was eventually rejected in December 1970 at the Bill's committee stage, and a reservoir known as Roadford Lake was built west of the moor near the village of Broadwoodwidger instead. However, the other reservoir at Meldon on the north west edge of the moor was passed, despite claims that the water would be poisoned by arsenic and lead because of the presence of three disused metalliferous mines and their spoil heaps in the area to be flooded. The dam was built in 1972, and in that year Sayer wrote a 62 page booklet entitled The Meldon Story that was published by the DPA. After expounding at length all the arguments made against building a dam at Meldon and in favour of an alternative site at Gorhuish, and the responses from the establishment, it ended with this statement:

Following these efforts, she concentrated on the two companies involved in the extraction of china clay in the south west of the moor. They had permission dating from 1951 to expand their pits and tips. Shaugh Moor is an adjacent area that is rich in ancient monuments and it was there that the companies planned to tip the vast quantities of spoil that is generated from clay extraction. At the time the area became known as "Area Y", from an explanatory diagram that Sayer had drawn. The activism culminated in an adjournment debate in the House of Commons in which Janet Fookes, a Plymouth MP, argued against irreparably damaging the ancient landscape. In June 1978, the two companies agreed to share their waste tips, as Sayer had recommended, saving Shaugh Moor.

In the early 1980s there were plans to create a bypass for the A30 road around the town of Okehampton on the northern edge of Dartmoor. Two alternative routes were proposed: a northern one through agricultural land, or a southern one which would encroach on the National Park. After a public enquiry was held in 1980 arguments continued for over five years with Sayer vigorously opposing the route through the moor. The matter was finally settled when the southern route was approved in December 1985 by the House of Lords. After the decision had been made, Sayer wrote a letter to Peter Bottomley, the then Minister of Transport that included the following extract:

She opposed proposals to build a new Dartmoor Prison at Princetown in the centre of the moor in 1959. In the 1960s she complained about off road car parking, and the poor treatment of Dartmoor ponies by those who only keep them for the subsidies they can obtain. In 1983 she refused an invitation from the Prince of Wales to attend the launch of the Duchy of Cornwall's management plan for Dartmoor, since it allowed for a continuance of military usage. She was also one of a deputation who met the Prince in 1990 to explain to him why they thought he should not renew the military licences for a further term. However, the licences were renewed that year until 2011.