One hundred years after the founding of CPRE, Rupert Hardy celebrates its legacy, while urging renewed defence of Dorset’s rural landscape
All images: Rupert Hardy
CPRE – the Campaign to Protect Rural England – has spent 100 years defending the countryside from unregulated development and urban sprawl. Founded in 1926, it has spent a century helping shape National Parks, Green Belts and the modern planning system.
Founding years
CPRE was founded in 1926 by Sir Patrick Abercrombie and Sir Guy Dawber as the Council for the Preservation of Rural England. It brought together organisations including the National Trust and the Commons Preservation Society. Early efforts targeted ribbon development and the lack of planning controls in rural areas. Abercrombie had famously warned against ‘ribbon development’ as it would create “glimpses through an almost continuous hedge of bungalows and houses” – a vision he believed would destroy rural beauty. Key early achievements included securing the Petroleum Act in 1928 to control roadside advertising, influencing the 1932 Town and Country Planning Act, creating the first Country Code in 1935 and campaigning for the Metropolitan Green Belt Act in 1938. It was helped by such inspiring figures as Sheffield-based Ethel Haythornthwaite, the environmental campaigner and poet.
Post-war transformation
Following World War Two, CPRE’s advocacy contributed to significant land-use legislation. The 1947 Town and Country Planning Act addressed many of CPRE’s goals for land-use controls. After a 20-year campaign, the 1949 National Parks Act established National Parks, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Sites of Special Scientific Interest. By 1955, the government accepted CPRE’s call for protected Green Belts around major urban areas.
Campaigns in the Last Seventy Years
CPRE’s focus has evolved to address new threats and environmental sustainability. Since the 1960s CPRE has continued to adapt. In 1963 it campaigned for protection of England’s coastline. A long campaign against hedgerow loss led to legal protections in 1997. From the 1980s onwards, work has included promoting brownfield development, energy efficiency and opposition to fracking.
More recently, CPRE has focused on dark skies and rural tranquillity, developing light pollution maps and promoting ‘star count’ initiatives.
As it approaches its centenary, CPRE has also been shaping modern planning policy and strongly promoting roof-top solar energy, affordable rural housing and hedgerow restoration.
CPRE is celebrating a hundred years of standing up for the countryside, and a century of achievements, impact and dedication with lots of events throughout England, including a parliamentary reception in February.
As Mariella Frostrup, CPRE Somerset president, puts it: ‘Protecting the countryside isn’t about freezing places in time or saying no to change. It’s about making better change – for people, for nature, and for the long term.’
Award-winning garden designer Sarah Eberle is creating a CPRE-themed show garden at the 2026 RHS Chelsea Flower Show, after which the garden will be relocated to a regenerated housing development in urban Sheffield. We have also produced a short video, 100 Years in 100 Seconds – see it playing above right.
In May, Future Rural: Imagining Tomorrow’s Countryside – a call to action as well as a celebration of the CPRE centenary – will be published in May.
Dorset CPRE’s successes
Our local branch, Dorset CPRE (DCPRE) has been
campaigning to promote and protect our countryside, as well as supporting rural communities. Recent successes have included:
Helping to stop the West Dorset, Slyer’s Lane and Blandford Hill windfarms, as well as the Rampisham, Mapperton and Sadborow solar farms, which we believed would have had serious visual impact on the Dorset countryside.
Helping to save the beautiful Crown Meadows from a housing development we considered inappropriate in Blandford Forum.
Working to mitigate the effects of hundreds of inappropriate planning applications.
Campaigning throughout Dorset to control littering since our former President, Bill Bryson, launched Stop The Drop.
Sponsoring and judging the Best Dorset Village Shop competition until 2019 (the Best Dorset Village competition is sadly currently in abeyance as it needs a new major sponsor).
Helping to fund the refurbishment of iconic fingerposts and we are supporting Community Land Trusts.
Sponsoring the annual Dorset Hedgelaying Competition, organised by the Melplash Agricultural Society. We also promote the Great Big Dorset Hedge initiative.
Organising a number of successful conferences: the next will be on 9th June on Getting the Balance Right between Dorset’s Housing, Nature and the Countryside.
Celebrate the centenary!
Dorset CPRE’s events will include a big party at Milton Abbey, with lots of speakers, to which our members and others will be invited.
Second, the group will be planting lots of trees across the county, including England’s rarest native timber species, the black poplar.
Dorset CPRE has a new logo and website and is also offering membership at a centenary rate of just £3 per month.
meeting on 31st March at Clayesmore School, where Dr Miles Russell, Bournemouth University’s director of archaeological fieldwork, will speak on excavations at Winterborne Kingston: Investigating Iron Age and Roman Dorset.
Do let me know though if you are coming –[email protected]
Finally, we must resolutely fight a government that seems determined to concrete over the countryside and flout local democracy.
