One current project is to compile an illustrated paper/presentation on the route of the once Hull – Hornsea rail-line through the city of Hull and the countryside and villages of Holderness. Through much of the route in the City the line has been converted to a cycleway and footpath and to each side as much has been retained of the shrubs, undergrowth and now mature trees. It is thus one of Hull’s ‘green corridors’ and the photo. above shows that sections are maintained and valued by local volunteers, mostly by litter picking.
The concept of a ‘green corridor’ is vital to nature conservation, as much in the countryside as in urban areas. Green corridors allow wildlife to move along linear distances this helping in the search for food and suitable mates. In arable farming regions such as East Yorkshire and north Lincolnshire over the last two generations so many hedgerows have been ‘grubbed-up’ (destroyed), or so reduced by mechanical flailing to their barest minimum, that they no longer sustain wildlife and although plantations of woodland may still exist green corridors that once linked them have been lost so the plantation becomes mystically devoid of ground-living animals and short-distance flying birds.
Of course in towns green corridors are more likely to be interrupted by roads where back-in-the-day level crossings existed or where modern roads, often serving relatively new housing estates, cross the line. This is true of Hull as whereas initially the Victoria Dock Railway and later the Hull – Barnsley Railway ‘high-level’ track both skirted the edge of the then town to the north the routes are now, as a result of urban expansion, in the town.
After the ‘Beeching cuts’ the issue of what use to make of now disused rail lines, particularly once the track and sleepers had been removed, was relevant. A senior lecturer at Hull University back in the 1960s, Dr. Jay Appleton, wrote a number of papers recommending their adoption as public rights of way.
(to be continued)