Landscapes of Military Modernity: From ‘Eyesores’ to National Heritage?

Abstract

Abstract Throughout much of the twentieth century, there has been a sense that England’s green and pleasant land was affronted, desecrated even, by the appurtenances of modern war. Unlike their ancient and medieval equivalents, pillboxes, airfields, bunkers, nuclear weapons testing facilities and other twentieth-century military installations seemed incompatible with the natural environment—and with the integrity of the longer continuities of history embodied in the English landscape. Amenity bodies were among those most hostile to the militarisation of the national domain. Paying special attention to the National Trust, this essay argues that public recognition of the heritage value in modern-day military landscapes was slow, halting and contested. The ruination of these sites was perceived as disturbingly abrupt, the sometimes almost futuristic modernity of their structures suggestive as much of vicissitudes to come as of those now happily overborne. This perspective informed efforts to remove such ‘eyesores’ once abandoned by the armed services. For all that twentieth-century Britain may have been a ‘warfare’ as much as a ‘welfare’ state, the landscapes of Britain’s modern-day military experience were—and remain—incompletely integrated into mainstream understandings of national heritage.