1 Statement of significance.
The Surrey Hills landscape is made up of a patchwork of different character areas each one distinctive with its own identity and set of features. Farming has played a central role in shaping this landscape, although only 40% of the Surrey Hills is designated as agricultural land under the Agricultural Land Classification Scheme.
Traditional mixed farming creates a beautiful and forever changing landscape. The seasonal cycle of ploughing, drilling seeds and harvesting provides a valuable habitat for many species of farmland birds like the peewit, skylark and barn owl. Farming maintains some of the finest landscapes features including hedgerows, ponds and meadows. There is also a rich heritage associated with farming particularly associated with fields systems, such as field names.
2 Management Issues.
The break up of large estates and the loss of farmed landscape, where farmers are key ‘custodians’, leads rapidly to erosion of local distinctiveness, historic interest, landscape diversity and general visual quality of countryside. The mosaic of features associated with the farmed landscape is vulnerable to loss and decline through neglect and inappropriate management. Factors contributing to this change include: intensification through modern commercial farming; fragmentation, through which land may be speculatively acquired for residential and leisure plots; and contract farming through which the traditional close relationship between a farmer and the stewardship of their land is often compromised. Diversification can have both a positive and a negative impact on landscape character. Further decline in farming and traditional land management will impact on biodiversity resulting in issues such as deterioration of woodland, scrubbing up of downland, loss of hedgerows and increased horse ownership leading to the division of fields into horse pasture and paddocks. Over grazing can also result in erosion to soils and ragwort encroachment.