Why save Severus Hill?
I’m part of the campaign to save Severus Hill, an Ice Age landmark in York, which may also have been the place where Emperor Septimius Severus was cremated, after he died in Eboracum in AD 211. The hill is definitely a four-acre former reservoir site that nature has rewilded, and is definitely a place that Yorkshire Water wants to sell.
In a recent discussion with some friends, I was asked why we were trying to stop someone selling an old bramble-filled hole in the middle of a housing estate. People need houses, came the argument, and it’s hardly the Okavango Delta or the Amazon rainforest, is it?
Well no, of course it isn’t. It’s a small green space in suburban York. But its lack of giraffes or anacondas completely misses the point. These four acres of former waterworks have been left to do their own thing for years, and nature has reclaimed them. Lime-loving grassland plants, red kites, hedgehogs: they may not serve a safari sales-pitch, but they are our biodiversity.
When the reservoir was built for the York New Waterworks in the 1840s, it sat in a huge expanse of greenery. Acomb was a village in the West Riding. Holgate was a few houses near the junction of the Harrogate and Wetherby roads. The railways were a mad new idea. Decade by decade, that green space vanished incrementally as industry moved in, and York expanded. Severus Hill was a water body, then an island of abandonment. Now it is both a unique remnant and a vision for the future.
If we can’t give wildlife the opportunity to thrive in our cities, in this nature-depleted country, then our race is run. What hope do we have of addressing the mortal crisis of our time – anthropogenic climate change – if we can’t do something as straightforward as saving Severus Hill?
It’s not just the biodiversity either. The Ice Age history of Severus Hill makes it a great place to celebrate geodiversity too. As it was partly formed by glaciers that came from the Yorkshire Dales, the till of the hill will undoubtedly contain erratic fossils* from ancient coral reefs. Geo-biodiversity! I’m not sure even the Okavango or the Amazon can offer that depth!
But that’s still not the point. This isn’t a zero-sum game. We can aspire to save the world’s great natural habitats whilst also working to conserve our own small corners of green space. We can then try to connect them, or reconnect them, as St Nick’s Green Corridors project is doing.
Look after the pennies, my granny used to tell me, and the pounds will look after themselves. I don’t think she was talking about buying former reservoirs, but the principle broadly applies. If you can help us save Severus Hill, the benefits for nature will reach far beyond this corner of suburban York. We don’t have much time left, though. Our fundraising window closes at the end of June, and we still need to raise tens of thousands of pounds to buy the land.
So, don’t sever us from nature. Don’t sever us from our heritage. Save for us York’s naturally historic hill!
*Many of the sorts of fossils you’ll be able to admire if you join my York Festival of Ideas ‘Corals in the Cobbles‘ walk on Monday June 3rd.
