A Designation History - East Devon Area of Outstanding Natural ...

Despite not being included in the first choice of areas for designation,
the fine coastlines of Devon were, indeed, given early consideration, as
Harold Abrahams had argued in his paper (NPC/G/184), when Lord
Strang, the NPC Chairman, informally discussed the question of AONB
designation for parts of the Devon coastline with Geoffrey Clark, the
Devon CC Director of Planning, in December 1954. Geoffrey Clark
had then suggested 11 that the Areas of Special Landscape Value (ASLV)
in the County Development Plan would provide a starting point (see
copy of letter on following page). In East Devon 12 , the ASLV covered an
extensive area called “The East Devon Plateau”, including all of the Devon
section of the Blackdown Hills, and the remainder of “The Blackdown
Hills and Sidmouth Bay” Hobhouse Conservation Area, plus extensive
areas of Common and heathland between the Exe Valley and Sidmouth
(Pebblebed Heaths) and an area of incised plateau to the north-west of
Lyme Regis.
However, consideration of the designation of various parts of the Devon
coastline was not formally addressed by the NPC until September 13
1955, when they considered Lord Strang’s paper (NPC/255) setting out
the possibilities for a Cornwall AONB, following Cornwall CC’s earlier
rejection of the NPC’s Cornwall National Park proposal. In authorising
the commencement of discussions to consider the designation of much
of the Cornwall coastline as an AONB, the NPC also decided that, with
the objective of safeguarding simultaneously, the fine coastlines of the
whole of the South-West Peninsula, parallel discussions should be started
with Devon and Dorset CC’s.
East Devon Pebblebed Heaths