Travel in relation to religious functions and sacred places is a neglected aspect of transport policy and environmental study. Likewise, the impact of transport on people’s spiritual health is a generally ignored element of sustainable development.
The conventional view of religion in Britain is that it is something for personal, private choice, not suitable for general discussion. Indeed, conventional wisdom is that religion and spirituality are things we are growing out of and those that take them seriously are really rather silly. Evidence for this viewpoint is taken from the decline in the mass religions and the generally exclusive acceptance in discourse of scientific materialism. Yet, religion in Britain and the rest of Europe is diversifying at a rate unprecedented since Roman times, perhaps ever. Whilst there appear to be continually fewer people expressly involved in the traditional mass religions, there is a counter-trend in the expansion of individually chosen ‘alternative’ spiritualities, as well as the fundamentalist branches of Christianity and Islam. Those of no spiritual persuasion (atheists, agnostics) still frequently acknowledge the spiritual side of life and derive spiritual satisfaction from a variety of activities, their environment, pets, wildlife, etc.
This is acknowledged, if perhaps unwittingly, by the Ehrlichs in their generally excellent rebuttal of anti-environmental rhetoric, Betrayal of Science and Reason, excellent save mainly for its rejection of things spiritual. However1:
"Like many people, we find that time spent in natural surroundings and with other organisms ... restores our spirits as little else can."
But scientific materialism has become a religion in itself, with a dogma which effectively suppresses discussion of spiritual matters. As a result, people’s spiritual health has tended to be neglected in discussion of sustainable development, planning and, indeed, transport - even though our transport and travel patterns are to a large extent dictated by the traditional influence of one religion.
Travel in relation to religious activities may appear to be a diminishingly small proportion even of total leisure travel, yet important travel patterns are determined by a country’s traditionally dominant religion. For most of western Europe, this is Christianity: the Christian sabbath day of Sunday is generally lightly trafficked, although certain leisure trips, especially in the summer, are dictated by the day’s dedication. Public transport is reduced and has not been able to cope with the relatively dispersed desire lines as Sunday travel for leisure and shopping has increased. Similarly, the main Christian festivals of Christmas and Easter see a reduction in work and business travel, with an increase in leisure journeys, but traditionally poor or non-existent public transport on and around the festival days themselves.
Religious travel (and tourism to sacred places) has become increasingly car-borne. Religious movements of the last half-century have had a subtle yet profound effect on travel patterns. New sacred buildings to cater for the spiritual paths of various ethnic and other faith communities, as well as Christian schisms, have generated travel to out-of-centre sites, heavy on car use, due to relative land costs and in some cases a self-righteous sense of economic status. Similar considerations are true of recent burial grounds, which require extensive sites at low cost. Other new and revived religions have numbers, needs and desires which require regional or rural gatherings, again served predominantly by car.
Even places of worship in central urban areas argue strongly for car access, as two recent examples show. The East London Mosque on Whitechapel High Street objected to development on a vacant site next-door partly on the grounds that it would lose its car parking, yet it stands close to a busy Underground station and on a road with a plethora of bus routes. In Norwich this summer, opposition from Anglican, Roman Catholic and Methodist church leaders quashed attempts by the City and County Councils to bring in Sunday parking restrictions in the city centre, on the grounds that it would go against the freedom to worship2 ... as if that meant the freedom to drive to do so, for people of a denomination still very well supplied with churches.
Sustainable Development seeks to improve the quality of life within the capacity of supporting ecosystems. Quality of life encompasses spiritual health, including the availability of spiritual comfort and the potential for personal spiritual development. Spiritual health is important to everyone (even if not conceived of as such by individuals) of whatever faith, or of none. The impacts of current transport patterns on human and ecosystem health, resources and climate are well documented, but the effect on spiritual health is rarely approached.
Clearly, emotional and psychological harm affects spiritual health, but there are also direct impacts. Space for worship or contemplation can be lost through noise, pollution or destruction - whether that space is a religious building, sacred well (as in the case of St. Anne’s Well, Chertsey, desecrated by the proximity of motorways3), graveside or simply the home, garden or municipal park. The importance of parks and wild spaces for non-physical human needs as well as those of the rest of Nature are beginning to be recognised; for instance a report from English Nature in 19954 made it plain that natural areas are vital for health and wellbeing, particularly for children, and that places can be considered deficient in natural wildspace and general open space if they are more than 280m from them. Interestingly, a survey for the Comedia report Park Life5 in the same year found children calling for a variety of imaginative features in parks, including places to worship. That report found spiritual replenishment to be an important reason for people’s use of parks.
Yet despite the partial recognition of the spiritual importance of parks and wild places, it is rarely acknowledged in the purposes officially ascribed to such places. Even the criteria for village and town green designation require physical activities, rather than, say, quiet contemplation. Yet religious origins seem to underlie the archetypal village triptych of green, pond/spring and church on a high place6. Such patterns may be the remnants of pre-Christian Pagan ritual centres, corresponding well with the most famous of Norse temples at Uppsala (Sweden) - a name which means ‘open halls’. Similarly, the ancient sanctity of St. Paul’s Cathedral, believed to stand on the site of a Roman temple of Diana, may actually lie in the open space outside. This is the summit of Ludgate Hill, probably dedicated to the ‘Celtic’ God Lug and possibly once ringed with standing stones, complete with an outlier to the S.E. in the form of the London Stone, marking the line to the sacred mound of the Tower of London7.
This example also provides a case of early transport impact on sacred places. The London Stone, already damaged, was moved to the North side of what is now Cannon Street in the eighteenth century in order to not obstruct traffic and to widen the road. Other more recent examples include the situation of Stonehenge8, and, in London, the Iron Age temple site under Heathrow Airport and the barrier of a major road cutting the Tower of London off from its hinterland to the North. Ancient monuments, whether or not directly religious, are important to spiritual health. Heritage of this kind is one of many cultural factors of importance, from community cohesion and cultural identity, to that which links people to their past, their land9, their ancestors - from grave stones to archaeological remains. Sacred places do not of course have to be artificial: the Thames, which London has turned its back on for many centuries, has always been a sacred river, whether seen in the personification of Old Father Thames, or as Dark Mother Isis10.
And, with the massive increase in travel seen in the second half of the twentieth century, people are feeling more and more alienated from any sense of rootedness. Heritage becomes all the more important and concern for ancient places is increasing, as the damage too increases. We are losing a recorded ancient monument every day, and 95% of the rest show signs of piecemeal damage11. The main culprits are agricultural cultivation, urban expansion and development, road-building and the quarrying which feeds it, and natural erosion (a category including visitor pressure), with vandalism and metal detecting being important but lesser factors. That recorder of a passing age, W.H. Hudson has proved to be sadly apposite in his comments about agricultural destruction (from ploughing and rabbit-farming) of prehistoric barrows and other earthworks in Wiltshire12:
"One wonders ... what our descendants of the next half of the century, to go no further, will say of us and our incredible carelessness in the matter! So small a matter to us, but one which will, perhaps, be immensely important to them!"
It is often the more subtle heritage which is most important. Nineteenth and twentieth century transport policies have carved swathes through the traditional street patterns of towns and cities, some having survived better than others. For instance, ring-road construction has been less insensitive in some historic towns than in others. In Norwich, the Inner Ring Road follows the mediaeval city boundary and wall for much of its length, although with one major incision, complete with flyover, and damage to heritage was a major factor in popular opposition getting the completion of the ring stopped in 1993. In Chester, on the other hand, the ring road overlays its own offset grid onto that of the old city, cutting through the walls in two places and effectively divides the city centre in two.
Not only can sacred places be lost or damaged for all who look to them, individual access to them, or to one’s spiritual community, can be lost through severance, distance or lack of transport. In particular, sacred places and the whole sacred land are everybody’s sacred heritage, whatever their spiritual orientation. But if they are in theory open to all, has everyone equality of access? Are the needs of people with a variety of disabilities catered for? Can this be done fully without structurally altering the site?
Most ancient sacred places which remain tend to be outside built-up districts, away from areas with some quality of public transport and where it can be reasonable to walk or cycle to most places. Some 30% of British households live without regular access to a car. Without a car, most ancient sites are not accessible. Even the recent Rural Bus Grant has done little to improve rural public transport, although there are exceptions (particularly in Wiltshire, with its strong concentration of ancient sacred monuments), but even these fail in the evenings and on Sundays.
As well as the exclusion of non-car-owners from ready access to ancient sacred sites, this state of affairs encourages those with cars to use them all the more, such that it is generally expected that one will drive. The result is rural congestion, road casualties and more air, noise and visual pollution, all of which discourages (or even prevents) those in a position to walk or cycle from doing so. Perhaps we need Green Travel Plans for sacred places?
The easy access brought about by high car ownership also brings problems for sacred places themselves, and this is particularly true of ancient sites. Disrespectful tourists and deliberate vandals overlap in their damaging activities, whether it is simple erosion due to too many people walking around (or parking nearby), misguided use of fires, or senseless damage and disruption as in the daubing of graffiti on Avebury stones or the nihilistic invasion of Summer Solstice ceremonies at Stonehenge this year by ravers and New Age (fellow?) travellers. The result is often that these sacred places, even recognised active places of worship, have restrictions placed on access, sometimes reduced to a sanitised ‘heritage experience’, lessening everybody’s ability to experience them. (These sort of problems have led Pagan, Christian, archaeological and heritage interests to come together in the Ancient Sacred Landscapes Network to foster co-operation and an informed approach to encouraging appropriate behaviour at ancient sacred places.)
As well as loss of direct access in the ways described above, modern transport and travel patterns can have an effect through lifestyle: less direct, but more far-reaching. These effects can be grouped together as ‘dislocation’:
Little research seems to have been done in this area, yet it seems to be becoming increasingly important. A number of areas seem worth investigating:
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