Landscape
The Yorkshire Dales National Park has a sense of place that is unique. Its special qualities result from a combination of nature and culture, the beauty of the landscape, and the way it has been shaped by people over time. It also includes the more intangible qualities appreciated by residents and visitors, such as peace, solitude, space, inspiration and the escape the National Park offers from urban living.
The character of a landscape is created by the combination of its patterns of geology, landform, soils and vegetation, land use, field patterns and human settlement. At the broad scale, landscape character makes each part of Britain distinctive and gives each its sense of place. England has been divided into 159 areas with similar landscape character. These are called Joint Character Areas (JCAs). The Yorkshire Dales National Park mostly falls in the Yorkshire Dales JCA but is also covered in its western extreme by the Howgill Fells JCA.
At the local scale, within one joint character area, there may be many distinct differences in landscape character, even between different parts of a single valley or dale. The Authority has published a comprehensive assessment of the landscape character of the Park (Landscape Character Assessment and Quality of Life Capital Assessment of the Yorkshire Dales National Park). The report identifies 40 distinct ‘landscape character areas’, of which 34 are on a dale-by-dale basis. The remaining six are separately identified upland character areas. Descriptions of the landscape character of each of the 40 areas are available using the links below: The detailed assessment is available using the link above.
Dales Character Areas
- Swaledale and Arkengarthdale
1 Upper Swaledale
2 Arkengarthdale
3 Mid Swaledale
- Wensleydale
8 Upper Wensleydale
9 Mid Wensleydale
10 Lower Wensleydale
11 Cotterdale
12 Widdale
13 Sleddale
14 Raydale
15 Bishopdale
16 Waldendale
17 Coverdale
- Craven Dales
18 Kingsdale
19 Upper Chapel-le-Dale
20 Lower Chapel-le-Dale
21 Ingleton Glens
22 Upper Ribblesdale
23 Mid Ribblesdale
24 Lower Ribblesdale
25 Crummackdale
- Malhamdale and south west fringe
26 Malhamdale
27 Newton and Otterburn Moor
28 The Southern Valleys enclosed by Winterburn Moor, Rylstone Fell and Flasby Fell
29 South Western Dales Fringe
30 The Southern Dales Fringe
- Wharfedale and Littondale
31 Langstrothdale
32 Upper Wharfedale and Littondale
33 Wharefedale-Craven Fault area
34 Mid Wharfedale
Upland Character Areas
- Southern Howgill Fells
35 Southern Howgill Fells
- Yorkshire Moors and Fells
36 Northern Gritstone Moors and Fells
37 Three Peaks & Central Moors and Fells
38 Eastern Gritstone Moors and Fells
39 Limestone Moors
40 Southern Gritstone Moors and Fells
Further work is currently being undertaken under the auspices of the National Park Management Plan Steering Group to develop guidelines to further assist positive landscape change.
The landscape character assessment, in combination with a range of other documents, is used to help inform decisions relating to planning policy, individual planning applications, targeting of environmental grants and so on.
