COL Charles W Duncombe's view of the countryside owed much to his twin passions of riding and shooting. Introducing the delights of his native and beloved Ryedale to the wider world, he once wrote: "Certain favoured spots can be visited in a car; the pedestrian may be able to explore it in time; but it is the man or woman on horseback who really holds the key to its enchantments."

Presumably his readers imagined themselves on horseback as the colonel guided them round the district, always ready to stress the attractions closest to his heart. "We then enter Riccall Dale, a beautiful woodland some four miles long ... It will appeal alike to the riding man, to the shooting man, or to the fisherman. What glorious turf for a gallop! What ideal stands for rocketing pheasants! What attractive little pools for the rising trout!"

Soon we reach Rosedale. The colonel adjudged its ironstone railway, closed seven years before he composed this piece in 1933, to have been "very little noticeable". But "the single telegraph wire that ran alongside was fatal to many a grouse".

On now to Hawnby and "the wooded crests and banks of Arden". There, said the colonel, "the pheasant flies as high, and indeed sometimes higher, than the gun can reach." And finally - literally the last sentence of the colonel's Ryedale word-picture - "To the north lies Snilesworth, with its lovely well-stocked moors and shooting lodge."

The colonel's field-sports'-influenced tour of Ryedale appears in a fascinating document of that title published in 1933 by the Ryedale branch of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, of which Col Duncombe was chairman. Officially a "report" but in format like a present-day softback book, A4-sized and complete with many pictures, it was intended, as the colonel explains, "to give some idea of all that there is at stake in this most beautiful district".

Having recently unsuccessfully chased up a later, less historically interesting version of the same report, priced at £30 in a bookseller's catalogue, I lost no time laying out the mere £6 for a copy of the original report I discovered in a York second-hand bookshop earlier this month.

The spur for producing the report, which includes pieces by expert contributors on the district's geology, natural history, abbeys and churches, country houses, towns and villages, and other topics, was the introduction by the North Riding County Council of new planning bylaws under the Town and Country Planning Act of 1932.

As Lord Feversham notes in a Foreword: "Although dealing with Ryedale, the Report gives a general indication of what is required throughout the whole area embraced by the county council scheme."

Covering the entire North Riding apart from its urban areas, chiefly the Teesside fringe, this "scheme" was a pioneering measure to protect and enhance the landscape. It set a pattern of tight development control which, come local government changes of 1974, enabled the North Riding to pass on to its successors one of the least disfigured counties in Britain.

Used to promote North Yorkshire, this priceless legacy is nevertheless now being squandered outside the national parks through ill-considered industrial estates, scattered houses and other haphazard developments.

Back in 1933 the county council seized the chance to attack clutter in villages and the countryside. Henceforth no advertisement was to be erected or displayed that "disfigured the natural beauty of a landscape." To make the matter plain the bylaws forbade the disfigurment or "injury" of "the view of rural scenery from a highway, railway or any public place or water ... the amenities of any village or any historic or public monument, or of any place frequented by the public solely or chiefly on account of its beauty or historic interest."

Fast-spreading at that time, and often cheaply constructed of corrugated iron, filling stations were blighting the countryside. The new bylaws disallowed any station unless it "did not affect injuriously the enjoyment by the public of any view of or from any rural scenery, or any place of beauty or historic interest, or any public park or pleasure promenade, or any street or place which is of interest by reason of its picturesque character." Small wonder few new ones ever got built.

Detailed controls on the stations began with a ban on those corrugated sheets. The operator's name could be displayed only once, in letters no higher than 12in, and at a level no higher than the lowest part of the roof.

No more than three signs advertising the brand of petrol could be erected, and though the name could also be displayed on the pump, it had to be confined to a neat band no more than 9in wide. And all painted apparatus had to be a uniform colour.

As the filling-station issue suggests, roads and traffic were also becoming an issue. A contribution to the report by one L Lascelles, an associate member of the Institute of Transport, usefully notes that "the Romans forbade the use of wheeled traffic at night on account of the noise it made as it rattled over the paved roads". Claiming that the main-road towns and villages of Ryedale endured "streams of lorries thundering through" at night, he urged: "Any measures for the preservation of rural England must include very strong regulations for preserving the peace as well as the beauty of the country, by the construction of by-pass roads, diversion of night traffic and stringent restrictions on traffic noise."

Well, more communities suffer now than then. And yet Lascelles still paints a part-rustic image. The grass verges "provide soft tracks for horses and cattle, safe from the fast moving traffic." And if "unsightly" concrete kerbs could be removed, not only would "the appearance of the countryside be greatly improved", but "the high roads would once more be made safe for horsemen."

Having taken over roads only in 1930, the NRCC saw beauty as part of its business. Lascelles reveals: "The county council plants quick-set hedges along the side of every new road or bypass. Pink and white May trees are planted alternately in the hedges at a distance of 75ft apart. These should add greatly to the beauty of the road." Hmm, a little too orderly perhaps. But virtually all the trees have gone anyway.

Then, as now, poles and electricity cables upset the sensitive. Recalling their advent in Ryedale like some kind of invasion, Lascelles said: "In the spring of 1932 the Cleveland and Durham Electric Power Co Ltd, entered Rye-dale for the purpose of supplying a number of towns and villages." He complains: "The appearance of many an old building or bridge is spoilt by having a pole placed beside it." Fortunately, however, "The General Post Office recognises that the Yorkshire moors and the Cleveland Hills are an area worthy of special consideration." Their engineers were "advised" to consult local opinion.

Beyond the scope of bylaws, ribbon development greatly alarmed the Ryedale CPRE. Rather lamely, Col Duncombe observed: "Our plea is for the restraint of the speculative builder, for the guidance of the local authority and the help of the private owner who proposes to build himself." In fact only the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 prevented ribbon development from lining every road in Britain.

Meanwhile, Col Duncombe's insistence that "it is quite possible for houses to be erected within the means of the industrial and labouring classes which are an improvement rather than a blot on the landscape" mirrored his intense dislike of the ironstone miners' cottages in Rosedale, of which he remarked: "They appear to have been built on the same lines as those of the oldest and worst of the West Riding colliery villages. Industrialism has now left the dale, but the houses for which it was responsible remain - a legacy to remind us of what uncontrolled building is capable."

Very surprisingly, the Farndale reservoir, announced just months before the report and destined to be a national battleground 40 years later, receives only a passing mention. Historian and naturalist Wilf Crosland hoped that "the coming of the waterworks may not mean the extermination of the Farndale daffodils."

Optimistically, Col Duncombe forecast: "It is probable that the lake will be a feature of great beauty in the landscape."

Most people today, including the colonel's Ryedale CPRE successors, will be glad his opinion was never put to the test.