History of the British countryside, part 2

Following on from my previous post, here is...

A simplified history of the British countryside, from the Stone Age to the present - Part Two

14th - 17th centuries

The early 14th century saw a boom in agriculture, woodland cover was down to 7%, and the population was around 7.5 million. After the Black Death of 1348-50, the population was down to 3.5 million. Deserted villages and abandoned farms were left unmanaged, so woods started to develop again. After centuries of being contained in private parks, rabbits escaped into the wild, and quickly became so numerous as to be seen as pests due to their grazing. The Tudors needed enormous amounts of timber for ships and forts – Henry VIII’s flagship the Mary Rose alone needed 1200 trees – and their large-scale removal of large and ancient trees, mostly oak, changed the appearance and wildlife of woodlands. In the 1660s, silviculture and plantation forestry began as landowners were encouraged to plant, grow, tend, and harvest trees for timber to support the Navy. Serious efforts to drain the East Anglian fens began.

Enclosure Acts, 1750-1850

As the population increased and more efficient food production was needed, and workers were required for growing industries in the cities, successive Governments passed Enclosure Acts for thousands of parcels of land across the country between the mid-18th and mid-19th centuries. These broke up and privatised previously open communal land and changed the face of the countryside dramatically. Barriers and boundaries sprang up everywhere to enclose the new private properties – walls, fences, hedgerows, banks, ditches, roads and tracks. Rights of Common were removed, denying people the ability to live off the land, and there was mass migration to cities. Inside the estates, some good habitat management practices like coppicing were continued by gamekeepers to provide good conditions for game birds, as game sports became popular with the wealthy new landowners.

18th - 19th centuries

Coppicing peaked in the early 18th century, as the new industrial furnaces needed 10,000 acres of coppice each. As the Industrial Revolution took hold, coal became the preferred fuel, and large timber was needed for coal mine pit-props and railways. As coppice and other habitats declined, so too did a wide range of species which relied on them. Botanists explored the world and brought back exotic plants, including ornamental but invasive rhododendron and new fast-growing conifer trees for forestry. Many landowners turned to sheep grazing due to the high value of wool, and we still see the legacy of this today in areas like the Lake District and Scotland. The Victorians straightened many rivers to create more usable land and to try to prevent flooding by allowing water to move more quickly through an area. Muntjac, Sika, and Chinese Water Deer were introduced from Asia and soon escaped into the wild.

World War One and Two

Declaration of war in 1914 meant another increase in demand for timber, both for the trenches and for mine pit-props to ensure a supply of coal for Royal Navy ships. Trade links were almost completely cut off, preventing cheap imports, which resulted in more woodland inclosures being felled. By the end of the war woodland cover was at an all-time low of just 5%, so in 1919 the government established the Forestry Commission to ensure a supply of homegrown timber for the future with fast-growing conifers. Farmers had to produce more food with fewer labourers and horses so tractors were introduced, and the “Ploughing Up” campaign led to an extra 2.5 million acres being turned over to growing wheat, oats, and potatoes. In World War Two, a similar campaign meant the area of arable land in the UK increased by 50% in just five years.

Mid to late 20th century

Following WWII, agriculture and forestry intensified further, and even into the 1980s hedgerows were being dug up to create larger fields. However, the need for people to be able to access the countryside for wellbeing was also recognised and National Parks, nature reserves, and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty were created. In the 1950s, disease decimated wild rabbit populations, and, without their grazing controlling regrowth, many grasslands became overgrown with scrub and trees. The following decades saw rapid advances such as increased mechanisation, introduction of new crops like the now-widespread bright yellow oilseed rape, and increased pesticide use. Environmental awareness spread during the 1980s, and agri-environment schemes were established to encourage landowners and farmers to take actions that benefit certain species or habitats.

Present day

Today, around 65 million people live in Britain, and to the 85% of those who live in towns and cities the countryside is largely regarded as a place of recreation rather than work and survival, although around 70% of land area is farmland. There are still many pressures, changes, and challenges: the constant construction of new housing estates, polluting industries and lifestyles, species decline and biodiversity loss, climate change. However, the ecological importance of a diverse range of habitats is more widely understood, and there are widespread efforts to restore woodlands, grasslands, hedgerows, heathlands, river meanders, and wetlands; reinstate traditional management methods, upon which many species depend to create the conditions they need; and reintroduce nationally-extinct species. Understanding the history of the land may help us create a sustainable future. 

Modern farmland in winter

History of the British countryside, part 1

I love history, and I love the countryside. One of the very first lessons we had at college at the start of last academic year was, to my delight, on the history of the countryside. I wanted to write about it back then, but never got around to it. But then last term we had a Specialist Project unit at college, so I decided to create a booklet on that very subject :)

The booklet was submitted just before Christmas, so the text for this post has been written for about two months. I did want to add to it, to include more interesting things I found in my research that I didn't have room to put in the booklet. But because I made the booklet directly from the notes document and not in a separate one, the notes I omitted no longer exist, and I just don't have time right now to re-do it all (or go back through the document Version History), sadly. So here it is...

A simplified history of the British countryside, from the Stone Age to the present - Part One

Key terms:

• BCE = Before Common Era (instead of BC) 
• CE = Common Era (instead of AD) 
• c. = circa = around, roughly 
• Tundra = open arctic landscape of lichens, mosses, short grasses, dwarf shrubs, reindeer and wild horses 
• Aurochs = ancient wild cattle, up to 2m tall at the shoulders, became extinct in Britain in the Bronze Age 
• Coppicing = periodic cutting of tree stems to allow regrowth of multiple stems – sustainable way to produce wood 

Mesolithic ("Middle Stone Age", c. 10,000BCE - 4500 BCE)

At the end of the last Ice Age, the climate began to warm. As the ice retreated, the land slowly transformed from treeless open tundra, to boreal forest of pine and birch, to dense broadleaf woodland – the “wildwood”. Animals such as red deer, boar, and aurochs migrated up into this north-western corner of the continent, and humans followed. The natural grazing processes of these large herbivores created a shifting mosaic of woodland interspersed with open areas of grasses, flowers, and small shrubs – trees covered about 60% of land area. Humans were nomadic hunter-gatherers, following their food, and had a relatively small impact on the landscape - although not none. Some began to create clearings to attract the herds and allow fruiting plants to grow, for easier hunting and foraging. The land between what is now Britain and Europe was slowly taken over by rising sea levels, finally creating an island around 6000 BCE. 

Neolithic ("New Stone Age", c. 4500 BCE - 2200 BCE)

Small-scale human organisation and impact on the land increased as rudimentary agriculture with crops and domestic animals reached Britain, and humans began living in more permanent settlements. Quarries and mines were established for flint and other useful stone. Settlers made use of difficult areas, for example by building wooden trackways across fens and marshes. Woodlands started to be cleared and managed – coppicing began – and after a few generations the loss of nutrients on well-draining soils meant that trees could not regrow: grasslands and heathlands established, and were used for grazing. Watercourses would have become cloudier with silt as soil washed into them, no longer held together by living tree roots. By the time Stonehenge and other monuments were created there were large areas of open land with views unobstructed by trees. 

Bronze Age and Iron Age (c. 2200 BCE - 43 CE)

Better metal tools meant easier, faster tree clearance for settlements. The first field systems were established, in some places marked out with stone walls known as ‘reaves’ which can still be seen today. Mines for copper, gold, and tin were created. Coppicing increased to produce charcoal, which was needed to fuel the smelting of copper and tin for bronze. By the Iron Age, small settlements and farmsteads scattered the land, surrounded by fields of crops and pastures for livestock. Woodland clearance continued to increase, as did coppicing for smelting iron. The introduction of iron-tipped ards (an early type of plough) meant heavier soils could be cultivated. Humans had organised into large regional tribes, and on hills across the country the treeless slopes were dug up to create ramparts of steep banks and deep ditches, known today as hill forts. 

Bronze Age burial mound

Roman occupation (43 CE - 410 CE)

The Roman conquering of England and Wales brought enormous change, and their engineering innovations left huge marks on the landscape. They created the first urban infrastructure, building towns and cities, 16,000km of roads, and canals and aqueducts carrying water to the towns, as well as military forts and luxurious villas with formal gardens for the landowning aristocracy. The landscape became more planned and regulated, with clusters of farms serving an estate, and, as war-going people who needed timber and money, the Romans began to manage woodlands as commercial crops, and hay meadows for animal feed. Non-native plant and animal species were introduced, including rabbits for meat and fur and the sweet chestnut tree for nuts and timber. Their heavier iron plough allowed expansion of farming, and in some places Roman field systems are still in use today.

Anglo-Saxon period (410 CE - 1066)

The Germanic tribes that came to Britain after the Romans left were farmers, so lifestyles largely reverted to those of pre-Roman times. Coppice woodlands were divided into compartments for families and villages, marked out using boundary wood banks, and the practice of leaving “standards” within coppice – selected trees left to grow naturally as one large stem for timber – began. Scattered farms with enclosed arable and pasture fields were replaced with villages and open strip fields farmed communally – as a result, wood pasture for livestock grazing increased too. Eventually towns began to establish again, and estates linked to the early Christian monasteries. The composition of tree species around the country was affected by a warming of the climate between around 800 CE and 1300 CE, known as the Medieval Warm Period. 

Norman period (1066 onwards)

William the Conquerer designated huge areas of land as Royal Forest, i.e. hunting parks – originally, “forest” meant an open area given over to hunting. 90% of the population lived in the countryside and were suddenly banned from hunting deer, wild boar, and hares, but in return Rights of Common were established, which allowed people to collect firewood, graze livestock, and dig turf or peat for fuel, among other things. Hunting favoured open areas, so many grasslands, heathlands, and wetlands were protected and kept open – and survived for centuries because of this. Meadows increased in area as hay became more profitable than grazing, and most floodplains were utilised as meadow. The Normans also introduced pheasants and fallow deer, and re-introduced rabbits.

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Next week I'll cover the late medieval period to the present day. If you like this sort of thing, I recommend reading Nicholas Crane's The Making of the British Landscape. Archaeologist Francis Pryor has a book of the same name and that looks good too. Oliver Rackham's History of the British Countryside may appeal to those with more of a scientific interest, I didn't find it to be very easy reading and the chapters are by habitat type rather than in chronological order. And Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens is fascinating in terms of humanity's general development and how we changed from being one of numerous human species, very much a part of the ecosystems we inhabited, to being the only human species and dominating everything.

Museum visit

If you like such places, I recommend a visit to Salisbury Museum. I went there last weekend and really enjoyed it.

They have an excellent new exhibition on for the next few months, 'Ancient Sites from the Air' by photographer David R. Abram - aerial photographs of ancient sites across the country. Each image was created by stitching together hundreds of individual photos taken from a drone moving over the site - so each one is really high resolution and super detailed. It's really impressive. Plus they're just cool photos anyway, quite abstract. 

Two of my favourite images in the Ancient Sites from the Air exhibition by David R Abram. You're encouraged to take photos in here (not the rest of the museum though), for personal use and for social media use to promote it. 

The state of the art Wessex Gallery of Archaeology is great too, which has thousands of finds from prehistory to the Norman period. The museum website says it's one of the most important archaeological collections in the country outside of London, with many artefacts from the Stonehenge landscape, Old Sarum, and Wiltshire as a whole, including the Pitt-Rivers Wessex Collection. Lieutenant-General Pitt-Rivers was the first to use a scientific approach to exploring and excavating historical sites, as opposed to just digging and looting without any method or recording, and so laid the foundations for modern archaeology. 

I really liked the largely intact 4th-century mosaic found in the village my family used to drive through regularly on the way to see my grandparents. I was impressed with just how much time and care it would have taken to remove it from the site and then put it together again. The website says the latter took 3 weeks. 

Out of everything in the Wessex Gallery, though, I think my favourites were the oldest objects in there: the 450,000-year-old stone handaxes. Simply because of how mind-bogglingly old that is. 450,000 years old! That's from an inter-glacial period, waaaay before Britain was permanently settled. 

What was just as mind-boggling was the meteorite in the corridor. It's just a 90kg ball of rock. But it's 4.5 billion years old. And not from Earth. If it was from Earth it would be one of the very earliest rocks. It's from outer space. The asteroid belt to be precise. Obviously I know that meteorites are from outer space, but I've not actually seen one before. So cool! 

Finally, the museum cafe does good lunches too - I recommend the mushroom lasagne :)

I've always loved history and archaeology but it's fallen by the wayside over the last several years. I was disappointed to find out I'd missed 8 series of 'Digging for Britain' when I watched the new one a few weeks ago. It's nice to be getting back into it all. 

This may have just been a load of waffle, haha. Next week I'll finally publish what I was originally going to post now - the first of two posts on the history of the countryside :)