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.
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| 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.
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