The British Landscape Throughout the Ages

OSTRAVSKÁ UNIVERZITA V OSTRAVĚ FILOZOFICKÁ FAKULTA

KATEDRA ANGLISTIKY A AMERIKANISTIKY

Britská krajina v průběhu věků

BAKALÁŘSKÁ PRÁCE

Autor práce: Eliška Fialová Vedoucí práce: Mgr. Petr Kopecký, Ph.D.

2014

UNIVERSITY OF OSTRAVA FACULTY OF ARTS

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN STUDIES

The British Landscape Throughout the Ages

BACHELOR THESIS

Author: Eliška Fialová

Supervisor: Mgr. Petr Kopecký, Ph.D.

2014

ABSTRAKT

Bakalářská práce Britská krajina v průběhu věků je kompilačního charakteru a

chronologicky pojednává o proměnách britské krajiny. Popsané změny v krajině jsou

antropogenního a také přírodního původu. Na úvod jsou uvedeny základní geografické

charakteristiky Británie, které vpraví čtenáře do daného tematického kontextu. Tato práce

je rozdělena do čtyř kapitol podle časových období, které značí určitý zlom ve vzhledu

britské krajiny. Dále obsahuje každá kapitola dvě sekce v nichž popsané události jsou

jednak kulturního a dále také ekonomického charakteru. Práce se zaměřuje převážně na

viditelné proměny krajiny, které byly vnímány jejími obyvateli. Cílem bakalářské práce je

vytvořit závěrečný souhrn nejvýznamějších událostí jenž přetvářely britskou krajinu a

popsat jakým způsobem se jejich vliv zobrazil v charasteristice krajiny.

Klíčová slova: krajina, ekonomika, kultura, zemědělství, Británie, ekosystém, náboženství,

venkov.

ABSTRACT

The thesis titled “British Landscape Throughout the Ages” is a compilation work

which chronologically investigates the tranformations of British landscape over the

centuries. The described changes in the landscape are both of anthropogenic and natural

origin. Some basic geographical facts about Britain are outlined at the beginning of the

thesis in order to provide suitable context. The thesis is divided into four chapters on the

basis of time periods which signified a turning point in the visual character of British

landscape. Moreover, each of these chapters is further divided into two sections. These

sections contain events which are of economic and cultural character. There was an attempt

to describe primarily visible chnages in the landscape which were noticed by the

inhabitants of the country. The aim of the thesis is to create a final summary of the most

substantial events for the development of the British landscape and also to identify the

manner in which these events managed to imprint on the British landscape and its

ecosystems.

Keywords: landscape, economy, agriculture, culture, Britain, ecosystem, religion,

countryside.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor Mgr. Petr Kopecký, Ph.D for all his help and valuable

advice during the process of writing this thesis.

Prohlašuji, že předložená práce je mým původním autorským dílem, které jsem

vypracoval/a samostatně. Veškerou literaturu a další zdroje, z nichž jsem při zpracování

čerpal/a, v práci řádně cituji a jsou uvedeny v seznamu použité literatury.

V Ostravě dne . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

(podpis)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT..........................................................................................................................4

TABLE OF CONTENTS ....................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION TO THE THESIS THE BRITISH LANDSCAPE

THROUGHOUT THE AGES.............................................................................................8

Main natural predispositions of Great Britain. .................................................................9

1 CHAPTER I - FROM THE PREHISTORIC PERIOD TO THE 17TH

CENTURY..........................................................................................................................11

1.1 Cultural factors ....................................................................................................11

1.1.1 Pagan beliefs – their evidence in the landscape...........................................11

1.1.2 Coming of Christianity - changing perception of natural places .................12

1.1.3 Protestant Reformation –the religious revolutions in the early modern

landscape......................................................................................................................15

1.2 Economic factors. ................................................................................................16

1.2.1 Evolution of agriculture and Roman influence on British landscape ..........16

1.2.1.1 The later Mesolithic .................................................................................16

1.2.1.2 The Neolithic era .....................................................................................17

1.2.1.3 Roman impact on British landscape ........................................................18

1.2.1.4 Open – field systems, feudal rule.............................................................19

1.3 Industry ................................................................................................................20

1.3.1 Inorganic production – iron, coal.................................................................20

2 CHAPTER II - 18TH

AND 19TH

CENTURY – BRITAIN IS BECOMING THE

TRUE INDUSTRIAL NATION .......................................................................................22


2.1.1 The phenomena of the sublime and its effects in the landscape. .................22

2.1.2 Pastime of the wealthy – English parks, the concept of a garden................23

2.1.3 The secularization of the British landscape .................................................24

2.2 Economic factors .................................................................................................25

2.2.1 Agriculture ...................................................................................................25

2.2.1.1 Regular patterns and hedges in the enclosed landscape. .........................25

2.2.1.2 Farmland in Scotland after 1707, clearances. ..........................................26

2.2.1.3 Artificial fertilizers and mechanization in agriculture .............................28

2.2.2 Industry ........................................................................................................28

2.2.2.1 Disappearing woodland – increasing number of Royal Ships .................28

2.2.2.2 Regulating rivers and creating canal systems – new elements in the

landscape..................................................................................................................29

2.2.2.3 Railways – impact on the landscape ........................................................31

3 CHAPTER III FIRST HALF OF 20TH CENTURY .............................................33


3.1.1 Protection of home wildlife and countryside ...............................................33

3.1.2 War memorials - landscape features resulting from the war conflicts.........35


3.2.1 Agriculture ...................................................................................................36

3.2.1.1 Changing appearance of rural areas in Britain in the first half of the 20th

century .................................................................................................................36

3.2.2 Industry ........................................................................................................38

3.2.2.1 War industry affecting landscape ............................................................38

3.2.2.2 Expanding road system and electrification gains its place in the British

landscape .................................................................................................................38

4 CHAPTER IV - THE SECOND HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY ...................41


4.1.1 Coming into the environmental age.............................................................41

4.1.2 Emerging of suburbs and Green Belts .........................................................42


4.2.1 Agriculture ...................................................................................................43

4.2.1.1 The conflict between protection and production in the agricultural lands

of the 20th century ...................................................................................................43

4.3 Industry ................................................................................................................44

4.3.1 Main changes of energy sources – oil, nuclear plants, natural gas. .............44

4.3.2 Increase in energy use and possible exhaustion of resources – renewable

energies? .....................................................................................................................45

4.3.3 Dams and airports ........................................................................................46

CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................48

GLOSSARY OF SOME IMPORTANT TERMS USED IN THE THESIS.................51

8

INTRODUCTION TO THE THESIS THE BRITISH

LANDSCAPE THROUGHOUT THE AGES.

Relations between the natural world and the world of people have always been a

topic discussed around fire, in the churches and in parliamentary halls. No matter how big

the scale of urbanization is, people seem to come back to the natural places in one way or

another. It might be in a form of new artistic style (Romanticism in the late 18th

century

and most 19th

century) or by means of establishing new societies and organizations.

Society in Britain called The British Druid Order established in 1977 serves as an example

of 21st organization whose aims are to enhance the public awareness in topics such as plant

lore and ecology, as well as improve the knowledge of so called spiritual environmentalism

(Constitution of the British Druid Order, 2014). Nature in literature also never completely

disappears. Often it has an important role and the interaction of humans and the natural

forces is reflected in many literary or scientific works.

The content of this thesis follows the activity of humans on the land but without the

main aim to identify whether they do good or evil. The struggle of humans to establish

their societies, cities, prospering economy and culture is discussed from its beginnings in

the Neolithic until the recent history of our time. This thesis wants to describe this activity

and identify how it changed British landscape.

The bachelor thesis “The British Landscape Throughout the Ages” focuses on the

complex and surely yet unfinished development of the appearance of the British landscape.

This process involves numerous factors of change which are in most cases closely

interrelated and affect each other on various levels. Nevertheless, for the purpose of clarity

and understandable organization of this text, only some of these factors were chosen and

separated into categories, namely cultural factors and economic factors. The latter is

further divided into two subcategories agriculture and industry. The earlier mentioned

interplay is hinted in the text itself on the places where it cannot be ignored and is vital for

the understanding of the process taking place. The aim is to have at the end of the thesis a

summary of events which somehow formed the appearance of British land. However, only

the main and most prominent of these events are described thoroughly as the aim is not to

give a full account of the history of British landscape. The thesis is a search for turning

points in the process of forming the appearance of British landscape.

9

It might be suggested that the time periods into which this thesis is divided are too

long, encompassing too many important historical events. However, time is perceived

differently by human cultures and by natural ecosystems. This is a work on the history of

woodlands and fields and other landscape elements rather than on royal machinations and

parliamentary arguments and it seems appropriate to adjust the timeline to this fact. Having

said this, it should be added that it does not implicate a total division of these sectors. As

has been mentioned above, the influence of some political events on the land cannot be

omitted and will be taken into consideration for example in the first chapter the importance

of introduction of feudal rule or later the Development Areas Act of 1945.

Main natural predispositions of Great Britain.

Specifying Great Britain’s position on the map of the world and thereafter acquiring

more precise idea of the type of environments and formation of soils is necessary as a point

of departure when trying to analyse how basic natural landscapes were changed and how

they evolved.

Great Britain, the object of interest in this thesis, is the biggest island from the

British Isles located in the temperate zone of the northern hemisphere. From the west the

British shores are washed by the waters of the North Atlantic Ocean. If it was not for the

North Atlantic drift Britain’s climate would be much cooler than it is now. The drift causes

the rise of sea temperatures and also the typical British climate described as humid and

chilly but consistent. These conditions are peculiar only for Britain and when compared

with other countries to the east the difference is felt significantly.

Moreover, the temperatures and precipitation vary according to the relief and

height. Even though in Britain an extreme relief is rather exceptional, with its highest

mountain of 1343 metres, still with each 100 metres of altitude the temperature rises for

0,5 °C. In the uplands the amount of rainfall changes from 2.5 mm per metre of altitude to

5 mm (Simmons, 4).

The primary topography of Britain is based on the two types of geological basis.

For north and west it is older and harder rock. For the south and east the soil is formed by

younger and softer material. Both these geological areas have been altered in the

Pleistocene by the ice slabs which also added to the content of the soil other sands, gravels

and clays. The well known deep valleys of Snowdonia or Lake District and the Highlands

were created by the glaciers. When the ice melted the sea levels rose because of that the

10

Irish Sea and the English Channel, the barrier between Europe and Britain which is given

so much cultural and historical role, were formed.

The British landscape would have different flora and fauna without the human

presence which started to shape the ecosystems around them. The period which could be

marked as one with the minimal human influence is before the era of agriculture, from

10,000 to 5500 BC. In this time right after the main post-glacial warming the major

environmental changes were brought about by alternation of climate.

Though some remote parts of Britain might seem to a traveller as untouched and fit

for the term ‘natural environment’. Closer investigation in most cases reveals that this is

only wishful thinking and the area was in some time of history under the human influence

and what looks as ‘natural’ was planted artificially for different purposes. Under the

condition that human intervention would be as minimal as it was in the period from 10,000

to 5500 BC for example the moorlands, which are for most people a symbol of vast empty,

windy space, would be wooded or the oak, lime and hazel forests would grow in the

Highlands (Simmons, 5). However, the human influence on British environments was

everything but little. In what ways and for which purposes and with which intentions these

changes were carried out is also a part of this thesis.

11

1 CHAPTER I - FROM THE PREHISTORIC PERIOD TO

THE 17TH

CENTURY

1.1 Cultural factors

1.1.1 Pagan beliefs – their evidence in the landscape

Pagan religions have its basis in the worship of nature. Mountain peaks are the

places closest to the deities residing above the clouds while caves and rock crevices are the

entrances to the underground world of souls. Forests are the places where the

communication with the supernatural forces was thought possible, especially individual

tress which grew into a magnificent sizes were objects of the devotion and places where

offerings were made (Walsham 20). It might seem that the religion which strove for as

much balance with the natural world as possible from the fear not to anger the various

deities would leave very few traces in the landscape. Nevertheless, it is not so. Indigenous

people of Britain left numerous sites as traces to their culture and the purpose of some of

them is still a matter of discussion in the academic circles. In the Neolithic era (according

to Walsham between c.3,500 and 1,200) many man-made structures appeared in the

landscape, among them were stone circles, menhirs and other megalithic structures and

Neolithic enclosures. In the south-west England the local megalithic structures are

intermingled with the natural rock formations of similar architecture as Richard Bradley

writes in his book An Archaeology of Natural Places, 2000 (Bradley 103). What would be

interpreted today as natural outcrops could have been mistaken for the older burial

memorials by prehistoric people who had no geological knowledge. Hence they

constructed their megaliths in close distance and in very similar pattern. Moreover, the

above mentioned Neolithic enclosures often integrated also these natural outcrops creating

thus a circular stone-wall monument. The other possible explanation of the similarity

between the natural stone structures and man-made ones is that those people with their

high respect for nature wanted to imitate the symbols of the power and durability of the

Earth and did it consciously (Bradley 103-104). There are several ways how these

monuments modify the natural places of their construction.

Firstly, it creates completely new awareness of the site and also the stone walls and

terraces establish new boundaries which in turn affect the behaviour of people in such

12

newly constructed places. Windmill Hill in Wessex is a place where such a transition from

former open place to the site with defined spaces for variety of activities took place. The

hill became divided by earth ditches into three circular areas and the people were suddenly

confronted with “a complex subdivision of space in which the appropriate places for

particular activities – and for particular deposits – were increasingly circumscribed”

(Bradley 106).

Secondly, the size of these monuments also changes the character of the landscape

especially it makes the particular hill top or any other place more visible. Silbury Hill is a

monument of remarkable proportions and character because it is an artificial hill which

reaches the height of 37 metres. On its top there is a platform where another of the circular

works of earth ditches was dug. Therefore the prehistoric people not only added new

elements to landscape not present in it so far but also multiplied those which were already

common, such as hills.

The megalithic sites, whatever their meaning was originally, if places of magical

healing or sacrifices or burials, were interpreted very differently with the coming of

Christianity. And in many cases their meaning was forgotten altogether as it is with the

fascinating chalk figures across Britain for instance White Horse of Uffington.

1.1.2 Coming of Christianity - changing perception of natural

places

The ethnic group which made further changes to the landscape inhabited by the

prehistoric people were Romans. However, their historical evidence in the landscape is

more concerned with the aspects of the second part of the chapter, economic factors. Their

culture did not manage to establish very strongly as they were replaced by another group of

nations, Anglo-Saxons, after relatively short period. Nevertheless, what is important in the

cultural sphere is that they brought the Christian religion to the island and even though its

progress during the Roman rule in Britain was limited by the early intrusions of Anglo-

Saxons the roots were there and the year 664, date of the Synod of Whitby, marks the

beginning of Rome dominance over Britain’s church affairs and the establishment of

Christianity as the only permitted religion of the kingdom.

The changes which followed can be traced in the landscape well as there was an

obvious trend to shift the religion “inside”. Suddenly the outer space was not where

believers should seek God but his presence was expected in the churches and chapels not

13

on the tops of mountains or beneath a grand tree. Therefore instead of a majestic oak tree

people brought offerings to the oratory of Saint Peter, which was made out of that fallen

tree (Walsham 27-35). There were two main ways how the remnants of the pagan past of

the country were treated, apart from the one already mentioned, that is a complete

destruction. First, which was less common, consisted in the construction of churches

beside the surviving prehistoric monuments. The second way, applied in more places

meant that the Roman or pagan monument or building were refashioned in a Christian

mode.

In such a manner many places across the country which were previously simply for

example burial mounds as Sutton Hoo in Suffolk were from all of the sudden reused as

site for executions of criminals. At this point it is necessary to point out that the conversion

did not have to be always as negative. For example, Yeavering, which was considered a

royal site and place where King Edwin and his vassals accepted the God, used to be an

important prehistoric site with Bronze Age barrows and Henge monuments. Whether the

place acquired a positive or negative reputation from the missionaries might have, as

suggested by Alexandra Walsham, a connection with the people’s resistance at that place

or on the other hand their willing cooperation. Places where the new religion was accepted

without any struggles were often given names with the prefixes God or Church (36).

The second way of treatment of the pagan sites was also suggested in the letters by

Pope Gregory to bishop Augustine, the leading figure of Christianization of Britain. He

suggests that “temples of the idols in that nation ought not to be destroyed” (qtd. in Foster,

4) but rather he would like to see the interior enriched with an altar and the whole site

consecrated with the holy water and install a relic or two in those temples. And in this way

create a place where resides not the Devil or the old pagan deity, but the true and only God.

His reasons for this tactic of converting the old sites rather than always building

completely new are well thought: “the nation, seeing that their temples are not destroyed,

may remove error from their hearts and, knowing and adoring the true God, may the more

familiarly resort to the places to which they have been accustomed” (qtd. in Foster 4).

A completely new element in the British landscape from this period were free

standing crosses in the fields or along the roads and in many other places. Alexandra

Walsham in her book The Reformation of the Landscape (2012) suggests that this might be

a cunning way of Christian reformers to diminish the power of the free standing pagan

14

menhirs and replace the tradition of constructing menhirs with a cross, which is admittedly

quite similar in structure.

By the 13th

century Christianity was stable enough for its representatives to adopt a

new attitude towards the idea, previously unthinkable, that the holy could be found in the

various geographical locations. After all, Jesus baptized his apostles in the river Jordan and

there are other miracles happening in nature such as parting of the Red Sea.

In the 13th

century the different nooks in the landscape were mainly divided

between the numerous Saints whose cult was blooming at that time. The topographical

legends explained the physical look of the landscape as acts or consequences of

appearances of the Saints. In the later Middle Ages some of these places became

immensely popular and the tradition of pilgrimage revolved around them. Thanks to this

religious travelling new inns were built by the roads and a very common feature of these

sites were new ecclesiastical buildings constructed nearby by rich patrons.

But still, the main potential of the changing the medieval landscape resided in the

construction of splendid churches and monasteries. The function of these buildings was to

spread the religion and also coordinate Christians in the country. Monasteries played an

important role in the shaping of the landscape being centres of knowledge and learning,

also arts and sometimes economy and of course of spirituality. Where a monastery was

built so was definitely a church. Moreover, in the surrounding landscape the community of

the monastery created their housing settlements and the land in those sites was quickly

enclosed and parcelled out.

The previous two subchapters showed that the landscape bears the evidence of the

struggles between different cultures. The inhabitants live there and therefore the changes

which they notice most are the new elements in it, new buildings or their absence. And

those who want to be remembered add their metaphorical chapter in this natural chronicle.

Such layering of cultural evidence is a relatively quick process, by 1500 the landscape was

covered with the prehistoric earth ditches, menhirs and monoliths which were overlaid

anew by Christian missions, which added also their own historical evidence. Thus when

the Reformation started its followers were surrounded by numerous reminders of what they

called Popish idolatry.

15

1.1.3 Protestant Reformation –the religious revolutions in the

early modern landscape.

Catholic faith was considered by the Protestants the false faith. It was serving Rome

more than God according to them. Even though this ideological clash took place mainly in

the abstract sense in the minds of people their efforts to eradicate the Catholic Church

physically from both the rural and urban landscape were visible enough for historians such

as Alexandra Walsham, Simon W. Ward or Iain Soden to gather historical proof of the

landscape change in that period.

All previously mentioned historians agree in their books or essays on one fact, that

the Dissolution Acts of 1539 did bring the change to landscape but this change was too

often seen as only negative, with the emphasis on the abandoned abbey ruins. Another

point which is often stressed in connection with Reformation is the iconoclasm. Though it

is without doubt a part of the religious reformation having its importance it is not discussed

in the following text due to its little effect on the landscape.

During the Reformation the landscape of Britain was becoming more desacralized

by collective efforts of state, Protestant clergy and laymen as well and this process

continued throughout the 16th

century and early 17th

century. Targets of Reformation

efforts were varied, holy wells, wayside crosses and mainly churches and monasteries. In

the case of monastic communities the process of destruction goes hand in hand with the

renewal and reconstruction to other uses as has been indicated earlier. Maurice Howard in

her essay “Recycling the Monastic Fabric: Beyond the Act of Dissolution” (2003) claims

that at least half of the desecrated sites served other purposes even after the year 1539. The

new owners were particularly important courtiers of Henry VIII and they eagerly seized

the opportunity for new properties in order to have new courtyard house built. When great

Benedictine abbey was dissolved in 1538 it became a home for Browne family, abbey of

Malmesbury in Wiltshire was bought by a clothier William Stumpe in late 1530’s and he

divided the place into three areas each with different use. All other sites were met with

similar treatment be it some lesser religious building or a whole quarter of a city as in the

case of Chester which was a typical medieval city with its three friaries, a nunnery and an

abbey which was rebuilt as a cathedral. What these changes meant for such city as for

example Chester specified Simon W. Ward in his essay “Dissolution or Reformation? A

case study from Chester’s urban landscape” (2003): “ the dissolution and redistribution of

16

their lands was the largest transfer of property since the Norman Conquest” (qtd. in

Gaimster 268). It might seem that the Reformation brought radical, sudden change to the

British landscape but evidence for such conclusions are scarce and they rather indicate the

contrary which is a “gradual evolution” (qtd. in Gaimster 268).

Having stated at the beginning that the desecrated places were mostly reused the

rest of them served their purpose as well though in the ruinous state. Mostly as triumph of

state; the ruins were evidence of Protestantism gaining the upper hand in the fight over the

supremacy in the landscape.

1.2 Economic factors.

1.2.1 Evolution of agriculture and Roman influence on British

landscape

1.2.1.1 The later Mesolithic

John Jackson Brinckerhoff in his book Discovering the vernacular landscape

(1984) writes about human communities inhabiting land that “we are also inhabitants of

the earth, involved in the natural order and in a sense even part of it. This means that we

have to spend time and thought and energy on providing ourselves with shelter and food

and clothing and a degree of security” (11). The later Mesolithic people set out to do

precisely this, they deliberately shaped their surroundings in order to live better, safer lives.

Though their possibilities were limited by the primitive, non-advanced tools they

possessed, in cases when the natural processes cannot provide satisfactory explanation,

human factor needs to be taken into consideration. The era of hunters and gatherers was

rich in great climate changes and six tenths of the time the processes which changed the

environment were of natural origin hence to recognize these from the human driven

changes is a difficult task (Simmons 24). Nevertheless, the later Mesolithic is the starting

point of the human’s intentional shaping of their environment in order to capture and kill

animals and gather plant material. The impact of this process was reflected mainly in the

recession of woodland.

There was no tool which could cut down a fully grown tree so the method used for

creating or keeping clearances in woods was ring barking and there is a possibility that fire

was used as well (Simmons 42-43). Fire burned the grasses and kept the amount of bracken

17

low. Such clearances had its meaning in the economy of the Mesolithic people, they

attracted animals which then could be hunted down. The woodland “was spatially the most

important element of the vegetation cover of England and Wales during Holocene” (49)

writes Simmons thus its occupation was a step forward.

1.2.1.2 The Neolithic era

The Neolithic era was a step towards the highly important managing of lands by

Neolithic people known as agriculturalists. This innovation introduced in c. 3,500 BC

clearly was not the first example of environmental manipulation, as previous paragraphs

showed. However, it continued to provide the humans with their basic material needs until

the 19th

century. The speed of spreading agricultural way of life in Great Britain was

relatively quick and by 2,500 BC it was the leading means of survival in majority of the

lowland areas (Simmons 53-54). The main new tool was the axe, first from stone, than

bronze and the last and hardest from iron. Also digging sticks and wooden plough helped

to cultivate the land. All the crops had their predecessors in the wild plants, among crops

which were cultivated were wheat, barley and in the higher areas rye and oats. The

prevailing ecosystem continues to be woodland and the impact which agriculture had on

wooded areas was the major change of the period.

Agriculturalist chose the land which was fertile and worth the effort of managing

and removed all the trees from that area. The clearance was kept from reforestation by

letting animals graze there, they ate any saplings which would have otherwise grown up.

With a time these clearances evolved into small patches of cultivated fields in the forest

and others were made some place else when the fertility of the soil at the previous one

decreased. These patterns can still be seen in west Wales or for instance in Devon.

However, the whole forest not only the clearances was the place where the cattle was

grazing. The result was slower regeneration of the forest and together with coppicing there

was larger number of younger trees in it. The vegetation altered as a result of large scale

clearances as well. The cleared area covered as much as 50% by the Iron Age and when the

Domesday Book was compiled it counted only for the 15% from the area common in

Mesolithic era (Simmons 58-60). Such alternations resulted in better natural conditions of

bracken, different grasses and also on acid soils, heather.

18

1.2.1.3 Roman impact on British landscape

As Rome expanded and conquered new territories they brought their culture and

social order with them. The new territory of Britannia, as Romans called Britain, was also

one of the places where they created a space which could be defined as political landscape.

In such landscape each space has its purpose clearly defined and the environment serves

the needs of humans. Every activity and every group of society has its space. Where there

are vast areas without boundaries there are roads built and cities along them because every

road serves the purpose of reaching the military or commercial destination in the shortest

time possible which is closely associated with the way the were built (Brinckerhoff 12; 22-

23).

The Roman system of roads developed into a phenomenon, the state of Rome was

possibly the first one to develop such system and use it as a model for land planning in

newly settled territories. These Roman motorways have one common characteristic. They

all disregard any landscape features which stand in their way so they have very direct

route, in this concept they might be compared to the modern highways. The best known is

Fosse Way which links Exeter and Lincoln and many of its parts still form modern roads.

Together with roads there were rest houses built for the military officials and relay stations

for messengers all running here and there working to please the Emperor. Also new

bridges were built across the rivers and military bases such as York or Chester. All this

was constructed to conquer British people as well as its landscape, it strengthened the new

imposed social order and linked the territory together which allowed easier and faster

communication and trade routes. Apart from roads the legionary forts were among the

most common new buildings in British landscape in that time. Already mentioned York,

which was a political as well as military centre, probably had a fortress from which only

one ten sided tower survived until now. Around Chester is a Roman wall which is two

miles long, this city was constructed with the same objective to control the subjugated

territory as was the city of Caerleon in Wales. Other military and political constructions

were walls from which a great number survives until these days. The best known is

Hadrian’s Wall in Northumbria. It is circa 15 feet high and stretches for 80 miles

(“Hadrian’s Wall”). As relaxation centres public baths were built and the construction of

the palace in the City of Bath was a great example of Roman successful merging with the

ethnic group already present in Britain.

19

Romans were not those who brought any new field systems or farming methods.

Their interest was not to settle down in Britain, even though eventually the mingled to

some extent with the common people, the main role Britain served was a place of

commerce, new material sources and work force.

1.2.1.4 Open – field systems, feudal rule

The layout of people’s settlement changed significantly throughout the centuries

after the withdrawal of Romans. The typical landscape of the 5th

and 6th

century was that

of settlements scattered around without any planning. These settlements usually had one

main hall and adjoining smaller houses and there was not any clear division between the

inhabited area and the wilderness. This, however, changed in the 7th

and 8th

century when

the human dwellings began to establish more firmly in the landscape and enclose

themselves against nature around. Also the layout of the settlement starts to be more

organized though the typical nucleated village had its origin later in the years following the

Norman Conquest.

The Normans brought a change in socio-economic relations with the feudal rule.

The feudal rule triggered constructions of estates which always had their own church and

were ancestors of the parish system. The evidence of this system can be found in the

Domesday Book where most of today’s villages are documented. Basically, Norman

overlords took over the position of the Saxon chieftains and moved their subjects

accustomed to isolated granges to cottages standing in straight rows around the geometric

village green.

This reposition of people’s dwellings is the beginning of typical English village

with open fields around. This farmland surrounding the village was divided always into

three still large enough fields which were part of the crop rotation and every year one third

of the cropland lay fallow. One field was further divided into strips owned by peasants.

However, they did not farm them individually because no one owned that many tools or

animals but when the whole village participated eight oxen and a plough were put together

easily. There were no fences surrounding the fields and the individual territories were

recognized from others by untamed nature such as bog, forest or heath. However, as the

population grew even these places were taken over to be cultivated to support the people

with more food and the natural border disappeared. Instead of it new roads, big rocks or

well recognizable trees were used as boundaries and prevented argument over ownership

20

of land. These boundaries were called marches and young boys who were about to inherit

the land were taken by the elders and showed these borders precisely and had to remember

them well.

The population increase in 12th

and 13th

century resulted in farmers inhabiting also

higher places in the hills and trying to try cultivate the land there. Thus new hamlets

appeared as high as 350 m for example in Bodmin Moor. Farmers cut down the trees in

these areas and cultivated the moorland. Yet, already in the 14th

century the houses were

abandoned and sheep replaced crops because grazing sheep in the uplands was less

laborious and required fewer people which was an important factor during the labour

shortage after the Black Death epidemics (Simmons 73-74). And so the sheep became a

major economy article of the uplands.

From all the previous information a picture of Middle Age’s landscape can be

composed; with the confined village, the incompletely ploughed fields around and a bit

further the wild nature of forest or hostile scrub. To this scenery John Jackson Brinckerhoff

adds some other political elements such as castles, manors and also chartered cities (150)

and thus completes a picture of the landscape scenery.

1.3 Industry

1.3.1 Inorganic production – iron, coal

The importance of inorganic resources was clear even to the prehistoric people in

the Neolithic who sometimes travelled long distances to places where the stone material

was famous for its quality as for example one site on the Langdale Pikes in the Lake

District which is known famous as the axe factory. Though it cannot be compared with

later inorganic production the numbers of flint production are relatively high, there were

about 300 shafts of flint and each produced at least 7 tonnes of this material (Simmons 63-

64). In Roman times the iron which became the major material in industry of that time was

worked in large numbers especially in Weald in South East England where the ironworks

produced 550 tonnes a year. Medieval industrial locations were again Weald and than

Forest of Dean and Cleveland (Simmons 105).

The impact which iron industry had on landscape can be still found even today. In

the Lake District National Park on the west bank of Coniston Water, the fourth largest

lake, remnants of bloomery were found. These constructions, necessary for the early

21

technology of iron working, were also very numerous in Scotland in east side of Loch

Lomond.

Whenever iron was manufactured there was an obvious need for some fuel. This

fuel was on the outset charcoal. To have enough fuel the clearance of wooded areas was an

activity following closely behind any iron working, also the men involved in iron

production altered the forest by coppicing. Nevertheless, the speed by which the woodland

was disappearing due to the iron was still smaller than the one induced by agriculture.

When there was lack of wood the iron industry turned from charcoal to coal as major fuel.

Restrictions concerning use of wood from the years 1558, 1581 and 1585 prove the

shortage of charcoal. The coal was therefore used on a larger scale approximately from

1600, which changes the perception of coal as the fuel of the later centuries, mainly 19th

century. Coal was extracted from shallow pits which were usually 30 m deep and during

the extraction little machinery was used apart from the pumps. The coal mining also left

some scars on the land surface; apart from further deforestation the coal mines themselves

were highly visible. The 18th

and 19th

centuries were undoubtedly the true industrial

centuries but this chapter shows that industry had already been evolving much earlier.

22

2 CHAPTER II - 18TH

AND 19TH

CENTURY – BRITAIN IS

BECOMING THE TRUE INDUSTRIAL NATION


2.1.1 The phenomena of the sublime and its effects in the

landscape.

A new attitude towards natural places, the phenomena of the sublime, is introduced

in Britain towards the end of the 17th

century (Stibral, “Ledovce, divočina velehor I konec

světa aneb O vznešenu“). But before Britain discovered the terrifying beauty of high

mountains and other untamed places its appreciation of landscape had a very different

direction.

The medieval landscapes were perceived by the Christians in the same or at least very

similar way as it was described in the famous medieval poem about Sir Gawain and the

Green Knight:

And no one save God to speak to on his way, / while he is nearing the wastes of

Northern Wales. / He keeps to the right of the Isles of Anglesey, / Fords the foreshore

by the promontory, first / Wading over at Holyhead, then heaving ashore once more /

Into the forest of Wirral, the wilderness. Few there / Were loved by God or men of

goodwill.

( Harrison 27).

The word “wastes” which is used in connection with Northern Wales is an example

of the medieval approach towards wilder, more mountainous landscapes, even the forest

was in their minds “the wilderness”. The following decades namely Renaissance and

Classicism brought other ways of perception of the space which humans inhabited. During

Renaissance the features of landscape are much more clearly defined, both rural and urban

areas are designed to be beautiful at sight. The function of Renaissance landscape is to

reflect the human impact and advancement. The space on the land is for humans to

establish their societies (Brinckerhoff 152). The reign of Tudors and Stuarts was time when

similar anthropocentric opinions are held, for example wild animals, especially deer and

foxes, were there in nature to be hunted and the domestic animals to serve as labour force,

to be useful. (Simmons 118).

23

In the 18th

century landscapes such as green rolling hills and quiet fields ceased to

be the main object of admiration as it was during the previous century. These peaceful

sceneries were replaced in the minds of artists and nobility by places such as craggy

mountains and steep rocks of Wales or Scottish Highlands and even previously feared wild

nature of Lake District. The adjective sublime was attached to such sceneries which

evoked fear mingled with admiration in the travellers who started to discover that beauty

need not be necessarily welcoming and peaceful but also menacingly beautiful. These

ideas are also elementary in the artistic and philosophical tendencies prevailing in the 18th

century and 19th

century.1 The visible changes this new approach brought into the British

landscape crystallized in the form of English park.

2.1.2 Pastime of the wealthy – English parks, the concept of a

garden.

Until the year 1712 the structure of English park was influenced by classicist

French architecture with its symmetry and regular shapes (Simmons 141). However, with

the coming of romanticism the parks started to be designed in the fashion of the paintings

by Salvator Rosa or Claude Lorrain acquiring “more natural look” and “wild elements”.

Among these new elements belonged for example serpentine lakes and streams,

belvederes, groups of trees and even artificially created ruins (Simmons 141). One element

which has a peculiar name is ha-ha fence. It is a fence which is not “visible” in the

landscape, it is created by a ditch which has stone walls on its inner sides so the walls

cannot be seen from the distance. It was used in the landscape designing not to spoil the

views and at the same time to prevent animals from entering areas with precious tree

collections.

The gentry improved the parks, which surrounded their country houses, by planting

exotic trees and bushes there. In the 18th

century at least 445 new plant species were

introduced into the British lands, among them also the colourful rhododendron (Simmons

142). People living in the urban areas could find pleasure and a place to rest not only in

spacious parks but also in smaller gardens. To the tradition of gardening Joachim Radkau

1 A very known essay written on the topic of fear or pain being paralyzing but also beautiful is Edmund

Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. He applies the idea

of sublime even on wild animals and describes their ability to hurt and also their untamed character not

subdued by humans to their liking. These characteristics are appreciated in the natural world by Burke as

well. The nature is sublime when it exceeds the human will and might cause harm to the intruders

(Sarafianos, “Stubbs, Walpole and Burke: Convulsive Imitation and Truth Extorted”).

24

says: “Garden landscapes are, ecologically, the most pleasant side of the urbanization

process” (Radkau 57). The garden as an element in the landscape existed much earlier than

a process which could be named as urbanization took place. The garden was present in the

landscape even before the agriculture because it was known by human cultures who did not

participate in the large scale cultivation of soil (Radkau 55).

However, in the 18th

century, gardens were especially places of experiments and

new improvements. It was in the garden where the greenhouse was invented and with the

start of the 18th

century English gardeners tried to grow exotic plants of various species

there (Radkau 57) . Gardens are also associated with fruit trees which are surrounded with

buzzing insect in the spring. This picture, among many others, led people to admire the

work of God or simply somehow mysterious “great interconnectedness of nature” (Radkau

58). In the 18th

century the discovery of the pollination of blossoms by insect changed this

attitude of admiration of God’s work to the admiration of “the divine wisdom of nature”

(Radkau 58).

2.1.3 The secularization of the British landscape

This discovery seems as a good example of the desacralisation of nature, which

reached its peak in the 19th

century. The 19th

century scientist, Charles Darwin, also

notably altered the approach towards nature and religion thanks to his work The Origin of

Species, (1859). The science had a significant influence in the 19th

century Britain and it

was also a period when it was becoming more common to believe that “ a true picture of

the world might best be obtained by observers who were detached from immediate social

pressures” and thus was “cultivated the objective view of the man in the white coat” as

observed by I.G. Simmons (183). Advancement in science and technologies had a visible

impact on the landscape and these new landscape features are described in the next

subchapter.

25

2.2 Economic factors

2.2.1 Agriculture

2.2.1.1 Regular patterns and hedges in the enclosed landscape.

With the outset of the 18th

century, the British landscape started to undergo

momentous changes in its field structure and the general appearance of the agricultural

countryside. The arable area of approximately 12 million acres of land with the applied

open field system changed over the course of nearly two centuries into regular landscape

with many rectangular fields divided by walls or hedges with trees (Simmons 124).

The term enclosure as one of the major economic terms of the 18th

and 19th

century might

be summarized by words of Carl Johan Dahlman, the author of the book The Open Field

System and Beyond, (1980), who describes the enclosure movement as “the simultaneous

occurrence of the following two events: the consolidation of scattered strips and the

abolition of communal rights and decision-making” (146). In other words, the land was

reorganized in a manner which was more appropriate to the current level of mechanisation

but disadvantaged those poor farmers living from their strip of the common land.

According to I.G. Simmons and John Langton the enclosures were carried out as

Acts of Parliament or by private commissioners. The climax of the enclosure movement is

located between the year 1760 and the mid nineteenth century (Simmons 124; Langton 42).

John Langton in his book Atlas of Industrializing Britain 1780-1914 (2002), specifies that

“by 1850 virtually all arable land was enclosed” (42). The number of enclosures issued in

the span of these years reached in England and Wales the number of 2800 from which half

was passed before the beginning of the 19th

century (Simmons 124). Such Acts resulted

also in many social changes; many people lost their source of livelihood and had to move

to towns. In Scotland a process of farm amalgation became common and up to 145 smaller

farms were deserted (Simmons 155).

The predominant grains which were cultivated on the enclosed fields were cereals;

wheat as an important bread cereal and also barley, oats and sometimes rye. The cereals

were grown even on the soils previously, that is until 1700, considered as wasteland. Thus

some of moorlands, heaths and areas in mountains were enclosed as well and adjusted by

intensive treatment for the cultivation of cereals.

26

Together with the very visible new regular patterns a new element in the landscape

appeared in the form of the means of division between the particular patches of lands. The

fields were divided most commonly by hedges in which trees were planted as well. It

should be mentioned that not necessarily all hedges were built in the 18th

century. Number

of them is of a much older date. Nonetheless, their massive construction in this period

possibly justifies calling them 18th

century landscape element. The regions where the

hedges became common doubled in number. A variation on the green hedge was a stone

wall which was constructed in areas such as Cotswolds, where the stone was obtained from

local pits or out of the soils.

All in all, as the economic situation in the countryside changed so did the

appearance of its landscape which is fittingly described by Edith Girvan: “The countryside

changed in appearance, with large new farmhouses being built and small villages

becoming depopulated. Open fields had given way to compact farms with hedges and

ditches. More land was cultivated and animals became fatter” (24).

2.2.1.2 Farmland in Scotland after 1707, clearances.

As for the development of the landscape changes in Scotland, they are closely

connected with the economic and historical events that swept over the Scottish lands.

Firstly, it is important to mention a massive population growth of the peasant class in the

second half of the 18th

century when 60 per cent increase was possible (Simmons 128).

Secondly, the historical turmoil of Jacobite rebellions had a visible impact on the

landscape. Though the path towards the final result was gradual. After the second Jacobite

uprising in the year 1745 the social order in most Scotland suffered a heavy blow, the clan

system was destroyed. Then the tribal leaders were changed into landowners after they had

suffered a defeat at the Battle of Culloden and the redistribution and confiscation of land

was carried out by the Crown. What followed is a similar process as in the area of England

and Wales, land was enclosed and lines of stone walls and hedges were constructed as well

as more quality road system. Also the moorland was converted into the arable land and

places of settlements in the higher zones of Scotland founded during the Middle Ages were

abandoned. Overall, the Scottish landscape was transformed and became more

symmetrised.

A great theme in the history of Scotland are so called clearances, a series of

displacements of peasants and land conversion to big sheep farms. The process took place

27

between the years 1760 and 1860 starting in the southern Highlands (Simmons 130,

Devine 133). Its spread was relatively quick and by 1800 the first clearances reached the

north parts to Sutherland (Girvan 11, Simmons 130). However, the generally spread

conviction about Highland Clearances to be a violent forced removal of tenants cannot be

applied to all cases of dismissal of the redundant work force which accumulated in that era.

From the beginning, that is the later part of the 18th

century, there were generally efforts to

plan such redistributions beforehand. Also, the continuous and considerate release of

tenants seems unlikely to be some brutal clearance as such measures were taken also in

other parts of Britain.

Some landlords took more drastic methods, not conscious of the social costs of their

actions and in those cases it can be rightly talked about evictions of whole communities

(Devine 133-138). The major reason for such displacements was the scale on which the

keeping of sheep was effective and this scale was large. A cost-effective flock of sheep

was at least 600 hundred of them. Not only people were removed from the area which was

intended for sheep farming also many woods were cleared out.

Nevertheless, the commercial sheep farming should not be seen as the sole factor of

the disappearance of woodland on the Highlands. I.G. Simmons argues that “the area of the

native woodland removed for them [sheep] has subsequently been exaggerated. Most of

the native woodland had probably disappeared before the coming of commercial sheep

farming: they were unlikely to have been the agents of the woodland decline before the

year 1760” (129). Not that there would not be any major changes in the management of

woodland in the discussed period, there were. However, driven by a different economic

reason than the large-scale sheep farming. As an environmental historian Jan Oosthoek

writes in his book Conquering the Highlands: A history of the afforestation of the Scottish

uplands, (2013): “there was substantial felling in the native pinewoods of the Highlands

driven by high timber prices, particularly during the Napoleonic wars” (Oosthoek 28).

Further on, the reader can also discover that despite the coming of commercial sheep

farming, the natural regeneration of the pine populations was at least partly possible. And it

was possible especially in places where sheep farming was not too intensive and thanks to

the significant decline of felling of native pines by 1850 (Oosthoek 31). By the 1870’s the

sheep boom was over due to the cheaper imports from New Zealand and Australia.

28

2.2.1.3 Artificial fertilizers and mechanization in agriculture

The 19th

century is a period of innovations in agriculture mechanization and

intensification of production due to chemical fertilizers. These improvements made

possible by the science and technology of the modern era cannot be identified in

themselves as new features of the landscapes as for example disappearance of woods can

be. And yet, a certain difference is noticed by population living in this new kind of

landscape when instead of a man with a scythe they can observe mechanical reaping more

and more often. The new rotation system of crops so called High Farming meant that in

1870 on the 6 million hectares of arable land it was not very likely that an observer would

see a piece of land which lay fallow. This flexible, highly productive system was designed

in a sequence wheat, root crops and green crops. And even the symbol of the 19th

century

era, the steam engine, found its way into the landscape view. The landlords had the

possibility to admire, or in case of jobless peasants, to hate the steam ploughing on British

fields.

2.2.2 Industry

2.2.2.1 Disappearing woodland – increasing number of Royal

Ships

As has been hinted in the previous subchapter Britain was becoming one of the

least forested countries in Europe during the 18th

and 19th

centuries (Simmons 121,

Oosthoek 31). The percentage of woodland areas in Scotland, which were the centre of

Britain’s forestry at least from the 17th

century, fell to extremely low figure of 9 per cent of

the Scottish land area (Oosthoek 31). In England and Wales the wooded area compromised

less than 2 million acres of the whole land area (Simmons 121).

The reasons for the extensive tree felling happening throughout England were

various. Already mentioned commercial sheep farming was one of them. Other motives

were those of the industrial character. Great demand of wood was coming from the

tanneries for the leather where the bark of oak trees was extensively manufactured. Also,

the production of charcoal demanded significant management of woods. However, the 18th

century was the last era of charcoal production, then it was replaced by coal mining. This

transition from charcoal to coal is seen as one of the important changes in the modern

industrial production. This turning point occurred in the Severn Gorge near Telford, in the

29

Shropshire when iron was smelted with coke by Abraham Darby. In North East districts

the coal mining was the major devourer of wood in the second half of the 18th

century and

then 19th

century.

Even in areas such as Midlands, which were relatively well wooded at the

beginning of 18th

century, the system of coppicing was introduced when the canal system

(discussed further on) lowered the costs of transportation. This area witnessed a growing

reduction of its woodland areas since it became a supply of the shipbuilding industry. The

Royal Navy needed for one 74-gun ship approximately 50 acres of timber (Simmons 122).

Many other forests underwent similar changes, as for example the Wyre forest on the

border of Worcestershire and Shropshire or the New Forest in Hampshire which was

previously an area preserved for keeping deer. Now, in the 18th

century, it became another

supply of timber for Royal dockyards. The Commissioners of Royal Forests even tried to

prevent access of deer and their mere presence altogether but this proved impossible as

there were around 6,000 of them (Simmons 122).

Nonetheless, there was also the counter process to this grand deforestation in the

form of plantations. The resources of timber planted on large private estates of British

landowners represented a profitable crop. In Wales the process of converting the coppiced

areas into the high forests again occurred mainly between 1750 and 1825 (Simmons 122-

3). In Scotland this afforestation trend was also present and the landowners began to

introduce different tree species from Europe such as sycamore maple, Norway spruce or

silver fir. Scotland was particularly suitable for such experiments. According to House and

Dingwall quoted in the book Conquering Highlands Scotland had to its advantage “the

availability of considerable ‘wastelands’ in the Scottish Highlands which facilitated these

experiments with new species and planting methods” (33).

2.2.2.2 Regulating rivers and creating canal systems – new

elements in the landscape.

This subchapter describes primarily those changes in landscape which were brought

about by canal systems, coal mining and railway network. In addition, the surface of land

was altered by other industries such as lead mining, salt extraction or tin and copper

mining also mentioned further on. By the 19th

century the British Empire gathered enough

financial resources and surplus that there was enough capital for investment (Simmons

120).

30

The 18th

and 19th

centuries are periods of great industrial potential and

improvements. The extensive coal mining together with iron production cooperated in the

creation of the symbol of the Victorian era, the steam engine. This industrial invention

enabled after some time the booming of railways all across the country. The atmosphere of

the age is epitomised in the Great Exhibition of 1851 as Simon Schama states in BBC

series The History of Britain. He also describes the building where the vast exhibition took

place as “a greenhouse of the size of a palace” and calls the whole event “a huge showcase

for Britain’s Industrial Empire”(Schama “History of Britain The Great Exhibition”).

The mining of numerous raw materials as well as the processing of plant materials

in furnaces or mills and kilns had its consequence in the appearance of the landscape.

Generally seen in the form of holes, waste heaps, toxic waste dumps. The areas of

Tyneside and Cheshire were locations of coal fired salterns where deposits of salt were

opened for glassworks. Cornwall landscape shows up to the present day evidence of tin

and copper mining. While Peak District and Northern Pennines were in the 18th

and 19th

century the leading regions of lead mining where long drainage tunnels were constructed to

drain away the polluted mine water into the main waterways situated even 7 kilometres

away. An element which was not possible to miss in the industrialised landscape of Britain

was a smoking chimney.

Though the steam power was already available in the 18th

century its usage was not

as widespread as in the coming era; by 1800 the number of horses for work purposes was

still larger than that of steam powered machines (Simmons 141).

As the centre of industry moved also to the North of England, particularly the North

Eastern part, the supplies and heavy materials were transported on the newly built canals.

These water routes were connecting all parts of England with the greatest centre of

economy, the Docks in London. The very first canal which was not constructed on the

basis of a former watercourse was the Bridgewaters Canal. This canal was named after its

owner Francis Egerton, the third Duke of Bridgewater and served as an example for all the

other constructions that followed.

The construction of canals involved great landscape changes and earth removal. All

natural obstacles had to be moved from the course of the canal and the site was enlarged

and widened. Such changes disturbed the natural equilibrium of the rivers and further

maintenance was necessary. The construction of canals brought great changes into the

surrounding landscape and the canal itself was not the only new element in the landscape

31

as William George Hoskins writes in his book The Making of the English Landscape

(1955): “the canals flowed clear and sparkling in the sunshine, something new in the

landscape with their towpaths, lock-keepers’ cottages, stables for canal horses, their

Navigation or Canal Inns where they met the main road” (197). And further on other

features of these new industrial sites are described: “aqueducts, cuttings and embankments,

tunnels, locks, lifts and inclined planes, and many attractive bridges.” (Hoskins 191)

The manner in which the materials were transported on the canals is described by

Jeannette Briggs as follows: “Boats with cargoes could be moved easily and relatively

cheaply on water across country by one or two people in a canal boat plus a reliable heavy

horse to act as the force which propelled the canal boat along” (Briggs “The Canals of

England and Wales and their History”). A complicated system of locks was invented to

enable the boats to overcome natural obstacles such as hills. The locks were no new

technology to the period but it has never been functioning so extensively. The regulation of

the natural flowing rivers and streams happened not only in order to create a new “Cuts”

how the canals connecting rivers with towns were called (Briggs “The Canals of England

and Wales and their History”). Water courses were diverted also for the purpose of

powering the mills and furnaces with water. Pumping engines, pools and dams were

installed in this transition to factory based economy.

2.2.2.3 Railways – impact on the landscape

The steam engine is closely connected with the coal mining and the region of North

Eastern England is a proof of that. Coal mines appeared on sites as Newbottle, Lumley and

Penshaw. The great pioneers of railways, William Hedley, Timothy Hackworth, Edward

Pease or George and Robert Stephenson were all from North East and involved in the

development of the railway which enabled the growth of many cities which could transport

its coal cargoes to other cities. The coal industry together with railways transformed many

small fishing communities to major coal harbours (Simpson “Introduction to Coal Mining

and Railways in the North East”). As an example the city of Hartlepool could be named.

David Simpson describes this city in the second half of the 19th

century as “the fourth

busiest port in the country behind Liverpool, London and Hull” (“Introduction to Coal

Mining and Railways in the North East”).

The 19th

century was the period of full transition to fossil based economy and coal

was used to produce heat. The production of coal in England and Wales increased from 16

32

million tonnes in 1815 to 49 tonnes by 1850 (Simmons 164). By the same date, the number

of collieries in England reached the number of 1,704. The most industrialised area was the

region called Black Country, located west of Birmingham. Already in the middle of the

century it was largely transformed and the richest seams were exhausted (Simmons 167).

While coal was used to provide heat in industry and domestic fireplaces iron was

used primarily in manufacturing. What seem as the most effective combination of both is

the steam engine. Though it would be wrong to assume that steam engine meant

immediately locomotives. The process of its evolution was slower, David Simpson

describes it as follows: “Locomotives and steam engines on wheels were of course the

natural progression from the stationary engines in the colliery areas” (Simpson

“Introduction to Coal Mining and Railways in the North East”). However, when they were

developed great expansion of railway system occurred, its beginning could be placed in the

year 1825 when Sockton and Darlington Railway introduced services for passengers

(Simmons 168).

Thanks to this railway boom a great number of new elements enriched the British

landscape: embankments, viaducts and bridges, many new stations. The ballast which

filled the tracks was taken from the wet pits. These pits became sources of drinking water

and later their use was purely recreational. The easier and quicker movement of goods and

people meant expansion not only of industry but also of towns such as already mentioned

Birmingham, also Cardiff or Manchester. Railways encouraged a trend to travel to spa

towns as for instance Bath.

In general, the appearance of the British landscape by the end of the 19th

century

achieved a significant transformation thanks to its thriving industry and coal mining as

prevailing factors. From coal mining later evolved locomotives powered by this organic

material. Ian Simmons summarizes the environmental impact directed by humans by the

following words: “The environmental emblem of the nineteenth century is a lump of coal”

(191).

33

3 CHAPTER III FIRST HALF OF 20TH CENTURY


3.1.1 Protection of home wildlife and countryside

The first half of the 20th

century is marked for its war conflicts. The 20th

wars

influenced the cultural life in the whole Europe and Britain was not an exception. Both

world wars initiated new ways of environmental approaches from which the most notable

are the concern over the impact of land use and interest in protection of wildlife and also

historical buildings. Another phenomenon which is related to both mentioned trends is the

concept of rural England as the land which is worth fighting for, even though as it is

discussed further on, the reality was sometimes different and not all agreed with such a

point of view on this issue. Rural England was generally seen as a place of continuity and

traditions, with values which were no longer valid in the modern industrialised cities.

These were viewed as a mass of concrete, people and industrial areas. Rural settlements

were also perceived as an organic place in contrast with cities. At least it seemed so to all

the 20th

century city-dwellers moving to the country encouraged by the improved transport

opportunities. During the Second World War the countryside was a place of refuge for the

children evacuated from cities due to the bomb attacks which added to the idealisation of

countryside as the safe haven.

The reality of rural areas was that of a slow decline. The romanticized image of the

village with church, pond and the village green had been altered by the agricultural

depression. The pond was filled with debris, the church and other buildings were in decay

and the big country house: “is seized by the demolition contractors, its park invaded and

churned up by the tractors and trailers of the timber merchant. Down comes the house;

down come the tall trees, naked and gashed lies the once-beautiful park” (Hoskins 231).

This slightly nostalgic description of the countryside seems to be rather negative towards

the management of the 20th

century landscapes. This anti modern attitude is held not only

by William George Hoskins, the author of The Making of the English Landscape but also

by his other colleagues such as Maurice Beresford and John Hurst (Johnson qtd. in Hicks

“Review of T. Rowley The English Landscape in the 20th Century”).

34

Nevertheless, there is also more positive approach towards the environment politics

which was supported for example by Professor of cultural geography from Nottingham

University, David Matless. He writes about the inter-war years as the period when there

was an attempt to combine both the protection of the surviving landscapes and progress

(Matless qtd. in Hicks “Review of T. Rowley The English Landscape in the 20th

Century”). The feeling that the British wildlife, historic buildings and beautiful sceneries

need protection was very much present in the British society of that time. It was the result

both of the war campaign which emphasized countryside as an important national virtue

and of the effort to follow the suit of the creating the National Parks (Simmons 227). The

latter might be also associated with the fact that after losing its leading position of the

world super power, Britain searched for other values which would define it as a nation and

its landscape seemed as the best option.

One of the oldest and most renown organizations which concern themselves with

the protection of British environment is the National Trust foundation. It guards coast areas

and rivers and their estuaries, countryside, woodland, mountain areas and also historic

houses already from 1895. The impact this organisation has on these sites might be

overlooked by visitors today but without their work the sites would have a different

appearance or might not have existed at all. They manage footpaths and construct rest

areas with educational boards, clear the coastline after storms and carry out coastal clean-

up projects, conserve and reconstruct many important historical houses and castles which

became touristic destinations. Moreover, restore natural habitats destroyed by intensive

industry, for example on the Durham Coast (“What we protect”)

The National Trust, with other similar organisations for example Natural England,

protects natural areas of high quality in accordance with 1949 National Parks and Access

to the Countryside Act against any possible damage to their special qualities by modern

development (“Our Work”). Similar governmental Act which protects British landscapes

from the effects of “unrestrained modernity” (Hicks “Review of T. Rowley The English

Landscape in the 20th Century”) is the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 which

introduces the national planning schemes and wants to “ensure that planning will be

centrally co-ordinated and also effectively executed” (De Smith “The Town and Country

Planning Act”). Trevor Rowley in his book The Landscape in the 20th

century (2007)

compares the British landscape with the American one and perceives the Act of 1947 as

the reason why England “still has large unspoilt rural areas and roads free of the unsightly

35

billboards which are to be found blighting the roads in parts of North America (Rowley

qtd. in Hicks, “Review of T. Rowley The English Landscape in the 20th Century”).

3.1.2 War memorials - landscape features resulting from the

war conflicts

The new and most noticeable features of sacred space of the 20th

century are war

memorials to honour all who had died in the First World War or the Second World War

and even the Boer wars and some later conflicts. These sites are built in order to “educate

the public and to foster patriotism and good citizenship by remembering those who have

fallen in war by preserving and maintaining war memorials" as the War Memorials Trust

describes its aim. The estimated number of war memorials in Britain is 50,000 (“History”).

The importance of such sites might be found in the academic approach to the concept

called “public memory” which is “the assumption of a shared understanding of the past”

(Dickinson, Blair, Ott; 6). Thus, being a member of a nation means, among other things, to

understand and know its history which, when it is materialized for example in a form of a

war memorial becomes more real as a part of public life.

Many memorials but also whole buildings were built after the wars in honour of the

victorious side and its victims. Such places can acquire pilgrimage meaning for people in

favour of that certain political leader, party or a military action. The structure of war

memorials can differ whether they encompass both world wars or not, however, the main

characteristics are generally a tablet made of hard polished stone or some kind of a military

figure on a plinth and an inscription of different lengths and information value. Across

Britain there can be found memorials in the form of pillars, obelisks, animal figures or

walls situated in small cities, parks or city squares. Memorials are usually placed in an area

of grass or concrete enclosure. The passers-by can mostly read to which conflict the

memorial is dedicated and names of the people who lost their lives during that period.

36


3.2.1 Agriculture

3.2.1.1 Changing appearance of rural areas in Britain in the

first half of the 20th

century

What had the greatest effect on the appearance of rural parts of Britain in the first

half of the 20th

century were undoubtedly two world wars which swept across much of the

continental Europe as well. Due to these war conflicts the government intervention both in

agriculture and woodland management was more significant. In time of the First World

War the government took control of prices as well as production in agriculture. Until this

interference which occurred in 1917 the prices of agricultural products were rising rapidly.

A similar scenario was repeated in the inter-war period when cheap exports threatened to

harm British agricultural sector (Simmons 204). The years in between wars were also

noted for worsened conditions for drainage maintenance and the conversion of land to

other particularly not agricultural uses, an issue which will be dealt with further on.

Impact of wars on forests was visible in the substantial tree felling which reached

the figures of 202,000 hectares after the Great War and about the same number for the

Second World War (151,000). But the numbers would be different if the wood which was

needed would not be reused also from the bombed buildings (Simmons 199). National

control of forests resulted from the wars and apart from some less important councils the

Forestry Act of 1919 which established the Forestry Commission played the most

important role. Its major concerns were the expansion of woodland and its effective use

that is high timber production. Another of its aims was “to serve as ‘forestry authority’ that

would administer licenses for felling and grants for planting” (Oosthoek 54).

The Forestry Commission was aware that planting new forests on the lands

available to them will be no easy task. The lands they had at their disposal were mostly

poor, located upland and therefore exposed to more severe conditions. The more fertile

lands had to be reserved for food production which, when successful, ensured lower

agricultural imports and an advantage in the times of war (Oosthoek 54). This is also the

time when non native tree species of conifers became more prominent and the cultivation

of oak forests was deemed unprofitable as the oak timber used so extensively in ship

37

building industry in the 19th

century was replaced by iron. The introduction of Forestry

Commission planning meant an increased demand for timber and that was the most

decisive fact when choosing tree species. These had to be highly productive and this is the

condition which the conifers met (Oosthoek 56).

Apart from the characteristics of the agricultural lands which have been only briefly

mentioned at the start of this subchapter there were also those which were more visible.

Between the years 1920 and 1950 continuing mechanisation in agriculture resulted in the

figures of tractors being significantly higher than those of horses which were used for work

before. In the year 1943 there were 125,000 tractors ploughing British fields (Simmons

205). Consequently, the layout of the fields had to be altered in order to provide necessary

conditions for more mechanised farming methods. This meant that the hedges had to be

removed in many places and 15% from the total area covered by hedges disappeared

(Simmons 208). Overall, it was felt that the British rural areas were in decline for the most

of the first half of the 20th

century. The secretary of the Cambridgeshire Rural Community

Council asserted that there was “ decline both of the demand from agriculture for the

country craftsmen, and the inroads into their markets” (Brassley, Burchardt, Thompson

135). The same feeling of deterioration seem to concern also areas such as mountains,

heaths and moors because of the depopulation which was taking place and could be seen in

the thinning numbers of farms and population sizes of parishes from which many men

were taken into wars. Nevertheless, the broadly accepted scheme of decline is not the only

one that is available. Valerie Wright argues that in rural areas of Scotland Scottish

Women's Rural Institutes augmented the quality of housing conditions in the rural areas

and thus the problem of depopulation somehow diminished. This would support the claim

of Christopher Bailey, one of the contributors to the book The English Countryside

Between Wars: Regeneration or Decline? (2006). He writes that: “if the narrative of

decline is a familiar one, it is because it is embedded in much of our literature, and also

because historians and other academics, being literate people, often reach for it as a readily

comprehensible framework for their own arguments” (Brassley, Burchardt, Thompson

134).

When one use of land becomes less profitable its users turn to another. In this

manner heaths, previously sites of sheep grazing, were often converted into golf courses.

However, if it signifies only decline is arguable because suggestions were made that golf

courses can be important in preservation of fauna and flora (Colding, Folke “Role of Golf

38

Courses in Biodiversity Conservation and Ecosystem Management“). Moors and

mountains show similar tendencies in the 20th

century, both of these areas are increasingly

used for recreational purposes and for many sports including grouse shooting. The aspect

of continuity can be found in the facts that sheep grazing is retained and deer forests are

still present in the British mountains.

3.2.2 Industry

3.2.2.1 War industry affecting landscape

After the Second World War about 20% of British land was in ownership of the

military which converted the areas into temporary camps, fortifications, munitions

factories, airfields or vast training areas (Forbes, Page, Pérez 18). The war industry

affected all parts of Britain including coasts and uplands and also distant rural corners of

the country where the industry was located to be safer from the bomb attacks. Farmers

often sold their lands to military in order to solve their financial problems. Even such

unexpected sites such as Dunstanburgh Castle in Northumberland experienced landscape

changes due to war conflict. In this particular site a minefield and weapon pits were new

additions to the local landscape scenario (Forbes, Page, Pérez 19; Simmons 228).

Regarding the British coasts it is vital to examine the effect of the fear of invasion

which the country faced during the 1940’s. As a result of the anticipation of the enemy the

coasts were covered with barbed wire, bunkers and other concrete and heavily protected

structures. Though wars in their very nature are savage and distasteful some of their

elements retained certain cultural value. An example is the National Machine Gun Factory

which was designed in a neo-Georgian style and thus in spite of being a war establishment

it also contributes something to the national heritage (Forbes, Page, Pérez 22).

3.2.2.2 Expanding road system and electrification gains its

place in the British landscape

The technologies available in the 20th

century, more wealthy population and its

rising numbers transformed the level of impact the inhabitants of Britain had on their

landscapes. When looking at Britain from the air there would be very few places which

would not have at least one feature of the 20th

century development. If in the 19th

century

the steam engine was the pivotal industrial innovation for the 20th

century it would be a

car. Another of the 19th

century emblems, the coal, is still important and needed industrial

39

material in the first half of the new century and it will not be completely discarded until

1980’s (Waddington, Parry “Managing industrial decline”). One of many possible

depictions of the 20th

century landscape is given by Peter Wakelin in his article “The 20th

century landscape: heritage or horror?” where he summarizes elements of the most recent

layer of landscape change saying:

“power lines and phone lines snake everywhere. A golf course has dispersed its

lakes and bunkers along the meadows, with a new executive-class estate of houses where

the village once stood. […] From apex of expansion of the railways to the utter dominion

of the motorway; from the golden age of the landed estate to the consumption of the

countryside by urbs in rure and the megalopolis” (Wakelin).

Though the “utter dominion of the motorway” was not yet complete in the first half

of the 20th

century, it was the time when the road system expanded rapidly and the plans

for the first motorways were made. There are many kinds of roads in Britain varying in

width or directness. There are paths, lanes or by pass roads. Many main roads are part of

some older roads or tracks. Banbury Lane is one of them, it follows the old Jurassic Way

which is dating back to the Iron Age (Hoskins 182). Roads gained the upper hand in the

year 1937 when they covered an area of 185,000 hectares as opposed to the railways which

occupied an area of 101,000 hectares. Also the figures monitoring the increasing use of car

show the same trend towards this new means of transport. In 1904 there were 8,465 cars in

Britain and in 1950 it was 2,257,973 registered vehicles (Simmons 129).

Following the expansion of road system was so called “ribbon development”. This

term refers to “a type of development which consists of the erection of buildings along the

frontages of existing highways, each building with direct access to the latter. It refers, in

particular, to arterial and by-pass roads newly constructed with public money“ (Clarke,

“Restriction of Ribbon Development Act, 1935). This acquisition of land by further urban

structures, both roads and houses, contributed to the feeling that the beloved countryside is

in danger. Nevertheless, the proper road system is necessary for the country’s economic

prosperity and growth because it “ provides real and direct economic benefits: to business,

to workers, to consumers” (McLoughlin 5). Thus, it might be expected that the British

government wants not only maintain but also to expand the road network, which is twenty-

fourth in the world as for its size (McLoughlin 5).

Another technological advancement which affected British landscape was the

construction of the National Grid. On the one hand, it facilitated the lives of many people

40

and allowed more mechanised farming. On the other hand, it has been usually perceived by

people as something that blighted the landscape. Therefore the controversy surrounding the

construction of power lines has revolved not around the question whether to have them or

not but where to built them because “power transmission lines cross extensive land areas,

usually stand out from their surroundings, and for this reason they are often visually

striking objects” (Soinia, Poutaa et al. “Local residents’ perceptions of energy landscape:

the case of transmission lines”). In her research Katriina Soinia her colleagues focused on

the people’s attitude towards the transmission lines and they discovered that 64% of

population considers power lines a negative landscape element (“Local residents’

perceptions of energy landscape: the case of transmission lines”). The construction of the

Grid system included placing the hardware of the system, positioning the pylons and

straining the high tension wires. As electricity was being used more and more the power

stations enlarged simultaneously, an electricity power station could cover even the area of

200 hectares (Simmons 212). Electricity is what all people use gladly, nevertheless they

would prefer not to see its towers in their back yard and that is why the construction of new

power lines will always cause protests.

41

4 CHAPTER IV - THE SECOND HALF OF THE 20TH

CENTURY


4.1.1 Coming into the environmental age

The period from the 1950 onwards does not encompass any dramatic changes in

religious or cultural sphere when compared for example with the coming of Christianity

and then its subsequent confrontation with Reformation or the impact of both world wars

on people’s lives and the landscape they lived in and . Nevertheless, the world we live in

has became one dominated by humans and their activities. The changes we inflict might

not be as visible as demolition of Christian temples or sight of bombed city but they have

far reaching consequences. The reason why from the second half of the 20th

century until

nowadays governmental organisations as well as lay people put so much emphasis on the

environmental issues and landscape protection is the realisation how much it is related with

human health or economy of the country. The modern human population is “modifying

physical, chemical, and biological systems in new ways, at faster rates, and over larger

spatial scales than ever recorded on Earth” (Lubchenco “Entering the Century of the

Environment: A New Social Contract for Science”). And it is well aware of the need to

protect and value the natural world.

This awareness contributed to the continuation of many reservation plans and acts

which have its roots in the pre-1950 period. Organisations such as Nature Conservancy

established by the previously mentioned 1949 Act came to acquire more lands under their

protection and their efforts resulted in 10 national parks in England and Wales (Simmons

287). Government ran numerous biodiversity programmes which were designed to recover

the lost habitats of various species and return of these animal species but also plant

diversity to the nature of Britain. A piece of legislation which worsened the relationship

between farmers and conservationists was the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981 which

ensured protection of species and plants but more importantly made compulsory for

farmers to be notified about all the potential areas of natural interest on their property. The

negativity coming from the farmers was not the only issue conservationist group had to

deal with. The very up keep of natural parks is problematic because of the limited financial

42

support and the two fold function of the parks; they are supposed to be both the provider of

the outdoor recreation and protect the precious scenery but also to keep the rural economy

moving forward. Their success is in that what we cannot see such as other quarries or

ribbon development around villages.

A significant part of the country’s effort for preservation of the national appearance

of the landscape concerns also historical buildings. Many of them becomes a national

heritage through this process in contrary with their former function as sacred spaces.

Increasing number of cathedrals bears the label of ‘heritage’ and is open not only for

prayer anymore but for tourism as well. A similar process can be seen in the treatment of

military areas which are often open to public and serve also educational purposes if they

are not used for military training (Forbes 18).

4.1.2 Emerging of suburbs and Green Belts

Thanks to private car there was an increasing growth of the semi rural place called

suburbs in the close vicinity of the urban centre. These mainly residential areas are

associated with the middle class lifestyle and often ridiculed by upper classes. The most

common perception of the suburbs is that they look all the same no matter which city or

state they are located. Although Harris and Larkham in their book Changing Suburbs:

foundation, form, function (2004) present the suburbs as being rich in differences when

surveyed in more detail (2). Though the suburbs are taken as the 20th

century element their

massive growth occurred also in the latter part of the 19th

century and already in the

Roman times every town had a suburb of a certain form. Therefore, the myth that suburban

areas are an unpleasant result of the 20th

century growing population might not be fully

justified though the transportation by the private car significantly helped to develop this

suburban infrastructure (Harris, Larkham 1-6).

The urban planning of the second half of the 20th

century had to develop a strategy

how to prevent the urban centres to be joined into one unrecognizable mass. Most cities

were therefore surrounded by so called green belts. While the suburbs are examples of

spreading the urban infrastructure the green belts are “regarded as one of the most

internationally famous attempts to control urban growth” (Amati 1). Green Belts are places

of recreation and sports but also of salvage yards and quarries. They were implemented

either by public purchase or the local authorities could restrict the developers’ demands by

not allowing massive construction on the outskirts of cities. The pressure of development

43

growth was high in many places, South East England in particular but the green belt policy

was successfully carried out despite of this additional hardship (Willis “An Economic

Appraisal of a Physical Planning Policy“).


4.2.1 Agriculture

4.2.1.1 The conflict between protection and production in the

agricultural lands of the 20th century

Attention of public was turned not only to the increasing urbanisation represented

for instance by the growing suburban areas as has been suggested but also to the speed by

which the British agriculture was being intensified. The expansion of agricultural

production was a reaction to the increased demands for food which were thus satisfied.

However, the inevitable downsides of the intensifying process were profound and were

generally seen in the loss of the diversity of flora as well as fauna. Moreover, the necessity

of acquiring more lands for the food production meant further conflicts with

conservationists and other industries. The

The events and processes which led to and driven the agricultural intensification of

the second half of the 20th

century are summarized by Firbank into three main sections:

“Government policy sought to increase the food production […]. The second was

technological, with the availability of pesticides, chemical fertilisers, new varieties

and cropping systems, and larger machinery. The third was social, with farmland

managed by fewer people on larger units, as landowners sought to reduce labour

costs and as farmers’ children increasingly sought other ways of life” (“Striking a

new balance between agricultural production and biodiversity”).

The governmental intentions behind the intensification were to ensure better food

self sufficiency of the country and later this motif was replaced by the regulations of the

Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union. The use of fertilisers and

biocides affected the wildlife in close surroundings of fields and even beyond their

boundaries. The pesticides were implemented into the food chains and in the end were

found in the bodies of the top predators. Also some less competitive kinds of plants were

44

decimated by the chemical runoffs and generally by the higher input of fertilizers (Firbank

163-165; Simmons 259).

The machinery available to the farmers and landowners triggered further demolition

of the hedgerows which was considered by many as “the removal of an immortal element

of the scene” (Simmons 267), the scene being the British landscape. Overall, the

landscapes which were product of the intensifying phase starting in the 1960’s (Simmons

259) were highly productive but the rate at which their “productivity” was negatively

affecting biodiversity of the surrounding habitats would not be acceptable today (Firbank

164).

Apart from disappearing hedges there were other noticeable alternations to the

agricultural landscapes. Fields were larger and there were more buildings in the

countryside for example for the indoor keeping of pigs and poultry. Moreover, the

traditional farming methods when the grassland was next to crops and a bit far away there

was a small piece of forested land were no longer valid. Instead, the various uses of the

agricultural lands were more and more separated and there were whole regions providing a

particular type of goods (Firbank 167). The agricultural lands are a vital part of the British

landscape heritage and they constitute 45% of the overall area of Great Britain, in England

and Wales it is about 59% (Fuller 5).

4.3 Industry

4.3.1 Main changes of energy sources – oil, nuclear plants,

natural gas.

The industrial growth continued throughout the second half of the 20th

century and

continued to add other elements to the most recent layer of the landscape change. The

numbers of privately owned cars grew steadily and with them mileage of roads covering

15 000 hectares of land by 1990 (Simmons 237). Cities were expanding and different

industrial branches were gaining more and more land. However, there is controversy in

talking about the massive economic changes and scientific improvements in this period and

the impossibility to identify their effects in the landscape which often accompanies them.

The reason for this is to be found in the explanation provided by Peter Wakelin who says

that: “industrial change throughout the century was extraordinary, but most of it from 1900

45

used buildings which were multifunctional boxes unreflective of industrial processes or

technical changes taking place inside” (Wakelin). Nevertheless, there are still numerous

industrial changes which visibly covered the British land, sometimes literally as it might be

said for the use tarmac and concrete.

Energy use is a very influential sector which has possibly the major environmental

impact because of its rapid increase and its changes. Until the Second World War the coal

was the main employer as well as supplier of energy. British coal represented 25% of the

world coal production which when compared to the figure of 2.9% from the year 1983

displays a significant fall (Dintenfass 3-4). The diminishing importance of coal is well

illustrated in the figures concerning the energy used to generate electricity. In 1992, 60%

of electricity was coal generated while in 2000 it was already mere 28%. The coal was

replaced by natural gas in this sector and accounted for 39% of generated electricity.

Nowadays, electricity is not generated by single material but by numerous substances

which have different share in the total number of the generated electricity. 25% is

produced by power plants, 30% by the familiar coal, figure of 40% accounts for gas

generated electricity and 3% is from hydro and other renewable energies (Elliot 24).

4.3.2 Increase in energy use and possible exhaustion of

resources – renewable energies?

The standard picture of the energy production was changed but stable. Coal was

major provider of electricity, gas was important as heat provider and oil was the transport

fuel. The incident which caused engineers and politicians to search for other ways of

supporting the industries was the oil crisis during 1973-4. The crisis was caused by

Western assistance to Israel which was despised by Arab countries, countries operating

over large exports of oil (Elliot 27). However, after the imminent danger of the limited oil

supplies faded away the possible alternatives to the energy sources were not pursued as

vigorously anymore. The one aspect which seems to have the power to persuade the public

to accept the renewable and alternative energy sources is the threat of global warming and

the need to limit the carbon dioxide emissions. As Patrik Söderholm writes in his work

“Fuel Choice in West European power generation since the 1960’s” in the 1980’s and

1990’s there was an inclination towards renovation, better usage and even further

construction of power plants in all Western European countries as it was an option how to

liberate the economy from the fossil fuels (223). Nonetheless, public disapproval rooted in

46

the questioned safety aspects of power plants, problems to find a suitable site and limited

technological innovations hindered the expansion of power plants (Elliot 39-43). The effect

a power plant can have on its surroundings are not always those far reaching consequences

as those associated with Chernobyl or Fukushima but small portions of radiation are

emitted on everyday basis and these portions can affect not only people’s health but whole

living ecosystems, such as forests. Moreover, those plants which become outdated and

from some reason are not used anymore are very difficult to demolish for the contaminated

reactors and other radioactive parts. In some cases, the reactors simply stay where they are

in the countryside, the land not suitable for any reuse yet.

The renewable technologies have a little more public approval than nuclear plants

but still the technologies acquire significant areas of land and this fact always raises

disputes as the land is precious in times of high competition between leisure, food and

housing all in need of land. As David Elliot asserts: “while the energy sources like wind

maybe renewable, the land is a valuable and limited resource” (56). The renewable

technologies though not producing carbon dioxide emissions and pollution have a direct

impact on the locality where they are planted. They create very often a visual intrusion

which is the most often reproached aspect when a new project is introduced. If the device

for wind, wave or tidal energy technologies is planted offshore the question of land use is

less problematic, however the interference with the local visual aesthetics of landscape is

still an issue. Hydro dams, on the other hand, are more likely to be assessed as positive

additions to the landscape view. However, at the same time they are also disruptions for

the ecosystems and another of the constructions taking up too much space.

4.3.2.1 Dams and airports

Dams are not an invention of the 20th

century, already in the 19th

century these

water reservoirs were considered to be a possible solution as water supply for growing

industrial cities. Between 1840 and 1970 there were 200 dams constructed in Britain

(Mcculloch “Political ecology of dams in Teesdale”). After the Second World War the

permissions to build these water reservoirs were not easy to gain due to the protests rising

mainly from the middle class protectors of countryside and also due to the general

environmental atmosphere of the age. Construction of dam means a great intrusion not

only into the natural water flow of the rivers but also into the surrounding area and its

ecosystems, not to mention its appearance. In the upstream of the dam, a large lake needs

47

to be built which involves displacement of whole villages and sometimes even loss of

valuable plant species. Ashraf Ghaly, Professor of engineering at Union College, New

York, discusses the controversial issue which a construction of dams can present in the

landscape planning for engineers. However, he introduces his work by enumerating the

positives of dams which are: “ reducing or eliminating the hazard of floods, regulating

water flow in a turbulent river, storing water for drinking or irrigation purposes, generating

hydropower, creating an artificial lake for recreational activities, or establishing a new

habitat for fish, birds, and animals” (1).

The popular way of capturing the landscape pattern of any country is an aerial

photograph. From the bird’s view the unnaturally square shapes of forests, lengths and

curves of rivers, sprawling cities and their green belts can be noticed much easier than

from the ground. And still, with all the excitement from the take off one might forget to

look down at the very airport. The large infrastructure of airport is a significant alternation

of the landscape which is impossible to miss from the air. The growth of airports is caused

by demand of global commerce and also partly by general trend to travel more. There has

been a long lasting debate about the emissions from planes when they travel in the air,

nevertheless it is also important to take into account the emissions which are produced

when a plane takes off, lands or stays idle as these moments produce even more emissions

than the actual flight. The airport emissions are estimated to have the 13% of the overall

share of the carbon dioxide emissions (Ayres “Airports and Cities: Can They Coexist?”).

Although Jessica Steinhilber claims that “airports, the progressive ones, see sustainability

as a way to do business” (qtd. in Hewitt 25) therefore it is expected from airports to control

their pollution levels otherwise they might not be allowed to expand further.

48

CONCLUSION

The various historical events and their consequences for the British landscape were

the main concern of this thesis. The aim was to select those events which were most

notably connected with the transformation of landscape and influenced it on a profound

level. These events originated either in the cultural sphere of live which involves also

religious events or in the agricultural and industrial sphere. Consequently, the basic

implications of such events for the landscape were described.

In the cultural sphere pagan religion, acceptance of Christianity and Protestant

Reformation classify as the most prominent factors for the development of the landscape

from the prehistoric period until the 17th

century according to my research. Evidence of

pagan beliefs in the landscape are various Neolithic structures, menhirs, stone circles or

megaliths and various earth ditches. The act of accepting the Christianity added many new

buildings and other man-made structures to the landscape from which the free standing

cross was the most prominent. There were ecclesiastical buildings in towns which were

often boasting with a magnificent cathedral. Also villages and numerous large monasteries

and their properties were new Christian landmarks. All this changed the landscape of

former pagan Britain. Protestant Reformation and more precisely the Act of Dissolution in

1539 meant great changes mainly for churches and monasteries which were either

converted into other uses, mostly not sacred, or ruined.

In the 18th

and 19th

century the most influential cultural event for the British

landscape seem to be the cultural phenomenon of the sublime. Nevertheless, this new way

of appreciation of beauty did not alter the landscapes but created a visible manifestation in

the form of the English park and also ha-ha fence is a well-known element of this era.

The need of the modern society to cope with the 20th

century world wars and losses

they brought materialized in many war memorials as new elements common to cities,

villages or any place in the countryside. Also, the war conflicts initiated new interest in

protection of the British wildlife which through the actions of various non-governmental

organisations (National Trust) introduced Natural Parks, reservations and sites of cultural

heritage to the country and this atmosphere of environmental concern continued even in

the second half of the 20th

century which initiated for example so called Green Belts. A

piece of legislation which has had a large impact on the appearance of landscape in Britain

49

is the Town and Country Planning Act. It sought to synchronize the development plans and

to restrain the negative signs of modernity such as billboards in the countryside.

The first step in creating the agricultural landscapes was taken in the later

Mesolithic when hunters and gatherers voluntarily shaped their surroundings in order to

survive and the result was the start of the recession of woodland areas. The following

Neolithic era introduced even larger wood clearances for the purpose of creating patches of

cultivated fields with new crops and all was triggered by the new way of agricultural life.

The interests of the next nation occupying British land was prevailingly military and

commercial. Therefore their alternations of the landscape were of these characteristics:

roads, military towers, barracks and boundaries such as walls. A direct change of the

layout of the agricultural lands followed after one of the most vital events in British

history, the Norman Conquest. The Normans brought new socio-economic relations to the

country and these reflected in the confined village with houses gathered around the village

green surrounded by open fields which were in some places divided by marches.

The event or more likely a process which signified a turning point in the

agricultural countryside in the 18th

and 19th

century was the agricultural revolution having

its peak from 1760 to the mid-nineteenth century. The revolution’s most noticeable effect

was the enclosed field system instead of the former open fields. The increased

mechanisation techniques were applied on rectangular, regular and smaller fields divided

by well known hedges. In Scotland the agricultural revolution generated so called

clearances which meant creation of big sheep farms, further clearance of woodland and

relocation of peasants connected with abandonment of many upland villages.

The governmental intervention in agriculture in the 20th

century was more

significant first due to the wars and then its decisions became the most significant land

forming factor. Firstly, it resulted in felling of large wooded areas but also in establishing

the Forestry Commission, which was active in the afforestation of the country with the

focus on fast growing non-native species. Continuing mechanisation implied larger fields

with fewer hedges which were dismantled to enable newer methods of farming by tractors.

Then there was a significant use of fertilizers and pesticides but the changes resulting from

their application were more significant for the environmental processes then the visible

surface of land. Nevertheless, there were more buildings in the countryside for the indoor

food production (poultry, pigs) and fields were being enlarged and hedges continued to

disappear.

50

Until the end of the 17th

century the inorganic production and its effects proved to

be incomparable with that of the following truly industrial 18th

and 19th

centuries. But still,

the beginnings of iron and coal industry left some scars in the landscapes, there were

shallow coal pits, iron bloomeries and shafts.

The Industrial Revolution and its technological innovations are deeply ingrained in

the appearance of the British landscape. The major energy source which fuelled this

industrial boom was coal and its extraction was responsible for most of the cleared

woodlands, together with the ship building industry. The large scale industrial activity was

epitomized in the landscape by collieries, shafts, salterns, drainage tunnels and other sites

of waste disposal. Moreover, new ways of transportation enriched British landscape with

many fascinating bridges, lock systems and lifts, towpaths with Navigation inns, tunnels

and numerous railway crossings and viaducts. Also later modern transport demanded many

acres of land. Roads and highways were constructed and large infrastructures of airports

used both for commercial and leisure purposes were significant additions to the landscape.

The 20th

century war industry itself covered landscape with its bunkers, ditches and barbed

wire.

The needs of modern society had to be powered by various energy sources. The

way in which the energy is generated is one of the most landscape forming elements of the

20th

century because the energy use was increasing rapidly. Visible reminders of our

dependency on the energy generating technologies are omnipresent power lines,

controversial oil refineries, power plants and also structures of the renewable technologies

such as hydro dams, wind or solar power plants, tidal and wave technologies offshore.

Many places in the British landscape have their own story, their “delicate web of

documented fact interwoven with threads of pious fiction and myth,” as Alexandra

Walsham calls it (555). This thesis perhaps hinted some of these facts and a small portion

of fiction as well although there is still a great deal to be said.

51

GLOSSARY OF SOME IMPORTANT TERMS USED IN THE

THESIS

Culture

The term is used in the thesis in the same way as it is used in Anthropology

meaning “those abilities, notions and forms of behaviour persons have acquired as

members of society” (Eriksen 3). The way people think, how they ensure their survival by

different technological means and their shared religions or set of beliefs that is all part of

the term culture.

Environment

Narrowed selection of components from nature to only those which are “non-

human” and “interactive with human species” (Simmons 6). This statement implies that the

term environment encompasses the flora, fauna and soil and more in relation to the cultural

and technological activities of humans. As an example could be used a pond which is used

for fishing.

Landscape

The word entered the English vocabulary from the Dutch and it was first a term

used by painters to describe a section of land with all its features which they had in front of

their eyes, this view was transmitted onto the canvas as personal interpretation. However,

the meaning has changed over the years and in the context of landscape studies it is used to

refer to “a space on the surface of the earth” (Brinckerhoff 5). Despite the fact the

environment and landscape are two different terms they share some common features such

as it is always a place common to a group of individuals and displays certain cultural or

geographical characteristics (Brinckerhoff 5).

Nature

A term used when describing a set of ecosystems with their material components

and cycles taking place within them for example hydrological cycle, the nitrogen cycle but

also other phenomena as gravity. Summed up nature refers to “the whole of our material

surroundings as an outcome of billions of years of cosmic evolution and a few million

years of organic evolution” ( Simmons 6).

52

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The British Landscape Throughout the Ages

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