The English Landscape
The English landscape, and its habitats, evolved over a relatively short time...
The English landscape, and its habitats, evolved over a relatively short time. At the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago, stone-age hunter-gatherers, lived off bare tundra. As conditions grew rapidly warmer, waves of trees colonised the unglaciated southern parts of the continent - birch followed by pine, elm and oak. This migration stopped about 8,000 years ago when rising sea levels cut the British Isles off from the continent, by which time, most of England was covered in a dense wildwood.
An Ice Age Hunter Gatherer
*Image courtesy of the Creswell Heritage Trust
The landscape began to change again with the first Neolithic farmers who came to Britain about 6,000 years ago. They began to fell the wildwood to create fields and settlements. By the end of the Iron Age, very substantial areas had been cleared, and a recognisable "countryside" was beginning to emerge.
The Romans consolidated and developed the landscape further, adding extensive drainage, causing alluvial gravels to spread over many earlier settlements, and building roads and towns. Medieval land management persisted for about 1000 years. Rural communities, often centred around a church and manor, needed 2-3 large communal open fields for crops, commons for grazing animals, and woodlands for fuel and materials. Local timber and stone was used to build houses, and agriculture was adapted to the local soil and weather conditions. This phase of history gave the wonderfully rich variety that we see in the landscape today, as well as its regional distinctiveness.
More recently the history of the landscape is one of gradually increased uniformity as agriculture became more efficient and intensive. The enclosure movement of the 18th and 19th centuries replaced the large irregular communal fields and common land with the present checkerboard patchwork of smaller, rectangular fields. Since the late 19th century, agriculture has been on a boom/bust cycle influenced by wartime needs and peacetime competition with foreign producers. Increased productivity became essential but eroded regional distinctiveness as farmers grew the same crops in the same way irrespective of local conditions. This was only possible by putting more land into intensive production, with the increased and unsustainable use of energy and chemicals. There has since been a rapid loss of wildlife habitats for once common birds such as lapwing, skylarks and grey partridge.
Today, tourism is a much greater rural economic force than farming. Villages are under increasing pressure as shops, pubs, post offices and bus services disappear, more people use their cars to shop at urban and out of town supermarkets and rural jobs are in short supply. The countryside seems to be in deep decline.
However change is inevitable. The landscape has constantly evolved adapting to human needs and economics. It would be wrong to try to fossilise the countryside in its present form, and economically impossible to return it to some point in its history. Most of us agree that we would like more wildlife, an attractive countryside, and jobs for those who choose to live there. In order to achieve these aims we need to develop a national consensus for the future of our countryside.
