1 Giant’s Causeway, Co Antrim
Geology made the British countryside. It was the freakishly intricate composition of the geological map that created such diversity of natural features and building materials, which seem to vary every few miles, as well as natural wonders, such as the Giant’s Causeway in Co Antrim, Northern Ireland’s only World Heritage Site. The basalt stacks are the result of a volcanic eruption of 60–65 million years ago, after which lava that flowed into a valley crystallised as it cooled, forming hexagonal and other multi-faceted columns. Over aeons, the columns sank to different depths, giving the appearance of steps.
The Causeway had been the stuff of legend for centuries when it entered written history in 1692, on being ‘discovered’ by William King, then Anglican Bishop of Derry. An early name was clachanafomhaire, which associates it with the small, dark Fomorians who supposedly inhabited Ireland before Gaelic speakers arrived. The giants of later legend are Finn McCool and his Scottish rival, Benandonner, who used it as a bridge to do battle with each other—although it never came off, because the giants were too frightened to begin the fight.
This is one of the wonders not only of this country, but of the world
2 Fortingall Yew, Perthshire
What is the oldest living organism in Europe? It could be the yew tree that grows in the churchyard at Fortingall. Long ago, the trunk changed shape, losing its centre and one side to become a one-dimensional ligneous wall. Nobody quite knows the exact age of this relic, but it is calculated not in decades, not in centuries, but in millennia. The late Duke of Buccleuch made a pilgrimage to see it shortly before his death. ‘I never cease to marvel at the fact that there is something living today that was 3,000 or more years old at the time of the first Christmas,’ he said. Britain is lucky to have the greatest number of ancient trees in Northern Europe; Richmond Park is said to contain more centuries-old oaks than France and Germany combined.
3 Skara Brae, Orkney
In 1850, a great storm swept across Orkney, tearing a layer of soil and sand off a site beside the Bay of Skaill and revealing the remains of a Stone Age village. Upon excavation, it was found to be the most complete in Northern Europe. The first houses were built about 5,000 years ago, which makes them older than the Pyramids of Egypt and Stonehenge. They were built into middens—a compost made of household waste and animal dung, strengthened with pebbles, bones and shells, which dried to form a strong material, like a weaker concrete.
Furniture was made not out of wood—there are few trees on windswept Orkney—but sheets of local stone. The community living here was peaceable, with apparently no use for weapons and little obvious hierarchy, as all the houses are the same size.
4 Uffington White Horse, Oxfordshire
Chalk horses, scoured into the sides of downland, are peculiar to southern England. This is the oldest and could have been created 3,000 years ago; the lines took the form of trenches, which were then filled with chalk. It forms part of an ancient landscape, with the prehistoric path known as the Ridgeway running along the crest of the downs and a Saxon hill fort nearby. With its flowing, yet staccato lines reduced to the bare minimum, the White Horse is halfway between a Picasso and a hieroglyph. Like the real horses around Lambourn a few miles away, it is shown as a racing Thoroughbred, although, originally, it may not have been quite so svelte—genuine Bronze Age horses were essentially stocky ponies.
5 Stonehenge, Wiltshire
This is one of the wonders not only of this country, but of the world. The mere sight of it—the great circle of massive stones, alone in the bare landscape—evokes awe. We struggle to imagine the feat of will and organisation necessary to create it.
Archaeologists have yet to decode this phenomenon of pre-history; part of the hold that Stonehenge has on our imagination is that every age imposes an interpretation that reflects its own values and preoccupations. In form, Stonehenge stands in the middle of an earthwork circle formed by a 6ft-deep ditch. A little way inside this earthwork is a circle of what used to be 56 holes, but nobody knows what they were for. Two ‘sarsen’ stones were set up near the entrance to the circle; only one now survives. This was the form that the henge took for the first 900 years of its existence (3100BC–2200BC).
Next, the architecture of the circle was realigned towards the point on the horizon where the sun rises at the midsummer solstice. Then, in about 2000BC, came the great ring of standing stones, with lintels, that forms the popular image. During the dry summer of 2014, it was discovered that Stonehenge was a much bigger complex than previously thought. Increasingly, it is regarded not as an isolated monument, but as part of a ceremonial landscape that embraced scores of other sites on Salisbury Plain. An inclusive, One World Stonehenge? Perhaps.
In about AD70, Maiden Castle was abandoned. The cloak of mystery descends
6 Maiden Castle, Dorset
This is another mystery—but that was intentional, as part of a defensive strategy. An attacker would have had no idea what lay in store on the further side of the ridge on which the great earthworks were built, which was followed by others, separated by deep ditches. The entrance to the site was protected by a kind of maze, at any twist of which defenders, hurling pebbles from their slings, could spring out.
The first earthwork was constructed 5,000 years ago. However, Neolithic people deserted the site, only returning hundreds of years later to use it for burials. The present complex was redesigned and improved towards the
