Types of Landscape in Great Britain: A Study in Regional Geography

By Andrew Dawson

Eighty years since the last major, single-authored regional geography of Great Britain was published, the country’s landscape is now very different from what it was in the middle of last century. Public interest in it, however, is as great as it was then. Television offers programmes about its coasts, hills and cities, government frets about it, and ecologists worry about what we have done to it. Students of urban design and landscape appreciation have developed new ways of looking at it, but professional geographers have largely ignored it. Types of Landscape in Great Britain aims to fill the gap.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brown Dog Books
• Release date: Aug 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9781839524912

Book preview

Chapter 1

A Gap in the Literature

There has long been an awareness of landscape in Great Britain. In the seventeenth century, books offered plans for knot gardens, while landowners, seeking favour with the restored Stuart monarchy, laid out their parks in the style of André Le Nôtre. The Great Fire of London prompted Christopher Wren, amongst others, to prepare plans for a rebuilt city, inspired by Renaissance ideas of town planning; while John Evelyn, drawing attention to the almost complete clearance of England’s woodland, published Sylva, in which he advocated a policy of replanting. During the eighteenth century, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown’s ‘English’ style of landscape gardening was widely adopted by estate owners; Thomas Pennant’s and Johnson and Boswell’s accounts of their visits to the Highlands of Scotland encouraged many to follow in their footsteps, and William Gilpin developed the idea of the ‘picturesque’ landscape, encouraging the well-to-do to travel to such places as the English Lake District, the Wye Gorge and the Falls of Clyde. Later, the squalor of the first industrial towns provoked Titus Salt and others to lay out ‘model’ industrial ‘villages’, providing not only salubrious but also aesthetically pleasing environments for their workers; and in the twentieth century the necessity for ‘town and country planning’, as it became known, was widely accepted. People also wanted to see somewhere different. Millions flocked to the seaside and the hills, and the stream of tourist literature swelled to a flood. Geography, especially regional geography, became a staple in the school curriculum and began to be taught in universities. Detailed studies of the places of which this and other countries are composed were published, but it has now been more than eighty years since the last single-authored account of Great Britain appeared, during which the landscape has been transformed.

Over that time, many hedges and orchards have been grubbed up; the slag heaps and winding towers of the coal industry have gone, and oil refineries, nuclear power stations, wind turbines and solar panels have appeared. Manufacturing industry has moved from blackened, multi-storeyed mills in inner cities to anonymous, box-like buildings, indistinguishable from warehouses, on industrial estates; soot no longer pours down from chimneys over town and city and many older buildings have been cleaned, while the railway network has been thinned and that of the motorways has been built. The number of households in the country has risen from fourteen million to twenty-six and that of road vehicles from four million to thirty-eight. Government has been given unprecedented powers to regulate the use of land; it has planted forests and built new towns; huge suburbs have been laid out, to which people have been moved from inner cities, and those places have then been redeveloped. Shopping and office complexes have been erected and airports constructed. Concrete, steel and glass have become the materials of choice for large buildings; replacing brick, stone and slate, and attempts to decorate exteriors have largely been abandoned in favour of severely functional styles, including flat surfaces and level roofs, in what has been called the Modernist style. Several hundred tower blocks and skyscrapers have been built, and cities are much more brightly illuminated during darkness than before. Most recently, what has been called the ‘Post-Modernist’ style of architecture and urban design has spread. There is much to report. Rowley (2006) has chronicled some of what has happened in The English Landscape in the Twentieth Century, while Pryor (2010) and Crane (2016), both of whose books are entitled The Making of the British Landscape, also cover the subject. All these, however, are histories. They do not show – nor do they aim to show – how some parts of the country have been greatly changed, but others less so. They are not regional geographies. There is a gap in the literature.

Regional Geographies

In 1902, Mackinder published Britain and the British Seas; in 1927, Demangeon’s The British Isles appeared in French – translated into English some years later – and in 1935, Unstead produced his book of the same title. A detailed list of the regions which each of them identified is provided in Appendix 1. There has been nothing comparable since. It is hardly surprising. Looking at their work, it is all too easy to see why, in the middle of the twentieth century, professional geographers began to question their approach. Its faults were clear.

Mackinder recognised two major regions in Great Britain: the Uplands and the Lowlands, whose physical geography he described in some detail. He divided the Uplands into three sub-regions – the Highlands, the Southern Uplands and Pennines, and the uplands of Wales – and the Lowlands into the rift valley of Central Scotland and the English Plain. In later chapters, however, and quite independently of this first regional division, he identified three more regions: Metropolitan England, Industrial England and Scotland. Writing about Metropolitan England – the area south and east of a line from the Wash to the Severn Estuary – he emphasised its tributary nature to London, drawing attention to the way in which its road and rail networks focussed on the capital. Describing Industrial England, in contrast – an area that included all the rest of that country and also Wales! – he drew attention to the presence there of the country’s coalfields and to the great urban settlements that had developed on them. He then divided each of his regions into sub-regions, five each in the cases of Industrial and Metropolitan England and four in that of Scotland, suggesting that each was characterised by a degree of functional unity. For example, he argued that those in Scotland were each closely connected with one of that country’s four major cities.

Mackinder claimed in his preface that he had treated the geographical phenomena which he presented ‘from a single standpoint and on a uniform method’, but it is difficult to agree. At no point did he explain why he had chosen to offer two different regional divisions, nor did he attempt any reconciliation between them. Had he done so, he would almost certainly have run into difficulty, for there is no reason why a division based on landform should yield the same set of boundaries as one that reflects the functional links between places. His work also posed a wider problem. Having failed to tell the reader what method he had employed to divide the country and why, Mackinder then appeared to choose whatever criterion seemed best to him to characterise each of the major regions that he had identified. As already noted, one part of the country was described as upland, one lowland, one industrial, one metropolitan and one Scotland. It was an example of dichotomous, rather than logical, division. All his regions were unique. One could not be compared with the others. There could be no science of them.

Demangeon’s account of the country’s geography also posed problems. Like Mackinder, he identified a series of major regions, some of which he subdivided into minor ones, but he failed to explain how he had done this. In almost all cases he emphasised their appearance and especially their relief, but in his account of London he concentrated on the city’s trade and commerce, that is, on its functional links with other places. It is clear from the titles of his chapters – the South of England, the English Plain, London, Wales and so on – that each had been chosen according to some characteristic that was peculiar to it but not possessed by others. In other words, his description of the country was no more than another example of dichotomous division.

It was these difficulties which prompted Unstead to search for what he hoped would be a more logical scheme and to subtitle his work A Systematic Regional Geography. In it, he aimed to recognise what he called ‘the smallest regions or unit-areas’, and for them he revived the old English word ‘stow’, meaning place. He then grouped stows into tracts, tracts into sub-regions, sub-regions into minor regions and finally minor regions into major ones, suggesting that this method would allow not only the complete study of the whole of the British Isles, but of the Earth! In other words, rather than divide the country into its parts, he chose to recognise regional classes in which all units were of equivalent status, which he then combined into higher ones. He did not, however, pursue his method in full in the case of Great Britain, choosing not to identify all the stows in many parts of the country. We do not know how many there might have been, but it is clear that the number would have been very large. We do know, however, that he identified no less than sixty-seven tracts and ‘tract-groups’ – a term that he did not define – which he combined into the seven sub-regions listed in Appendix 1.

His method of regionalisation did not prove to be popular with other geographers, however, and it has not been employed since. Contrary to what he suggested, there is no objectively existing smallest geographic unit that can provide an indisputable basis for such a system; his criteria for grouping units of a lower class into a higher one – adjacent areas with ‘certain resemblances’ – were vague, and the regions that he presented were, like those proposed by Mackinder and Demangeon, little more than a matter of personal judgement.

In short, it is not surprising that, as professional geographers sought to enhance their academic credentials by adopting a more ‘scientific’ approach during the mid- and late twentieth century, they moved away from these types of study. Lacking an explicit, coherent, testable theory of regions, rooted in the phenomena under study, they concentrated instead on the subject’s sub-disciplines – geomorphology, climatology, rural geography, economic geography and so on – and so fragmented it. A whole area of academic enquiry was abandoned.

This has been unfortunate, for interest in landscape has not disappeared. The main television channels today are replete with programmes that describe Britain’s coasts and towns or portray journeys through its countryside. Strident voices have been raised, attacking some of the changes that have been occurring of late in its appearance, and government has commissioned consultants to advise how best to preserve what is of value in the British scene and by what means it might be enhanced. But the disinterested, scholarly voice of the geographer has been silent. The superficiality that characterises popular presentations of Britain has not been remedied; official views have not been challenged, and rigorous analyses of the country’s current geography have not been offered. It is time for a new engagement with the landscape.

How should it be pursued? Clearly, it should avoid the problems associated with earlier studies. In particular, it should concern itself solely with the appearance of the landscape, rather than attempt to combine this with a study of the functional connections that exist between places; it should eschew the process of dichotomous division in favour of a more logical one, and it should be based on an adequate theory of regions.

An Alternative Approach

Let us begin by making some assumptions! First, let us suppose that the landscape is composed of only two elements: the form of the land and its use! Second, let us assume that the form of the land is determined by gravity, which is always working to reduce higher land to no more than a gently undulating surface, known as a peneplain, close to sea level! And third, let us accept that the use to which land is put is always coming into accord with the wishes of those who control it, whose intention is to make the best of it, as they define that! These are, of course, simplifications; they only deal in the broadest terms with what are far more complicated matters, and we shall relax them in various ways later. They do, however, provide a base from which an examination of the British landscape can proceed.

The land which now constitutes Great Britain has a long history. During the past 540 million years great mountain chains have been raised across it, in Caledonian and Variscan times; Cretaceous rocks have been laid down, covering almost all of it, during the Cenomanian Marine Transgression; it has been tilted from northwest to southeast as the Atlantic Ocean has opened; volcanoes have erupted, and the Alpine orogeny has created the dome of the Weald and folded the chalk of southern England. It has also been exposed to long periods of weathering and erosion, during which higher land has been denuded – reduced to something close to base level. Some 25 million years ago or so, it may have been no more than a gently undulating peneplain, since when parts of it have been uplifted again. Those uplifts may have begun with land which now lies below parts of Scotland, Wales and the southwest peninsula of England, and somewhat later with that underlying what are today the Pennines and Lake District. There is evidence to suggest that they have been continuing, intermittently, ever since and that some areas may have been raised by many hundreds of metres, if not more; part of a phenomenon that has been observed in several places on the Earth’s surface, including what are today Ireland and Scandinavia, during what has been called the Neotectonic Period. As a result, some land which may have been peneplain at the start of the Miocene epoch has become what we shall call ‘high surfaces’.

Those surfaces have been subject to denudation. Raised well above sea level, they have become vulnerable to the weathering of their uppermost strata and the downhill movement of the regolith that this has produced. They have also been exposed to erosion, especially by glaciers and rivers. In some places, many layers of rock have been stripped off, transported to lower areas and deposited. But they have not been removed entirely and are still easily recognisable in some places: extensive, gently undulating at most and standing prominently above surrounding land. In others, they have been transformed into networks of valleys; the ridges between them, all of the same height, the only evidence of their previous form. And elsewhere, they have been reduced to lowlands. It would seem, therefore, that the country is now composed of only three types of landform: high surfaces, valleys and lowlands.

After the melting of the ice, people moved into the country across the land bridge which then existed with the continent of Europe, and gradually they have brought almost all of it into use. Some of the first to arrive established a hunter-gatherer economy, known as the Mesolithic, but their numbers were probably small and they seem to have had little impact on the landscape. The introduction of cultivation and domesticated animals at the start of the Neolithic, about 6,000 years ago, was much more significant. Slowly, the natural vegetation, which had regenerated as temperatures rose, was cleared to make way for cultivation, especially on the lighter soils, and eventually large areas, up to 500 metres above sea level, may have been brought into use, either for cropping or the grazing of animals. Heavier land probably remained under wood, though it may also have been used, not only as a source of firewood and timber, but for pasture. Many areas above 300 metres were then abandoned after the onset of cooler and wetter weather, in what is known as the sub-Atlantic phase of the Holocene, about 2,500 years ago. Later, Anglo-Saxon settlers, who arrived during the fifth and sixth centuries CE, introduced a new type of plough which allowed heavy land to be cultivated, and woodland continued to disappear. By the sixteenth century the country was said to be ‘treeless’, though that was an exaggeration. Nevertheless, it had become a place of large common fields, especially in the south and east, with smaller, enclosed fields further west, villages, hamlets and small towns. It was also a place of wetland, little of which had been drained.

That pattern of land use reflected the feudal society which developed during medieval times and the technology that was available to those who participated in it. Since the sixteenth century, in contrast, the British economy has been based on the individual ownership of land and its use to generate income. Increasingly, people have bought, sold and rented parcels of land, putting them to such use as they have thought fit. The common fields have been enclosed and the wetlands brought into intensive agricultural use, while the Industrial Revolution has led to the growth of not only towns and cities, but also conurbations. By the early twentieth century much of lowland Britain had been transformed. It was not, however, a transformation to everyone’s taste. Many people in towns and cities lived in squalor; the new industrial areas were grossly polluted, and urban settlements had begun to sprawl into the countryside. Since the Second World War, the use to which land may be put has been constrained. Urban land has been zoned for particular types of use; large areas around cities and conurbations have been designated as Green Belts, to protect them from development; and areas of scenic or scientific interest have also been given a degree of statutory protection. Today, most of Great Britain may only be used in a limited number of ways. Not for the first time, the identity of those who ‘control’ the land and the ‘best’ use to which it should be put have both been redefined. It has been under this, more restrictive regime that the landscape has evolved over the past eighty years.

In some places there is little or no settlement, land has not been enclosed or ‘improved’ for agriculture and there are few, if any, roads or other lines of transport across it. Such areas may not be wilderness or the surviving remnants of some natural environment, for few places in Britain are completely unused, but they are only being employed in the slightest of ways. In others, the landscape is covered by fields and is farmed intensively, with a network of roads, hamlets and villages. There are also built-up areas, some of which are large, not to say huge, stretching out of sight. In short, we may now be able to recognise a further trio of landscape elements, to be added to those associated with the country’s landforms: extensively used land, intensively used land and urban land.

We can now combine these elements to identify what we shall call ‘types of landscape’. The results are set out in Table 1.

Table 1: Types of Landscape in Britain

There are a few high surfaces in the country, such as the Cairngorm Plateau, where little or no attempt has been made to bring land into cultivation or other intensive use. They are Type 1 landscapes. There are also several that are used for deer-stalking, game-shooting or sheep-grazing, and where the vegetation has been managed to assist those activities, but which for all that remain no more than open moorland. The Pennines and the North York Moors are examples. They also fall into Type 1. But, there are also surfaces at lower altitudes, where the climate is more benign and where agriculture is well established; the chalk plateau of southern England is a case in point. These form Type 2 landscapes. None, however, of the country’s major urban areas lies on a high surface; there are no Type 3 landscapes.

There are also several types of valley. Some, especially in highland areas, are, like the surfaces into which they have been eroded, little used and devoid of settlement. They are Type 4 landscapes. Others, of which there are many and in which both valley sides and floors are enclosed and under permanent grass or cultivation form Type 5 landscapes. And, there are valleys in which mills, mines and houses have been commonplace in the past and which continue to be covered by urban settlement today. The Calder Valley and its tributaries in West Yorkshire and the valleys of the South Wales coalfield come to mind. They are Type 6 landscapes.

A few lowlands are hardly used at all; they fall into Type 7. Most, however, have been stripped of their natural vegetation. Where they have not been built on, they are almost entirely in agricultural use. There are many Type 8 landscapes. There are also many Type 9 landscapes, for most of the country’s cities and conurbations lie in the lowlands.

In other words, if we accept the hypothesis that the landscape of Great Britain reflects the assumptions that were set out at the start of this section, we can conclude that the country may be composed of a mere eight types of landscape – a finding that is in marked contrast to those of the regional geographers of yesteryear. Indeed, so striking is the difference between their lists of regions and Table 1 that it could be argued that what has been proposed here simplifies the country’s variety to the point of caricature. We shall see. The principal thesis of this account can now, however, be stated, namely, that the approach which has been suggested offers a more objective and rigorous way of studying the country’s regional geography than those of previous writers. It is this that will be tested in the rest of the book.

The Appreciation of Landscape

But, before we do, we should acknowledge that the typology in Table 1 takes no account of those who look at the landscape. Contrary to the first of the assumptions that were stated in the previous section, the landscape is not only a combination of landform and land use, but also what those who look at it see. In other words, its appreciation also involves the observer, very few of whom are likely to be geomorphologists or people whose first judgement of a place is based on the extent to which it might generate income. Rather, people say that places are ‘beautiful’, ‘nondescript’ or ‘ugly’, ‘threatening’, ‘boring’ or ‘sublime’; their reactions instant, instinctual and unreasoned. The regional geographers to whose work attention has already been drawn made no mention of such opinions; but they could not have done so, for the theoretical foundation for their study had not yet been provided at the time when they were writing. It was not until the 1960s that a group