Landscape in History, and Other Essays

by Archibald Geikie

The fens and bogs of Britain played likewise a large part in the attack and defence of the country in Roman and later times. They were of two kinds. One series lay on the coast, especially of sheltered inlets, and were liable to inundation by high tides. The most notable of these was the wide tract of low, swampy land at the head of the Wash, our Fenland—an area where, secure in their amphibious retreats, descendants of the Celtic population preserved their independence not only through Roman but through Saxon times, if indeed, as Mr. Freeman conjectures, outlying settlements of them may not have lingered on till the coming of the Normans. The other sort of fens were those formed in the interior of the country by the gradual encroachment of marshy vegetation over tracts previously occupied by shallow sheets of fresh water, and over flat land. It was in these swamps that the Caledonians, according to the exaggerated statement of Xiphiline, concealed themselves for many days at a time, with only their heads projecting above the mire. At a far later period the peat-bogs of the debateable land between England and Scotland formed an important line of advance and retreat to the freebooters of the border, who could pick their way through sloughs that to less practised eyes and feet were impassable.

One of the distinguishing features among the topographical changes of the last few hundred years has been the disappearance of a vast number of these fens and bogs. In some cases they have been gradually silted up by natural processes; but a good many of them have no doubt been artificially drained. Their sites are still preserved in such Saxon names as Bogside, Bogend, Mossflats; and where other human record is gone, the black peaty soil remains to mark where they once lay. It would not be impossible with the help of such pieces of evidence and a study of the present contours of the ground to map out in many districts, now well drained and cultivated, the swamps that hemmed in the progress of our ancestors.

No one looking at the present maps of the north of England and Scotland would be led to suspect what a large number of lakes must have been scattered over the surface of these northern regions when the Romans set foot in the country. Yet if he turns to old maps, such as those of Timothy Pont, published some three hundred years ago, he will notice many sheets of water represented there which are now much reduced in size or entirely replaced by cultivated fields. If, farther, he scans the topographical names of the different counties, he will be able to detect the sites of other and sometimes still older lakes; while, if he sets to work upon the geological evidence by actual examination of the ground itself, he will be astonished to find how abundant at comparatively recent times were the tarns and lakes of which little or no human record may have survived, and often how much larger were once the areas of lakes that still exist. Owing to some peculiar geological operations that characterised the passage of the Ice-Age in the northern hemisphere, the land from which the snow-fields and glaciers retreated was left abundantly dotted over with lakes. The diminution and disappearance of these sheets of water are mainly traceable to the inevitable process of obliteration which sooner or later befalls all lakes great and small. Detritus is swept into them by rain and wind from the surrounding slopes and shores. Every brook that enters them is engaged in filling them up. The marsh-loving vegetation which grows along their shallow margins likewise aids in diminishing them. Man, too, lends his help in the same task. In early times he built his pile-dwellings in the lakes, and for many generations continued to cast his refuse into their waters. In later days he has taken the more rapid and effectual methods of drainage, and has turned the desiccated bottoms into arable land.

In connection with the geological changes that have affected the general surface of the country since the beginning of history, reference may here be made to those which have taken place on the coast-line. Standing as it does amid stormy seas and rapid tidal currents, Britain has for ages suffered much from the attacks of the ocean. More especially has the loss of land fallen along our eastern shores. Ever since the submergence of the North Sea and the cutting through of the Strait of Dover, the soft rocks that form our sea-board facing the mainland of Europe have been a prey to the restless waves. Within the last few centuries whole parishes, with their manors, farms, hamlets, villages, and churches have been washed away; and the fisherman now casts his nets and baits his lines where his forefathers ploughed their fields and delved their gardens. And the destruction still goes on. In some places a breadth of as much as five yards is washed away in a single year. Holderness, once a wide and populous district, is losing a strip of ground about two and a quarter yards broad, or in all about thirty-four acres annually. Its coast-line is computed to have receded between two and three miles since the time of the Romans—a notable amount of change, if we would try to picture what were the area and form of the coast-line of eastern Yorkshire at the beginning of the historic period.

But though the general result of the action of the sea along our eastern border has been destructive, it has not been so everywhere. In sheltered bays and creeks some of the material, washed away from more exposed tracts, is cast ashore again. In this way part of the mud and sand swept from off the cliffs of Holderness is carried southward into the Wash, and is laid down in that wide recess which it is gradually filling up. Along the coasts of Norfolk and Suffolk, inlets which in Roman and later times were navigable channels, and which allowed the ships of the Danish Vikings to penetrate far into the interior of the country, are now effaced. On the shores of Kent, also, wide tracts of low land have been gained from the sea. Islands, between which and the shore Roman galleys and Saxon war-boats made their way, are now, like the Isle of Thanet, joined to the mainland. Harbours and towns, such as Sandwich, Richborough, Winchelsea, Pevensey, and Porchester, which once stood at the edge of the sea, are now, in some cases, three miles inland. There appears also to have been some gain of land on parts of the south coast of Sussex, whereby the physical geography of that district has been considerably altered. The valleys by which the downs are there trenched were formerly filled with tidal waters, so that the ancient camps, perched so conspicuously on the crest of the heights, could not communicate directly with each other except by boat. Instead of being a connected chain of fortifications, as was once supposed, they must have been independent strongholds, surrounded by water on three sides, and on the north by dense forest and impassable morasses.

The subterranean forces which throughout geological time have been so potent in the area of the British Isles, appear to have on the whole remained nearly quiescent during the centuries of authentic history. Volcanic energy, which played so notable a part throughout most of the geological past of our region, has never awakened here since the remote Tertiary ages, but has shifted its site northwards to Iceland, where it continued its activity even during the Ice-Age and has remained vigorous down to the present time. But two forms of underground movement have affected Britain since man appeared here. In the first place, there have been important changes in the relative levels of sea and land, and in the second place, the islands have frequently been shaken more or less perceptibly by earthquakes.

In southern Scotland, the north of England and of Ireland, the land has been upraised some twenty feet or more. As a consequence of this elevation a selvage of flat alluvial land has been added to a number of the estuaries, particularly to those of the Forth, Tay and Clyde. Canoes and other remains of human workmanship, found imbedded in the sands and silts of this marine terrace, show that the upheaval has taken place since some part of Neolithic time. The addition of these strips of level ground to the margin of the land has had an important influence on the human population of these districts, for it has provided many hundreds of square miles of arable ground, comprising admirable sites for dozens of villages and towns as well as for excellent coast-roads.

On the other hand, a long tract of land, extending from Cork across the Bristol Channel and the southern counties to the coast of Yorkshire, has sunk fifty feet or more since the Neolithic period. The result of this depression has been to allow the sea to ascend far up many of the estuaries which had previously been river-valleys, and thus to create, or at least to deepen and widen, the numerous natural harbours which indent the south coasts of England, Wales and Ireland. Not improbably the downward movement, by helping to lower the narrow isthmus which in the earlier ages of the human period connected Kent with the north-west of France, contributed not a little to the insulation of England from the continent.

Earthquake-shocks, though generally feeble, have been of severity enough to damage public buildings. The cathedral of St. David's in its uneven floor and dislocated walls, still bears witness to the shock which six hundred years ago did so much injury to the churches of the west of England. But though a formidable catalogue has been drawn up of the earthquakes experienced within the limits of these islands, it is not to that kind of underground disturbance that much permanent alteration of the surface of the country is to be attributed.

In fine, there can be no doubt that the larger features of the landscape of Britain have mainly determined the distribution of the several tribes of mankind out of which the present population of our islands has grown. It is hardly less obvious that the same features have continued during the times of history to influence the development and progress of these tribes. The Gael who long ages ago was pushed by the Briton into the mountain fastnesses of the north was left there to maintain, until only a few generations ago, his primitive habits as hunter and warrior, cattle-dealer and freebooter. While he remained comparatively unprogressive, the Norsemen, Danes and Saxons, who took possession of the lowlands that lay between his glens and the sea, were able to advance in agriculture upon richer soil and in a less inhospitable climate, and to crowd the land with their homesteads, farms, villages, towns and seaports. So too the Welshman, pushed in turn into his hills by successive Teutonic swarms from the other side of the North Sea, has preserved his pristine language, and with it much of that individuality of character which has kept him from cordially amalgamating with the invaders. And thus while the original Celtic people, restricted to less ample territories and less fertile land, have to a large extent retained the holdings and habits of their ancestors, building comparatively few towns, and engaging in few crafts, save farming and stock-raising, the Teutonic tribes, possessing themselves of the broad cultivable lowlands and the great repositories of coal and iron, have thrown across the islands a network of thoroughfares, have scattered everywhere villages and towns, have built many great cities, have developed the industrial resources of the land and have mainly contributed to the commercial supremacy of the Empire.