Seven Lectures on the United Kingdom for use in India / Reissued for use in the United Kingdom

by Halford John Mackinder

After these people there came others, and yet others, and at last a very powerful and highly civilised people, the Romans, who conquered nearly all the Western world. They conquered England, but never Ireland or Northern Scotland. The Romans have left monuments in various parts of the country, of which the most remarkable is this wall across the island. They did not care to invade those rugged regions of the North, filled with mountains and great moorlands, which we saw in the pictures of the last Lecture. In Scotland there continued, therefore, to dwell the wild peoples who inhabited all the island before the coming of the Romans. The mountaineers were kept out of the South by a stone wall, built right across the island, the remains of which are still for the most part standing to-day. The Roman wall shows you something of the strength of the Roman people, to whom the islands of Britain owed their first civilisation.

3.
Roman Bath at Bath.

Here is another evidence of the Roman epoch in Britain. It is the ruin of a Roman bath in the town which is now called Bath. The houses around are, of course, modern. Hot water rises at Bath from great depths, and is used for medicinal purposes. The springs were known to the Romans, and for that reason they built a Roman city here. All the upper portion of the building is, as you see, gone, but there remains the bath itself, with the steps leading down to it, and the bases of the columns which formerly supported a covered way around. The Romans came from the South—from the Mediterranean—and experienced a climatic difficulty in Britain, just as white men to-day experience one in the tropics. But white men have difficulty in tropical climates because of the heat; the Romans had difficulty in the northern countries because of the cold; and therefore it was that they valued the warm water of the baths at Bath.

4.
Round Tower at Glendalough.

Christianity was first preached in Britain while the Romans were there. It was carried by missionaries even beyond the Roman frontiers into Ireland, and afterwards into Scotland. When the Romans left the country, after ruling there for 400 years, there came over the seas the forefathers of the English—a race of wild, bold seamen. They were not Christians; but at first they did not conquer either Ireland or Scotland, and the Christian religion continued among the ancient peoples of those countries. Some of the most ancient of the Irish and Scottish monuments relate to the time when the English were newly come into England. This round tower, for instance, is probably a monument of that time. It is in a very beautiful mountainous portion of Ireland, and is known as the Round Tower of Glendalough.

5.
Iona Cathedral.

Crossing the sea to Scotland, we come to the islet of Iona, placed out in the Western ocean beyond the coast of the mainland of Scotland. Here are the ruins of a Cathedral of great antiquity. At Iona there ruled the Lord of the Isles, who was King over the pirates from the North. They seized all the Western isles of Scotland and held them until about six hundred years ago, when they were defeated at sea, and there was peace on the ocean off Britain.

6.
King Alfred’s Statue at Winchester.

Let us now return to England—to the England which had been conquered by the Romans and abandoned by them, and had been conquered afresh by the tribes of the English from over the water. Let us pass on through some dark centuries, as they are called, because history has little to tell of them, until we come to the first great Englishman, King Alfred the Great, from whom our present King-Emperor, Edward the Seventh, is descended. King Alfred lived a thousand years ago, and is called Great because he united the tribes of the English, and made the Kingdom of England. Here is the monument erected in his city of Winchester on the thousandth anniversary of his death.

7.
Bradford-on-Avon Church.