II. Physical Geography
The object of this section is to give a physical description of England and Wales according to natural regions, which usually follow the geology of the country very closely; although the relationship of configuration and geology is not so simple or so clearly marked as in Scotland.
The land is highest in the west and north, where the rocks also are oldest, most disturbed, and hardest, and the land surface gradually sinks towards the east and south, where the rocks become successively less disturbed, more recent, and softer. The study of the scenery of England and Wales as a whole, or the study of orographical and geological maps of the country, allows a broad distinction to be drawn between the types of land-forms in the west and in the east. This distinction is essential, and applies to all the conditions of which geography takes account. The contrasted districts are separated by an intermediate area, which softens the transition between them, and may be described separately.
The Western Division is composed entirely of Archaean and Palaeozoic rocks, embracing the whole range from pre-Cambrian up to Carboniferous. The outcrops of these rocks succeed each other in order of age in roughly concentric belts, with the Archaean mass of the island of Anglesey as a centre, but the arrangement in detail is much disturbed and often very irregular. Contemporary igneous outbursts are extremely common in some of the ancient formations, and add, by their resistance to atmospheric erosion, to the extreme ruggedness of the scenery. The hills and uplands of ancient rocks do not form regular ranges, but rise like islands in four distinct groups from a plain of New Red Sandstone (Permian and Triassic), which separates them from each other and from the newer rocks of the Eastern Division. Each of the uplands is a centre for the dispersal of streams; but with only one prominent exception (the Humber) these reach the sea without crossing into the Eastern Division of the country.
The Eastern Division, lying to the east of the zone of New Red Sandstone, may be defined on the west by a slightly curved line drawn from the estuary of the Tees through Leicester and Stratford-on-Avon to the estuary of the Severn, and thence through Glastonbury to Sidmouth. It is built up of nearly uniform sheets of Mesozoic rock, the various beds of the Jurassic lying above the New Red Sandstone (Triassic), and dipping south-eastward under the successive beds of the Cretaceous system. In exactly the same way the whole of the south-east of the island appears to have been covered uniformly with gently dipping beds of Tertiary sands and clays, beneath which the Cretaceous strata dipped. At some period subsequent to this deposition there was a movement of elevation, which appears to have thrown the whole mass of rocks into a fold along an anticlinal axis running west and east, which was flanked to north and south by synclinal hollows. In these hollows the Tertiary rocks were protected from erosion, and remain to form the London and the Hampshire Basins respectively, while on the anticlinal axis the whole of the Tertiary and the upper Cretaceous strata have been dissected away, and a complex and beautiful configuration has been impressed on the district of the Weald. The general character of the landscape in the Eastern Division is a succession of steep escarpments formed by the edges of the outcropping beds of harder rock, and long gentle slopes or plains on the dip-slopes, or on the softer layers; clay and hard rock alternating throughout the series.
The contrast between the lower grounds of the Western and the Eastern Divisions is masked in many places by the general covering of the surface with glacial drift, which is usually a stiff clay composed on the whole of the detritus of the rocks upon which it rests, though containing fragments of rocks which have been transported from a considerable distance. This boulder clay covers almost all the low ground north of the Thames Basin, its southern margin fading away into washed sands and gravels.
The history of the origin of the land-forms of England, as far as they have been deduced from geological studies, is exceedingly complicated. The fact that every known geological formation (except the Miocene) is represented, proves of itself how long the history has been, and how multifarious the changes. It must suffice to say that the separation of Ireland from England was a comparatively recent episode, while the severance of the land-connexion between England and the continent by the formation of the Strait of Dover is still more recent and probably occurred with the human period.
Natural Divisions.—The four prominent groups of high land rising from the plain of the Red Rocks are: (1) the Lake District, bounded by the Solway Firth, Morecambe Bay and the valleys of the Eden and the Lune; (2) the Pennine Region, The western division. which stretches from the Scottish border to the centre of England, running south; (3) Wales, occupying the peninsula between the Mersey and the Bristol Channel, and extending beyond the political boundaries of the principality to include Shropshire and Hereford; and (4) the peninsula of Cornwall and Devon. They are all similar in the great features of their land-forms, which have been impressed upon them by the prolonged action of atmospheric denudation rather than by the original order and arrangement of the rocks; but each group has its own geological character, which has imparted something of a distinctive individuality to the scenery. Taken as a whole, the Western Division depends for its prosperity on mineral products and manufactures rather than on farming; and the staple of the farmers is live-stock rather than agriculture. The people of the more rugged and remoter groups of this division are by race survivors of the early Celtic stock, which, being driven by successive invaders from the open and fertile country of the Eastern Division, found refuges in the less inviting but more easily defended lands of the west. Even where, as in the Pennine region and the Lake District, the people have been completely assimilated with the Teutonic stock, they retain a typical character, marked by independence of opinion approaching stubbornness, and by great determination and enterprise.
Lake District.—The Lake District occupies the counties of Cumberland, Westmorland and North Lancashire. It forms a roughly circular highland area, the drainage lines of which radiate outward from the centre in a series of narrow valleys, the upper parts of which cut deeply into the mountains, and the lower widen into the surrounding plain. Sheets of standing water are still numerous, and formerly almost every valley contained a single long narrow lake-basin; but some of these have been subdivided, drained or filled up by natural processes. The existing lakes include Windermere and Coniston, draining south; Wastwater, draining south-west, Ennerdale water, Buttermere and Crummock water (the two latter, originally one lake, are now divided by a lateral delta), draining north-west; Derwent water and Bassenthwaite water (which were probably originally one lake), and Thirlmere, draining north; Ullswater and Haweswater, draining north-east. There are, besides, numerous mountain tarns of small size, most of them in hollows barred by the glacial drift which covers a great part of the district. The central and most picturesque part of the district is formed of great masses of volcanic ashes and tuffs, with intrusions of basalts and granite, all of Ordovician (Lower Silurian) age. Scafell and Scafell Pike (3162 and 3210 ft.), at the head of Wastwater, and Helvellyn (3118), at the head of Ullswater, are the loftiest amongst many summits the grandeur of whose outlines is not to be estimated by their moderate height. Sedimentary rocks of the same age form a belt to the north, and include Skiddaw (3054 ft.); while to the south a belt of Silurian rocks, thickly covered with boulder clay, forms the finely wooded valleys of Coniston and Windermere. Round these central masses of early Palaeozoic rocks there is a broken ring of Carboniferous Limestone, and several patches of Coal Measures, while the New Red Sandstone appears as a boundary belt outside the greater part of the district. Where the Coal Measures reach the sea at Whitehaven, there are coal-mines, and the hematite of the Carboniferous Limestones has given rise to the active ironworks of Barrow-in-Furness, now the largest town in the district. Except in the towns of the outer border, the Lake District is very thinly peopled; and from the economic point of view, the remarkable beauty of its scenery, attracting numerous residents and tourists, is the most valuable of its resources. The very heavy rainfall of the district, which is the wettest in England, has led to the utilization of Thirlmere as a reservoir for the water supply of Manchester, over 80 m. distant.
Pennine Region.—The Pennine Region, the centre of which forms the so-called Pennine Chain, occupies the country from the Eden valley to the North Sea in the north, and from the lower Tees, Yorkshire Ouse and Trent, nearly to the Irish Sea, in the south. It includes the whole of Northumberland and Durham, the West Riding of Yorkshire, most of Lancashire and Derbyshire, the north of Staffordshire and the west of Nottinghamshire. The region is entirely composed of Carboniferous rocks, the system which transcends all others in the value of its economic minerals. The coal and iron have made parts of the region the busiest manufacturing districts, and the centres of densest population, in the country, or even in the world. The whole region may be looked upon as formed by an arch or anticline of Carboniferous strata, the axis of which runs north and south; the centre has been worn away by erosion, so that the Coal Measures have been removed, and the underlying Millstone Grit and Carboniferous Limestone exposed to the influences which form scenery. On both sides of the arch, east and west, the Coal Measures remain intact, forming outcrops which disappear towards the sea under the more recent strata of Permian or Triassic age. The northern part of the western side of the anticline is broken off by a great fault in the valley of the Eden, and the scarp thus formed is rendered more abrupt by the presence of a sheet of intrusive basalt. Seen from the valley, this straight line of lofty heights, culminating in Crossfell, presents the nearest approach in England to the appearance of a mountain range. In the north the Pennine region is joined to the Southern Uplands of Scotland by the Cheviot Hills, a mass of granite and Old Red Sandstone; and the northern part is largely traversed by dykes of contemporary volcanic or intrusive rock. The most striking of these dykes is the Great Whin Sill, which crosses the country from a short distance south of Durham almost to the source of the Tees, near Crossfell. The elevated land is divided into three masses by depressions, which furnish ready means of communication between east and west. The South Tyne and Irthing valleys cut off the Cheviots on the north from the Crossfell section, which is also marked off on the south by the valleys of the Aire and Ribble from the Kinder Scout or Peak section. The numerous streams of the region carry off the rainfall down long valleys or dales to the east and the south, and by shorter and steeper valleys to the west. The dales are separated from each other by high uplands, which for the most part are heathery moorland or, at best, hill pastures. The agriculture of the region is confined to the bottoms of the dales, and is of small importance. Crossfell and the neighbouring hills are formed from masses of Carboniferous Limestone, which received its popular name of Mountain Limestone from this fact. Farther south, such summits as High Seat, Whernside, Bow Fell, Penyghent and many others, all over 2000 ft. in height, are capped by portions of the grits and sandstones, which rest upon the limestone. The belt of Millstone Grit south of the Aire, lying between the great coal-fields of the West Riding and Lancashire, has a lower elevation, and forms grassy uplands and dales; but farther south, the finest scenery of the whole region occurs in the limestones of Derbyshire, in which the range terminates. The rugged beauty of the south-running valleys, and especially of Dovedale, is enhanced by the rich woods which still clothe the slopes. There are remarkable features underground as well as on the surface, the caverns and subterranean streams of Yorkshire and Derbyshire being amongst the deepest that have yet been explored. Compared with the rugged and picturesque scenery of the Lower Carboniferous rocks, that of the Coal Measures is, as a rule, featureless and monotonous. The coal-fields on the eastern side, from the Tyne nearly to the Trent, are sharply marked off on the east by the outcrop of Permian dolomite or Magnesian limestone, which forms a low terrace dipping towards the east under more recent rocks, and in many places giving rise to an escarpment facing westward towards the gentle slope of the Pennine dales. To the west and south the Coal Measures dip gently under the New Red Sandstone, to reappear at several points through the Triassic plain. The clear water of the upland becks and the plentiful supply of water-power led to the founding of small paper-mills in remote valleys before the days of steam, and some of these primitive establishments still exist. The prosperity and great population of the Pennine region date from the discovery that pit-coal could smelt iron as well as charcoal; and this source of power once discovered, the people bred in the dales developed a remarkable genius for mechanical invention and commercial enterprise, which revolutionized the economic life of the world and changed England from an agricultural to an industrial country. The staple industry of the district in ancient times was sheep-rearing, and the villages in nearly all the dales carried on a small manufacture of woollen cloth. The introduction of cotton caused the woollen manufactures on the western side to be superseded by the working up of the imported raw material; but woollen manufactures, themselves carried on now almost entirely with imported raw material, have continued to employ the energies of the inhabitants of the east. Some quiet market-towns, such as Skipton and Keighley, remain, but most of them have developed by manufactures into great centres of population, lying, as a rule, at the junction of thickly peopled valleys, and separated from one another by the empty uplands. Such are Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, Huddersfield and Halifax on the great and densely peopled West Riding coal-field, which lies on the eastern slope of the Pennines. The iron ores of the Coal Measures have given rise to great manufactures of steel, from cutlery to machinery and armour-plates. High on the barren crest of the Pennines, where the rocks yield no mineral wealth, except it be medicinal waters, Harrogate, Buxton and Matlock are types of health resorts, prosperous from their pure air and fine scenery. Across the moors, on the western side of the anticline, the vast and dense population of the Lancashire coal-field is crowded in the manufacturing towns surrounding the great commercial centre, Manchester, which itself stands on the edge of the Triassic plain. Ashton, Oldham, Rochdale, Bury, Bolton and Wigan form a nearly confluent semicircle of great towns, their prosperity founded on the underlying coal and iron, maintained by imported cotton. The Lancashire coal-field, and the portion of the bounding plain between it and the seaport of Liverpool, contain a population greater than that borne by any equal area in the country, the county of London and its surroundings not excepted. In the south-west of the Pennine region the coal-field of North Staffordshire supports the group of small but active towns known collectively from the staple of their trade as “The Potteries.” On the north-east the great coal-field of Northumberland and Durham, traversed midway by the Tyne, supports the manufactures of Newcastle and its satellite towns, and leaves a great surplus for export from the Tyne ports.