This document discusses the various elements that make up and influence rural landscapes. It describes both continuous elements like soils and relief as well as discrete elements such as roads, buildings, and field boundaries. It then focuses on transport routes as a key element, outlining the evolution from pre-historic footpaths to modern roads and airports. Additional elements covered include fields and field boundaries, buildings, and different farming practices that have shaped landscapes over time and across cultures.

1. Elements of the rural landscape
The bits that make up the landscape:
The bits we map

2. Elements of the rural landscape
• Elements of the
landscape: the things it
is built up from and
which give it its
particular character
• Some of the elements
are continuous, such as
soils, relief, land cover
• Other elements are
discrete, such as roads,
buildings, field
boundaries.
• The variations in
elements can exercise
enormous influence on
the character of the
landscape

3. Transport as an element of the rural landscape

4. The presence of transport routes
• Neolithic technology required
the use of high quality flint,
which can be traced to its
source.
• Flint tools from the Lake
District and East Anglia have
been found all over the
country, so there must have
been a transport system to
move them over. Almost
certainly on foot.
• Before rivers were managed
and land drained, huge
areas of marsh required built
wooden “roads” to give
access to farmland and
places of security. Somerset
Levels have revealed
several such walkways

5. Pre-historic transport routes
A reconstruction of the
Sweet Track in the
Somerset Levels,
approx 3,600 BC
The Ridgeway over the
Marlborough Downs,
age impossible to
establish

6. Roman roads
The Fosseway today

7. Packhorse tracks
• Few routes could be
covered by wheeled
vehicles in the middle
ages. Most goods, even
fresh foods, were
transported by Pack
horse
• Packhorse tracks are
narrow, as direct as
possible, and often
worn deep into the
landscape through
centuries of use.

8. Livestock to market
• The major Markets for
meat were London and
the south coast ports, to
supply the Navy with
salt beef and pork.
• The main fat stock
production regions were
Wales and Scotland.
• How were the cattle
transported to market?
• They walked. (Even
geese and ducks
walked)

9. Drove roads
• Drove roads were
continuous meadows,
fenced to keep cattle
out of farm land.
• The roads were very
wide and provided
grazing.
• Towns along the routes
provided secure village
greens were stock
rested
• If the pub is called the
Drovers arms, it is on a
drove road

10. Canals-the first alternative to roads
Current navigable canals All canals and navigable rivers

11. Impact of canals on the landscape
• Canals create
unbroken lines
through the landscape
– Water
– Boat transport
– Pedestrian access
– Vegetation
– Wildlife
• Enormous potential for
livelihood generation
within the countryside.

12. Railways-the end of commercial waterways?
• Railways brought speed, almost
unlimited carrying capacity and
access to difficult terrain
• The routes are incompatible with
recreation but good for wildlife.
• Railways killed off drove roads
for moving livestock and
effectively killed off narrow canals
• Railways killed off local
vernacular architecture. All
building materials now available
everywhere

13. Impact of railways on the rural landscape
• Railways in themselves have relatively little
physical impact on the landscape, but they
brought people into the countryside.
• “Metroland”, the suburbia surrounding the big
cities, grew into the countryside along the
routes of the new 19th and 20th century rail
network
• Any transport system which brings rapid,
cheap travel will bring pressure on areas
which were once considered remote and
inaccessible.

14. Return of he road
Croatia England
Austria

15. Harnhill, 1995 and 2002: more and more roads
1995 2002

16. Airports + cheap flights-the next pressure on the landscape
• The countryside is
the only place with
enough room for
airports
• Current pressures
in Cheshire
(Manchester) and
Essex (Stansted)
with possible
major
development in
Thames Estuary
• Cheap flights are
now available to
Cornwall from
London: £30 and
30 minutes and
you are in the
Southwest.

17. Buildings-a defining element of the rural landscape
• People need buildings, we
cannot survive in even
temperate climates
without shelter
• The very definition of rural
rather than wilderness
implies the presence of
human activity = buildings
• The nature of most
cherished buildings
derives from their setting
and their materials. The
concept of vernacular
architecture comes from
the unconscious use of
local materials in
traditional ways

18. Vernacular means locally sourced and locally cheap
Austria: timber & local
stone; prosperous
Canada: local logs for walls and
wooden shingles: poor
Vietnam: local bamboo
& leaf: poor
Kerala: local coconut palm;
Tamil Nadu: farm waste prosperous
materials: impoverished

19. Fields: patches in the landscape

20. Change in field shapes and boundaries
1995
1972
2004
Eysey Manor farm

21. Field systems
Céide Fields: Co. Mayo
Neolithic 5,000 years old Crofting systems: Scotland
Medieval fields
and woods
Enclosed fields

22. International field patterns 1
Cotswolds
Netherlands

23. International field patterns 2
Ireland- west
South Africa

24. Field boundaries
• Walls, fences, hedges, ditches,
banks
• Can give the essential texture to
the landscape

25. Walls
• Vernacular stone field walls of two types
– Quarried stone: stone is sourced from a
quarry and shaped for the wall
– Field stone: boulders are cleared from the
field and used for the enclosing walls

26. Hedgerows
• Hedgerows often seen as the quintessential feature
of the “English “ rural landscape
• Rule of thumb on age: number of hedgerow species
equals hedgerow age in centuries
• The hedges below are probably only 200 years old

27. Fences
• Generally unloved, but are a feature of
modern farm landscapes
• Barbed wire fencing invented in 19th
century America during the Civil War…
Canadian wooden
fencing, the local
vernacular

28. Field patterns in different cultures
Austria: open field systems. No boundaries
at all unless there is livestock, which is not
usual at low level
Kerala: crops grown on islands. Water
creates boundaries but is also used for
transport and fish rearing.
Vietnam: rice grown in flooded paddy
fields. No boundaries visible

29. Farming practice influencing landscape: permanent crops
Spain: olive groves;
centuries
Costa Rica: coffee,
years
Kerala: tea: decades

30. Elements of the rural landscape summary
• These landscape elements form the bits
(the entities) that we will use to build
models of the landscape
• You can’t understand the history of the
landscape or know why people value
and cherish it just by adding up all the
bits, but you do need to know what the
bits are and how they fit into the whole
landscape picture.