4 ms·

The main feeling I have when seeing maps like this is how incredibly small the city was compared to the present day, and how much more open natural space there

The main feeling I have when seeing maps like this is how incredibly small the city was compared to the present day, and how much more open natural space there must have been across the country. The UK is a very densely populated country - 277 people per km² compared to the overall European average of 72 - and I can't help hankering after a time when nature would have been much more bountiful. (That hankering is of course significantly tempered by the lack of hygiene, anaesthetics, antibiotics, cosmopolitanism, etc, etc!)

pyrale 2y ago
More rural areas yes, but England has been shaped by human activities for a very long time. Rural areas are not more "natural" (as in free from human influence) than cities.
- KineticLensman 2y ago
  > Rural areas are not more "natural" (as in free from human influence) than cities. Yes, we have very little left of the primary forest that predated human colonisation over much of the British Isles. Areas that we now perceive as wild countryside are usually anything but. One example is those moorland uplands which (in Scotland) were the result of enforced clearances [0] between 1750 and 1850 and which are now often optimised for grouse shooting. The New Forest, my closest national park, is essentially William the Conqueror's hunting estate and where land use and ownership been very tightly controlled since then. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Clearances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Clearances
- frereubu 2y ago
  I certainly wasn't contending that current rural areas are more natural (Isabella Tree's book Wilding is really interesting on what "natural" would have meant in the very long term), but if you're talking about the 13th century - which is one of the maps mentioned above and the kind of timescale I was thinking of - then I'd contend those were much more natural compared to now.
  - pyrale 2y ago
    It really depends on your definition of "natural". But in the 13th century, all of European land had been managed by humans for millenia [1]. To consider rural England from the 13th century more natural, you would rely on a definition unrelated to untouched land, but that distinguishes "natural" human activity, and, I guess, "modern" activity ? Anthropic reach extended since then (e.g. compounds tiny enough to get in blood, or scale of activity creating global impact), but when it comes to landscape, we have been the shaping factor for a very long time. [1]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236630316_Open_woodland_in_Europe_in_the_Mesolithic_and_in_the_Middle_Ages_Can_there_be_a_connection https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236630316_Open_wood...
- unholythree 2y ago
  True, but these are also medieval farmer’s fields, about as all-natural and organic as possible. They are certainly more natural than a parking lot, and barring very much stone construction would probably rewild within a generation or two. Edit: The more I think of it the stone construction really is the most unnatural part. Especially the ancient tradition of building those little walls using the stones you cleared in order to plow.
- southernplaces7 2y ago
  For example, it's worth bearing in mind that the population of Roman Londinium was larger than that of London until about the 16th century, and the population of Roman Britain was also considerably larger than during most of the medieval period. Given the timber-dependent, agrarian pre-industrial economy of the Roman era, this meant an enormous amount of forest removal (military forts and structures like Hadrian's Wall alone would have accounted for a lot of this.) Thus, any notion of a truly natural landscape of forest in the British Isles disappeared since long, long before the immediately pre-industrial era. Likewise applies for much of Europe even. Again, an example: the landscapes of modern Spain, France and Italy, were repeatedly cleared of forests during their history, particularly by the Roman Empire's needs. Of course, on the other hand, you could also define natural to mean anything allowed to grow without human intervention for X number of centuries, in which case, yes, there have been many truly natural old growth forests in Europe well after Roman times, simply because they regrew during the hundreds of years between the fifth century and later, heavy population growth prior to the disastrous 14th century depopulation stemming from the Black Death and Great European Famine of the early 1300s (thought to have possibly been caused by a massive volcanic eruption somewhere else in the world)
noneeeed 2y ago
It's interesting to read War of the Worlds, and the descriptions of walking between the towns and villages that would one day merge to form greater London. There was all this space between them. Now it's one continuous connerbation. It's hard to get your head around just how different the geography of the UK was even just in the Victorian/Edwardian eras, and how rapidly it's changed.
- KineticLensman 2y ago
  There's another interesting example of this effect in Nicola Griffith's 'Hild' books [0], which fictionalise the early life of Hilda of Whitby [1] in 7thC Britain. Some of the towns that we now recognise (York, Ipswich) already existed, but a lot of the action concerns conflict between small (but real) kingdoms that no longer exist, and that exploits the 'redcrest war streets', i.e. Roman roads, for fast tactical movement. This is one book where I really had to study the map at the beginning to figure out what was going on, even though it is my own country. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hild_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hild_(novel) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilda_of_Whitby https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilda_of_Whitby
- frereubu 2y ago
  I remember reading a line from William Blake's diary which talked about him walking "over the fields to Lambeth" from his house in Soho.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
adastra22 2y ago
Also the forests with their ancient (and huge) trees. Britain pretty much got clear-cut in the Industrial Revolution. Those ancient forests must have been a sight to behold.
- anovikov 2y ago
  But today, there's whole lot more greenery in UK than at the bottom of deforestration that happened around ~1955.
  - adastra22 2y ago
    But not enormous thousand-year-old ancient trees and the landscapes shaped by them.
    - anovikov 2y ago
      If these were chopped, they were for high-order uses like shipbuilding in the time of sail. They are too hard to saw to use as timbering in coal mines (which is assume where most wood has gone during the Industrial Revolution)?
- Wytwwww 2y ago
  England was mostly clear cut long before the Industrial Revolution. That was possibly one of the main reasons it happened, there was huge demand for coal because there was little available firewood. e.g. https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/144BD/production/_98233138_long_term_decline_woodland_640-nc-3.png.webp https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/144BD/productio...
volkl48 2y ago
That probably somewhat depends on what you consider "natural". While I'm not an expert - to my knowledge the land/resources were pretty thoroughly exploited and agricultural productivity wasn't exactly high. You'd have seen a lot of farm fields/pastures stretching across vast areas and things like that. Not that much "wild", unaltered/unworked land.
Wytwwww 2y ago
> and how much more open natural space there must have been across the country. That depends on the country/area a lot though. UK is a bit of an exception because it's population increased much more than almost anywhere else in Medieval Europe but in much of France and other places some rural areas were possibly more densely populated even back in the 1200s (populations are much more concentrated these days while they were more spread out before the industrial revolution). Even in England there are probably more forested areas these days than at any point since the 1400s or so.

pyrale 2y ago

More rural areas yes, but England has been shaped by human activities for a very long time. Rural areas are not more "natural" (as in free from human influence) than cities.

KineticLensman 2y ago
> Rural areas are not more "natural" (as in free from human influence) than cities. Yes, we have very little left of the primary forest that predated human colonisation over much of the British Isles. Areas that we now perceive as wild countryside are usually anything but. One example is those moorland uplands which (in Scotland) were the result of enforced clearances [0] between 1750 and 1850 and which are now often optimised for grouse shooting. The New Forest, my closest national park, is essentially William the Conqueror's hunting estate and where land use and ownership been very tightly controlled since then. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Clearances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Clearances
frereubu 2y ago
I certainly wasn't contending that current rural areas are more natural (Isabella Tree's book Wilding is really interesting on what "natural" would have meant in the very long term), but if you're talking about the 13th century - which is one of the maps mentioned above and the kind of timescale I was thinking of - then I'd contend those were much more natural compared to now.
- pyrale 2y ago
  It really depends on your definition of "natural". But in the 13th century, all of European land had been managed by humans for millenia [1]. To consider rural England from the 13th century more natural, you would rely on a definition unrelated to untouched land, but that distinguishes "natural" human activity, and, I guess, "modern" activity ? Anthropic reach extended since then (e.g. compounds tiny enough to get in blood, or scale of activity creating global impact), but when it comes to landscape, we have been the shaping factor for a very long time. [1]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236630316_Open_woodland_in_Europe_in_the_Mesolithic_and_in_the_Middle_Ages_Can_there_be_a_connection https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236630316_Open_wood...
unholythree 2y ago
True, but these are also medieval farmer’s fields, about as all-natural and organic as possible. They are certainly more natural than a parking lot, and barring very much stone construction would probably rewild within a generation or two. Edit: The more I think of it the stone construction really is the most unnatural part. Especially the ancient tradition of building those little walls using the stones you cleared in order to plow.
southernplaces7 2y ago
For example, it's worth bearing in mind that the population of Roman Londinium was larger than that of London until about the 16th century, and the population of Roman Britain was also considerably larger than during most of the medieval period. Given the timber-dependent, agrarian pre-industrial economy of the Roman era, this meant an enormous amount of forest removal (military forts and structures like Hadrian's Wall alone would have accounted for a lot of this.) Thus, any notion of a truly natural landscape of forest in the British Isles disappeared since long, long before the immediately pre-industrial era. Likewise applies for much of Europe even. Again, an example: the landscapes of modern Spain, France and Italy, were repeatedly cleared of forests during their history, particularly by the Roman Empire's needs. Of course, on the other hand, you could also define natural to mean anything allowed to grow without human intervention for X number of centuries, in which case, yes, there have been many truly natural old growth forests in Europe well after Roman times, simply because they regrew during the hundreds of years between the fifth century and later, heavy population growth prior to the disastrous 14th century depopulation stemming from the Black Death and Great European Famine of the early 1300s (thought to have possibly been caused by a massive volcanic eruption somewhere else in the world)

noneeeed 2y ago

It's interesting to read War of the Worlds, and the descriptions of walking between the towns and villages that would one day merge to form greater London. There was all this space between them. Now it's one continuous connerbation. It's hard to get your head around just how different the geography of the UK was even just in the Victorian/Edwardian eras, and how rapidly it's changed.

KineticLensman 2y ago
There's another interesting example of this effect in Nicola Griffith's 'Hild' books [0], which fictionalise the early life of Hilda of Whitby [1] in 7thC Britain. Some of the towns that we now recognise (York, Ipswich) already existed, but a lot of the action concerns conflict between small (but real) kingdoms that no longer exist, and that exploits the 'redcrest war streets', i.e. Roman roads, for fast tactical movement. This is one book where I really had to study the map at the beginning to figure out what was going on, even though it is my own country. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hild_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hild_(novel) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilda_of_Whitby https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilda_of_Whitby
frereubu 2y ago
I remember reading a line from William Blake's diary which talked about him walking "over the fields to Lambeth" from his house in Soho.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

adastra22 2y ago

Also the forests with their ancient (and huge) trees. Britain pretty much got clear-cut in the Industrial Revolution. Those ancient forests must have been a sight to behold.

anovikov 2y ago
But today, there's whole lot more greenery in UK than at the bottom of deforestration that happened around ~1955.
- adastra22 2y ago
  But not enormous thousand-year-old ancient trees and the landscapes shaped by them.
  - anovikov 2y ago
    If these were chopped, they were for high-order uses like shipbuilding in the time of sail. They are too hard to saw to use as timbering in coal mines (which is assume where most wood has gone during the Industrial Revolution)?
Wytwwww 2y ago
England was mostly clear cut long before the Industrial Revolution. That was possibly one of the main reasons it happened, there was huge demand for coal because there was little available firewood. e.g. https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/144BD/production/_98233138_long_term_decline_woodland_640-nc-3.png.webp https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/144BD/productio...

volkl48 2y ago

That probably somewhat depends on what you consider "natural". While I'm not an expert - to my knowledge the land/resources were pretty thoroughly exploited and agricultural productivity wasn't exactly high. You'd have seen a lot of farm fields/pastures stretching across vast areas and things like that. Not that much "wild", unaltered/unworked land.

Wytwwww 2y ago

> and how much more open natural space there must have been across the country. That depends on the country/area a lot though. UK is a bit of an exception because it's population increased much more than almost anywhere else in Medieval Europe but in much of France and other places some rural areas were possibly more densely populated even back in the 1200s (populations are much more concentrated these days while they were more spread out before the industrial revolution). Even in England there are probably more forested areas these days than at any point since the 1400s or so.