Learning outcomes:
This course has been designed to enable you to:
- Recognise the general pattern of Britain's history
- Recognise the principal theoretical issues in landscape history
- Anticipate and recognise the principal features and forms of evidence
Course sessions:
1. The prehistoric era
The landscape offers evidence for up to 11,000 years of history. The only substantial evidence for the first nine millennia is environmental and archeological. The earliest archeological evidence comprises small stone artefacts. 6,000 years ago, the first monuments were built, the grandest of them Stonehenge, about 4,000 years old. Most of this prehistoric evidence survives in districts comparatively undisturbed by later activities.
2. The Roman impact
Most historians treat the Roman era as one of intense change. So it was, but the landscape shows that they exaggerate the period's distinctiveness. We can identify three types of landscape: the larger town centres, most of the roads and the military features – especially Hadrian's Wall – are unmistakably Roman; but much of the countryside remained largely unchanged; and, most intriguingly, there were widespread 'Romano-British' landscapes in both town and country.
3. The Middle Ages
The Middle Ages were a millennium divided by the pandemic known as the Black Death. The first stage is marked clearly by place-names. They proliferated as settlements multiplied with burgeoning population. In places, today's scenery shows that the process had run beyond the economy's capacity to sustain it. Some of the political stresses are reflected in the grandest churches and castles there are.
4. The rise of the Modern
In Britain's responses to the Black Death's aftermath, landscape historians discern the seeds of the Modern era decidedly earlier than do other historians. Today's session concentrates mainly on rural landscapes, including the Agricultural Revolution. They demonstrate widening disparities of wealth and the growing capacity for centralised reform of everything from work to worship.
5. High Modern
The High Modern era has been marked, above all, by massive population growth. The specialisation and industrialisation that enabled and encouraged it was played out in ever bolder contrasts between rural and urban, private and public, leisure and work. Much of the energy for this intensification was wrested from mines and from peoples overseas. One of the most obvious consequences for the landscape was the development of transport infrastructure.
Non-credit bearing
Please note that our Virtual Summer Festival of Learning courses are non-credit bearing.
Certificate of Participation
A certificate of participation will be sent to you electronically within a week of your Summer Festival course(s) finishing.
