Category: Geography & Environment

Our most famous and oldest chalk-cut hill figure is the White Horse near Uffington. Unlike later equine hill figures, this one is quite stylised, even modern in its design. It measures 360 ft. in length and can be seen best from above or from two or three miles away on another hilltop. Its purpose is unknown and it does not seem to have been placed for onlookers on the ground, as it is on a shallow slope near the top of Whitehorse Hill, rather than the steeper slope below.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there were ‘scouring festivals’ every seven years, when people would gather to clean up the chalk trenches, followed by a party at the nearby Uffington Castle hillfort remains. This, along with the natural shifting of soil over the centuries, has likely resulted in it now being smaller than the Bronze Age original.

Today it is maintained by the National Trust on behalf of English Heritage. Tourists can picnic on the site and walk around it, but unofficial drones are not permitted! As it can be spotted from twenty miles away in good weather, during WW2 it was covered over so as not to aid enemy warplanes.

(Image: Dave Price at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

Birmingham is our second biggest city and is geographically just below the centre. It sits on a plateau which was once heavily forested and home to wild boar and wolves prior to the start of industrialisation. The name evolved from ‘Bromwich-ham’ or ‘Brummagem’, explaining the city’s nickname of ‘Brum’, with adjective ‘Brummie’ and those born there being affectionately referred to as ‘Brummies’.

A small market town sprang up there in the 12th century but it was not until the 18th century that it became a hub of industry large and small, from huge ironworks to one-man workshops. With this came the need for financial services and Lloyds Bank was established there in 1765 and Ketley’s Building Society (the world’s first) in 1775. It also left the legacy of an extensive canal system, one hundred miles long in total.

Due to bomb damage in WW2, much of Birmingham has been re-built and after the UK joined the Common Market in 1973 the manufacturing industries have been largely replaced with the service sector. Birmingham hosts five universities, its city-centre shopping zone, called the ‘Bullring & Grand Central‘, is the UK’s largest, and its National Exhibition Centre on the city outskirts is one of Europe’s busiest.

(Top image: Stephen JG at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0)

Spaghetti Junction is the nickname for the world’s most complicated motorway intersection. Its official name is the Gravelly Hill Interchange and it is junction 6 of the M6. This connects the M1, M5, M6, A38(M), A38 and the A5127, as well as other local roads in that area of Birmingham. It includes eighteen routes and covers thirty acres of land, some of which had to be purchased from local residents, whose houses were then demolished.

It was at least four years in the planning and another four in the construction, which began in 1968. It eventually opened on 24th May 1972. Amazingly, it is located over two rivers, two railway lines and three canals, hence the 13.5 miles of elevated roadway on five levels. These are supported by 559 reinforced concrete columns, the tallest reaching a height of 80ft.

The construction team did not take too kindly to the ‘spaghetti’ name at first, as it seemed to poke fun at what was a huge feat of engineering. It acquired the label even before building had begun, when sub-editor Alan Eaglesfield of the Birmingham Evening Mail made it the headline for an article commenting on the design in 1965 in which “a plate of spaghetti” was mentioned.

(Image: Highways Agency at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0)

Many householders would like to be able to grow their own fruit and vegetables, but their gardens are too small or non-existent. In the Industrial Revolution and before the advent of state welfare benefits, it was often necessary for survival to be allowed to cultivate a small piece of land and keep a few hens and even a pig.

In 1908, the government took the first steps to encouraging local councils to earmark land for this purpose. After WW1 more legislation was passed, as returning servicemen exacerbated the problem. There were 1,500,000 allotments in that peak period. This has reduced to around 330,000 in modern times, with 40 or 50 per site.

Nevertheless, demand continues to exceed supply. Waiting lists number more than 200 in some cases. Indeed, it can be impossible to find the relevant information on council websites. An alternative is to find a piece of land yourself and ask the council to consider taking it on. With the standard allotment size being 55 x 5.5 yards, one acre can accommodate twelve plots, along with pathways and communal areas, such as a chemical toilet. Rent must be paid and it is good practice to have an Association to better deal with management issues.

(Image: Jonathan Billinger at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

The River Severn is Britain’s longest river and one of the most turbulent, with a tidal range of 40ft. and flow of up to 8 knots. It forms a natural barrier between the southern parts of Wales and England but many bridges have been built over it, the two most successful being the Severn Bridge and the Second Severn Crossing (re-named The Prince of Wales Bridge in 2018).

The Severn Bridge was built in 1961-66 at a cost of £8,000,000, partly to tackle road congestion in the Gloucester area from traffic rounding the river. The Bridge cut sixty miles off the journey and was a vital part of the new M4 motorway. It had tolls on the English side, payable in both directions, initially set at 2/6d (12.5p). Occasionally the Bridge would be closed because of high winds, snow or ice.

The Second Severn Crossing was built at a cost of £330,000,000 in 1992-96 with wind resistance and extra lanes, again to cope with increased traffic. The M4 was diverted onto it and the Severn Bridge became part of the M48. The tolls were in the England-to-Wales direction only and were eventually abolished on both bridges in December 2018.

(Top image of the cable-stayed Second Severn Crossing: Sarah Charlesworth at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

The country was first divided up into regions, called ‘shires’, in the eighth or ninth centuries. Each shire had a ‘shire reeve’ (=’sheriff’) in charge of keeping the peace on behalf of the ruling monarch. The counties were mapped out after the Norman Conquest, many of them retaining the -shire ending, e.g. Wiltshire, Cheshire, Pembrokeshire.

England has thirty-nine counties, Scotland thirty-four, Wales thirteen and Northern Ireland six. These are known as the historic, or ancient, counties and they continue to exist today. However, with the advent of local government structures in 1888, things started to become rather messy. At first, county councils more or less governed the whole of the county in their title, but since 1965 there have been many changes and very few now match up precisely. Campaigners would like to see councils re-name themselves to reflect this, and drop the word ‘county’ from their name.

Royal Mail no longer requires addresses to include the county, since it can rely entirely on the postcode plus a house number. Nevertheless, our counties continue to be held dear to most Britons. One of the best example of this is the nickname for Yorkshire, which is “God’s own county”!

(Image: David Howard at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

The land mass of the UK is 60,000,000 acres but only one-tenth of this is available for housing, shops and businesses. With a population of 65,000,000, space is tight! Moreover, the Green Belt policy pioneered by the UK since the 1950s has sought to prevent expanding city boundaries ~ so-called ‘urban sprawl’ ~ surrounding them with protected countryside instead.

Today the policy has its problems, which the brownfields concept seeks to address. Building is not usually allowed on Green Belt land, unless it is for farming purposes. Local authorities choose the location and size of their Green Belts but they can also reverse these decisions under pressure for more houses to be built. Building on the outer edge of Green Belts arguably incorporates them into the city and it may then prove increasingly difficult to stop them being nibbled away.

An alternative is to re-develop land within cities and towns which has fallen into dis-use. True, these will usually require more preparation work, but it is estimated that there is space for a million new homes on brownfields. Organisations such as the Campaign for Rural England strongly advocate their use.

(Image of brownfield site in Scotland: Thomas Nugent at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

Planet Earth’s climate changeability has seen at least five Ice Ages come and go up to now, but in the current interval the UK’s springtime can be summed up in the old saying:

March winds and April showers,
Bring forth May flowers.

Andrew Lang included this in his 1897 collection of folk tales and rhymes entitled ‘The Nursery Rhyme Book’ and the weather conditions it describes are as true today as they were then.

They can be explained scientifically when one considers the seasonal movements of the jet streams and the gulf streams, along with the increasing hours of sunshine during springtime. The clash of air rising from warmer land with that from the cold seas causes windy weather in March, especially in the west, and rain showers quickly followed by outbreaks of sun in April.

The UK’s position off the north-west of the European continent subjects it to a whole variety of weather phenomena. Snow is not unknown in springtime, but usually there are cold, not quite freezing nights, with warm days. After this, in May the plants are ready to display their beautiful flowers.

(Image: Kenneth Mallard at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

Pigeons seem to gravitate towards humans and are quite tame. Their natural habitats are cliffs and coastal areas, but they are equally happy in crowded cities. Trafalgar Square in London used to be famous for its flocks of pigeons, encouraged by people feeding them corn and seed from the sellers who had their pitches there.

In 2000, London’s Mayor decided to rid the Square of its iconic feathered friends and today there are hawks ensuring that it remains pigeon-free. This is sorry thanks for the debt we owe to the hundreds of thousands of pigeons that were used in the two World Wars to carry vital notes between commanders, saving many human lives.

Pigeon racing is dependent on this same homing instinct and it became a very popular sport in the 1900s. At its peak in around 1960, there were 170,000 pigeon fanciers in the UK.

The bird’s attractive plumage and direct gaze charm many people into putting out seed for them on a regular basis. However, this can lead to increasing numbers, so the best advice is to leave out a few handfuls no more than once every three days and in different places around the garden.

(Top image: Martin Vorel at libreshot.com)