Human bones find lead to discovery of Saxon warlord's grave

[Digit]

Britain, Monk, was settled initially across the land bridge, later settlements were sometimes peacful sometimes less so. Only once have we been invaded across the Straits of Dover, the short route, other occasions started from around our coasts, sometimes ramdomly sometimes in a concerted effort.
This has lead to piece meal colonization with accents, traditions, dialects that exist still. This piecemeal approach produced a sort of no-man's-land between factions as well as physical barriers of mountains, flood plains, marsh land etc that could not be cultivated.
Much of the land below the ice line of the last ice age is of course heavy clay that was avoided till the iron ploughshare was available.
All this leads to localised areas of quite heavy population with unoccupied areas between, so you get an area like where Autumn Lady lives with a lot of sites and areas elswhere that were not occupied till much later.
I used to live in an area with no surface water for many miles around and the first occupation only occurred after WW2.
My nearest town, Cardigan, did not expand beyond its Celtic and Norman walls till the Victorian era and we have much Megalithic stuff and then nothing till much later, which is normally put down to a change in climate.
Blair recently apologised for the Irish potato famine, he might try that around here because it resulted in mass migration from this area as well.
Here endeth the first lesson.

[Forum Monk]

Britain, Monk, was settled initially across the land bridge, ...

I didn't realize I asked for this history lesson, but I truly appreciate it from a 'native' point of view.

This has lead to piece meal colonization with accents, traditions, dialects that exist still.

I have already seen the intense regionalism and intercity rivalries present in England and frankly I was surprised. e.g. I think your soccer teams have more rabid rivalries than our football teams.

Here endeth the first lesson.

Ok. Keep going. Will there be a final exam?

[Beagle]

Don't feel bad. I didn't have the first idea what an allotment was.

[Forum Monk]

Don't feel bad. I didn't have the first idea what an allotment was.

from a book by Kevin Cahill:

Hidden deep in the history of the United Kingdom is a great and secret book. It was published in four volumes and runs to over 2000 pages. Within its pages are the names and addresses of those who held, at the time of the book's compilation, the most valuable treasure of this country, the ownership of its land. The book is more than 120 years old now, but its pages are the only way to trace the present ownership of as much as one third of the acreage of England and Wales ...

Our country, the UK, is 60 million acres in size. Some 59 million of us live on those 60 million acres. Of those 59 million people, 99.9% live on less than 10% of the land, a maximum of 6 million acres, but more probably just 4.4 million acres. A further 14.6 million acres is woodland, mountain, waste, roads and so on. Which leaves 40 million acres of often beautiful, sometimes productive countryside. This is owned by just 189,000 families. The 59 million of us, less this group, live squashed together at about 12 to 13 people per acre. The tiny group who own two thirds of the entire country have around 90 acres apiece to live in.

Are such figures important? Why do we need, or want, to know who owns the land? Does it really matter who owns which parts of Britain? The answer is that it matters a lot more than we realise, and certainly a lot more than the tiny minority of those who own most of the land would like us to realise. If anything, the fact that the really rich and powerful do not seem to want us to know who owns the country is encouragement enough to try and find out what they are hiding from us.

[Beagle]

That sounds like any government I know. The book is the Doomsday Book. Right?

[Forum Monk]

That sounds like any government I know. The book is the Doomsday Book. Right?

Nah, nothing that ominous.
http://www.canongate.net/WhoOwnsBritain/Hardback


btw - here is the DoomsdayBook which may have been his reference:
http://www.domesdaybook.co.uk/

[Digit]

I offer no apologies Monk, I just happen to be passionate about my country's history and geology.

[stan]

Digit wrote:
Britain, Monk, was settled initially across the land bridge, ...
I didn't realize I asked for this history lesson, but I truly appreciate it from a 'native' point of view.

Maybe it was I whom Digit meant to lecture, since I suggested that ancient finds were everywhere.
I appreciate the clarification, Digit. I wondered why there was so much of England under pasture rather than cultivation.

All this leads to localised areas of quite heavy population with unoccupied areas between,

By the way, i admire this sort of population distribution, from an environmental point of view, as opposed to over here, where we have suburbanized vast rural areas. ( Too bad about your lack of forests, though.)

Your quote was interesting, too, Monk. Adds more to the picture Digit painted.

[Digit]

Here starteth the second lesson Stan.
Great swathes of forest were sacrificed over here to iron smelting and warships, but the greatest losses were for WW1 and WW2. The losses due to WW1 were so great the government set up the Forestry Commision to plant and re-plant large areas and millions of acres of forest have been planted in the intervening period.
Species wise our greatest loss occurred recently with the loss of vast numbers of native Elm to Dutch Elm disease, but apparently this has occurred a number of times since the last ice age.

[marduk]

Species wise our greatest loss occurred recently with the loss of vast numbers of native Elm to Dutch Elm disease, but apparently this has occurred a number of times since the last ice age.

yeah but only to the elms

[stan]

millions of acres of forest have been planted in the intervening period.

I wasn't aware of this. Kudos! Are these being harvested, or are they reverting to a "natural" state?

You say the Dutch Elms have been wiped out and then recovered several times?

[Digit]

Stan.
In the early years of the Forestry Commission most of the planting was on poor soils on the hills of upland England Scotland and Wales. Most of the timber was coniferous and in the early days many different species were tried. Species from the US and from Scandinavia were the most fresquently planted.
The early works were simply to produce as much timber as possible to provide construction lumber and vast numbers of props for use in coal mines.
All early planting was 'plantations' with trees planted very close together then thinned to every other tree at about 15 years old.
When WW2 kicked off a lot of the earlier plantings were just about ready to cut and members of Women's Land Army were used to fell great swathes of ancient woodlands as well as the new plantations
In recent times the emphasis has moved away from coniferous plantations with their dense canopy to a more natural, for the UK, mixed hard and soft wood production.
In addition a vast new forest is being planted in the midlands with mainly hard wood plantings.
Interestingly enough, although the conifer plantations were condemned by naturalist quite a few species of fauna have adapted very well to them.
It is not the Dutch Elm that has been devestated Stan, it is the English Elm, (Ulmus Procera) that has suffered from Dutch Elm Disease.
Although the English Elm is native here it was always rather rare because of repeated losses since the last ice age and most of the trees that were so common untill a few years ago were cultivated by taking suckers from chosen trees and therefore had a very limited genetic make up and were more open to attack.
Now new resistant species are being planted to restore these beautiful trees to our landscape.

[stan]

A lot of our elms have died, too.

The use of suckers to try to revitalize a species has been used here
with remnants of the American chestnut, which was the mainstay of the eastern forests until...maybe 200 - 150 years ago, when it was destroyed by the chestnut "blight."
So far I don't think there have been any fertile specimens.
But a lot of work is being done on the problem.
It was a great species. The plentiful
nuts fed many species of wild and domesticated ones as well as humans, and the wood was resistant to rot and much favored by furniture makers in the old days. Occasionally ancient chestnut logs are still found and turned into usable lumber.

[Digit]

Although we don't have the extensive forests that you do Stan we are blessed with a greater variety of trees than most of our European neighbours.
During the 19C and early 20C many private individuals and plantsmen send explorers all over the world seeking rare and exotic plants and trees and many have now become naturalised here.
Not far from me is a mature Cedarof Lebanon for example.
Some of the explorers who went out on these quests even lost their lives in their devotion to the task and some of their adventures rival anything that people like Livingstone, Mungo Park or Burton experienced.

[Forum Monk]

That's interesting Digit, but I question the wisdom of planting non-native species. I know I may sound like a liberal environmentalist here, but it is true that the impact on other species is often unforeseen. i.e. certain insects which may be driven out of an area by Lebanese cedar may impact birds and the related species which depend on them.

Hopefully you haven't experienced this kind of impact. In the US kudzu (a japanese vine) was introduced into the south to curtail erosion. It flourished to such an extent, it literally choked out other species and in late summer is seen dripping from and clinging to trees, telephone poles, lines, buildings, etc. It proved difficult to kill and is now a fact of life in the south.