Reading the landscape

I am not a great fan of air travel, but the journey from Gloucestershire to Belfast is significantly quicker and faster by air from Bristol rather than a mixture of road and ferry trips.

However, one of the benefits of a clear aerial view such as the one I enjoyed this morning whilst being circulated over Lough Neagh, is the opportunity to study the patterns of fields set out in a patchwork below.

The shapes and distribution of field boundaries, combined with other clues such as ridge and furrow patterns and odd circles and stripes, can give a historic view of the past. Writers such as Pennington, Hoskins and Rackham are good sources to begin time travelling. But what really matters is creative imagination.

The landscape is like a giant child’s magic writing board. Each generation leaves traces that are in turn partially overwritten by the next. I have heard a posher description of this as a palimpsest. Whatever the description, the result is a fascinating mixture of agriculture, forestry, wild places and hard features such as roads.

The secret of reading the countryside is simple. Irregular outlines tend to be ancient, straight lines and square corners more modern. The countryside around Belfast is mostly regular, revealing the field shapes established by planned boundaries. However, there are intriguing irregularities.

A small island close to Lough Neagh’s shorelines suggested an Ulster version of an artificial Iron Age island, known in Scotland as aacrannog. I am probably wrong, but the possibility filled my imagination until touch down at Belfast International.

Image (c) Amy Groark on Flickr