GeoBritannica

Mike Leeder

Description

GeoBritannica concerns the geological legacy of Britain, an inheritance bequeathed by its bedrock to the peoples who have lived on the island for the eleven millennia since the Ice Ages. The authors explain the geological foundations of the landscape and the raw materials it provides. They show how this geology has been made use of by society and by individuals in creative acts of the imagination. The reader will discover how regional environments and interests have been tackled by geologists in endeavours as diverse as mining, quarrying, architecture, literature and the visual arts.This is a book which puts a modern interpretation of the geological history of Britain into its historic, social and artistic contexts. Why is geology so fascinating to us? How do geologists do their science? Why are the differing landscapes what, where and how they are? What is the nature of the geological foundations of the British landscapes? How have geological discoveries developed our understanding of the landscape of Britain over the past two hundred years? What is the geological context of the raw materials used in past and present industries and for historic and vernacular buildings? How have geological landscapes and materials influenced past and present architects, visual artists and writers?This is a book for those wanting to develop a better understanding of where we live and how we develop our love and understanding of the island which we inhabit.

Sujets

• British Isles

Informations

• Publié par: Dunedin Academic Press
• Date de parution: 05 décembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781780465678
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 5 Mo

Extrait

GEOBRITANNICA
Geological Landscapes and the British Peoples
Mike Leeder & Joy Lawlor
Dedications
To our English, Irish and Scottish families past and present, who in their different ways have nurtured our love for these lands we write about: who have made us what we are today.
Chuig ár teaghlaigh Sasanach, Albanach, agus Éireanneach, anuas agus faoi láthair, a chothaigh ár ngrá i gcomhair na tiortha seo a scríobhaimid faoi, ina mbéalaí éagsúla: a rinne dúinn cad atá againn inniu.
I’n teuluoedd Seisnig, Gwyddelig ac Albanaidd ddoe a heddiw, sydd yn eu gwahanol ffyrdd wedi meithrin ein cariad tuag at y gwledydd hyn rydym yn ysgrifennu amdanynt: sydd wedi ein gwneud yr hyn yr ydym heddiw.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface
Foreword
Author Statements
PART 1        ‘…the Little Space of this our Island’
Peoples and geology: affection for; early progress in; works of the imagination
Chapter 1     Introduction
Chapter 2     Affection for Things Geological
Chapter 3     Early Discoveries
Chapter 4     Works of the Imagination
PART 2        Assembling the Geological Jigsaw
Field geology: the geological map; elucidation of geological history
Chapter 5     Mapping
Chapter 6     ‘Deep Time’ and the ‘Mobile Earth’
PART 3        Remembrance of Things Past
The Island’s ancient geography and geological history
Chapter 7     Past Geography and Geological History
PART 4        Material GeoBritannica
The make-up of things: settlement; communications; natural resources; building materials
Chapter 8     Settlement and Communication
Chapter 9     Natural Resources – General
Chapter 10   Building Stone and Aggregates
PART 5        Mineral GeoBritannica
Exploitation of minerals: discovery to extraction
Chapter 11   Metals and Mineral Salts
Chapter 12   Coal, Peat and Oil
PART 6        ‘To show to the world what exists in nature’
Creative imagination in geological landscapes
Chapter 13   Architecture and Monuments
Chapter 14   Sculpture
Chapter 15   Painting
Chapter 16   Literature
PART 7        GeoRegions
Geo-regions: cameos of landscape, culture and history
Chapter 17   Introduction to GeoRegions
Chapter 18   Assynt Foreland and Outer Hebrides
Chapter 19   North West Highlands and Northern Islands
Chapter 20   Grampian Highlands and Argyll
Chapter 21   Midland Valley
Chapter 22   Formerly Volcanic Islands of the Inner Hebrides
Chapter 23   Southern Uplands and Galloway
Chapter 24   Scottish-English Borderlands
Chapter 25   Lakeland, its Surrounds and the Isle of Man
Chapter 26   North Pennines
Chapter 27   South Pennines
Chapter 28   English Midlands
Chapter 29   Welsh–English Borderlands
Chapter 30   Northern Wales
Chapter 31   Southern Wales
Chapter 32   South West England
Chapter 33   Southern England
Chapter 34   Eastern and Central Scarplands
Glossary
Bibliography and Further Reading
Index
Acknowledgements
To individual artists for giving us their direct permission to reproduce their works gratis with warmth and encouragement: Caroline Bailey; Chris Griffin; Lulu Hancock; Katharine Holmes; Adam Kennedy; Keith Salmon.
To other artists for generously letting us include their work gratis through the intercession of their galleries: Katrina Palmer via Nicola Celia Wright at Motinternational Gallery, London; George Shaw via Rhian Smith at Wilkinson Gallery, London.
For their photographs: Val Corbett; William Lawlor; Vaughan Melzer. Special thanks to Vaughan for travelling in the Scottish Highlands looking for geologically instructive views.
For helpful comments on the South Uist ‘Krokeatis Lithos’ fragment we thank Professor Niall Sharples of the University of Cardiff. For information on the Forteviot tomb and the Govan Norse ‘Hogsback’ tombs thanks to Professor Stephen Driscoll of the University of Glasgow.
For encouragement and for reading through an earlier version of the manuscript with helpful suggestions we are grateful to Professor Julian Andrews, School of Environmental Sciences, UEA Norwich and two anonymous referees.
To institutions and their individual chief contacts for granting and expediting our requests for paid permission to licence images for reproduction: Albright Knox, Boston Museum of Fine Art, Buffalo (Martina Breccari); Bridgeman Images (Rob Lloyd, Holly Taylor); DACS (Ksenya Blokhina); English Heritage ( Javis Gurr, Graham Deacon); Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (Emma Darbyshire); Gracefield Art Centre, Dumfries (Dawn Henderby); Henry Moore Foundation ( Joanna Hill, Kerry Catling); Higgins Gallery, Bedford (Victoria Kahl); Leeds Museums and Art Galleries/ City Art Gallery (Sheel Douglas); Liverpool Museums (Nathan Pendlebury, Andrew Jackson); National Gallery of Art, Washington DC (Peter Huestis); National Trust ( Jenny Liddle); Rugby Museum and Art Gallery ( Jessica Litherland); Norwich Castle Museum (David Waterhouse); Orkney Museum (Sheila Garson); Arthur Raistrick Estate (Bill Rea); Scala Archives, Florence (Valentina Bandelloni); Scotland National Galleries (Magda Zabieiska, Manju Nair); Tate Images (Chris Sutherns); University of Bradford, Special Collections Archive (Alison Cullingford); University of Glasgow Forteviot Project (Professor Stephen Driscoll); Victoria and Albert Museum; Wales National Museum (Catherine Sutherland); Webb Aviation ( Jonathan Webb); Yale Museum of British Art.
Anthony Kinahan enthusiastically embraced and supported our project for Dunedin Press, with Anne Morton and David McLeod providing careful and expert editing and production skills respectively.
Finally, thanks to Zbiggy Kadysewski for his translation of our dedication into Gàidhlig and to Elgan Davies for rendering it into Cymraeg.
Preface
Interest in Britain’s landscapes and their geological foundations has probably never been greater, perhaps even more than during the explosion of late-Georgian/early-Victorian cultural and scientific exploration. In the day-to-day world, the language of geology is familiar: political events signal ‘tectonic shifts’ measured ‘high on the Richter scale of politics’; rumours signify changes in the ‘moving tectonic plates of party politics’; ‘fault-lines’ separate public opinion on major issues like devolution, national independence and EU membership; geological periods are used to mimic movie titles by naming great chunks of much-loved coastline as ‘Jurassic Coast’. Yet though our geological understanding has greatly progressed, the historian would rightly point to older records of tectonic, volcanic and meteorological events in classical works (like Tacitus’ Annals for example) and by the nature-curious scribe(s) of the later Anglo-Saxon Chronicles who recorded the extraordinary succession of strong earth tremors and storms that affected England in the early twelfth century.
Geology as the foundation to landscape was made clear to the mid-twentieth-century reader in books such as A.E. Trueman’s Geology and Scenery in England and Wales (1938, 1946); a pioneering classic written for ‘the educated layperson’ and in print as a popular paperback well into the 1970s. A book that first presented geological history in tandem with archaeology, arts and literature was A Land (1951; reprinted 2012) by Jacquetta Hawkes. A bestseller in its time, featuring sculptors and artists like Henry Moore and John Piper, it is now regarded as a classic. Hawkes presents a visionary view, an unashamedly and uniquely personal narrative of Britain’s geological history. This included the role that it played in her own psyche and, in her view, that of past and present inhabitants. Amongst more recent narrative efforts, R.A. Fortey’s The Hidden Landscape (1993; 2010) springs to mind; an affectionate and cultured pen-portrait. Also noteworthy is Death of an Ocean by Euan Clarkson and Brian Upton (2010) in which the classic geological landscapes of the Southern Uplands and Scottish Borders are explored in a scholarly but informally written manner using the context of the ‘lost’ Iapetus ocean.
On TV and in related books over the last twenty years Bill Bryson has explored the general character of the Island’s great outdoors and its cultural nexus in intimate and companionable ways. Latterly, geologist Iain Stewart has made fine TV documentaries for general audiences on both the foundations of geology and the pioneering geologists who did important fieldwork in Scotland. Archaeologists Neil Oliver and Frances Pryor have done the same for prehistory, providing rich and warm human tapestries from which to view the late-Pleistocene and Holocene epochs. We also applaud the wide vision of popular presenters in the visual arts, notably Lachlan Goudie’s landscape-inspired The Story of Scottish Art (BBC4, 2016).
Human influences on landscape history have had fine books written on the subject, beginning with W.G. Hoskins’ all-time classic The Making of the English Landscape (1955; reprinted 2013). It is clear to any close reader of his book that Hoskins was not a happy man in nuclear-armed, creepingly urbanizing and rapidly motorizing post-Second World War England. He and subsequent authors in the field take the geological foundations of landscape very much for granted, putting the human ‘making’ of it to the forefront. This is all fine and good, but the approach subsequently led to a rather narcissistic vision of landscape – about the author rather than the landscape itself – an issue explored in the ‘New Nature Writing’ literary spat of recent years.
The present book attempts to put the geological history, landscapes and materials of Britain (hereafter ‘the Island’) into historic, societal and artistic contexts. What is it about landscape and geology that is so fascinating? How do field geologists do their science? Why are distinctive physical landscapes and their geological foundations where and how they are? What geological discoveries originated here over the past few hundred years? What is the geolog