An emerging chronology
750,000BCE – C1stCE: Before writing crystllised the world – prehistoric ‘Britain’
700,000BCE: ‘Anglia Man’ and the earliest known ‘Britons’
700,000BCE-12,000BCE: Eighth time lucky – climate determines humans’ settling in ‘Britain’
450,000BCE-200,000BCE: The Origins of Island Consciousness – the torrent that created the Englsh Channel
225,000BCE – 48CE: Prehistoric Wales
130,000BCE – C8thBCE: Prehistoric Scotland
50,000BCE: Slaughtering Mammoths – an early abattoir at the Lynford site, Norfolk
27,000BCE: A man’s red-ochre burial in Goat’s Hole Cave (aka The Red Lady of Paviland)
12,000BCE – present: A brief history of British Woodlands
11,000BCE – 600CE: Prehistoric Ireland
8770-8460BCE: Emulating deer at Star Carr
8000BCE-C11thCE: Early history of Ireland
8000BCE-800BCE: Ancient Britain
3700BCE-1900BCE: The mysterious Avebury Complex
c.3000BCE-1500BCE: The many stone circles of the Isles
2500BCE: Stonehenge builders’ settlement and neolithic party venue
c.2200-1600BCE: Grimes Graves
2049BCE: ‘Seahenge’ & perils of ‘doing’ heritage
2000BCE-500BCE: British Bronze Age
c.800BCE at least: The Icknield Way, Britain’s oldest road
800BCE-43BCE: British Iron Age
C7thBCE-C5thCE: Celtic Iron Age in Britain
Pre-55BCE: Domesticating, breeding and distributing horses nationwide
55BCE-430CE: Roman Britain
Pre-Anglo-Saxon-C14th: Farming, slavery, serfdom, hamlets and villages
C5th-C15th: European Middle Ages – power struggle, intellectual revival, urbanisation and invention
410CE-C6thCE: Sub-Roman Britain
C5th-C11thCE: Anglo-Saxon England
500-900: Becoming one with the land – Dunadd’s coronation stone footprint
500-1400: Primary sources illustrating European feudalism
C11th-present: Feudalism in England
1066-onward: Norman conquest
1066-1924: An Eye Plucked Out for Disturbing the Deer – the creation and development of forests
1069-70: Norman scorched earth policy
1086: Domesday Book
C12th-19th: Enclosure of lands
1349-onward: Black Death, heralding the end of serfdom
1381: The Peasant’s Revolt
1422-1509: The Pastons and the making of the landed gentry
1485-1665: Early modern English history
1500-1850: English Agricultural Revolution
1520s-1640s: The denting of the Arcadian pastoral (and feudal) idyll
C16th-19th: The British Agricultural Revolution
C16th-today: Disconnecting from the land
1528/9: ‘A Supplycaccion for the Beggars’ and widely-held grievances – fuelling the Reformation
1530s-1700: Settling in Ireland and the demise of Gaelic Irish culture and its woodland ecology
1532-present: The decimation of wildlife following Henry VIII’s Vermin Act
1534-41: Dissolution of the monasteries
1536-7: The Pilgrimage of Grace
1549: Robert Kett’s protest and the enclosing of lands
1549: Robert Kett and the Norfolk Rising part II
1555-2009: The first turnpike and toll roads – the history of state-control of the highways
C17th: The Levellers – shaping an epoch of revolution
C17th-present: background to, & dances of, the Ouse Washes Molly Dancers
1607-1650: Midland Revolt, Levellers & Diggers
1609-76: Gerrard Winstanley, a True Leveller
1610/11: Publication of ‘The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine’, by John Speed, mapmaker
1630s-present: Draining and restoring the Fens
1640s: The Saveock Water pits and an ecology of magic
1640s-onward: Mucky Porter & the Methwold Severalls
1649: Cromwell and the ‘Royall Oake of Brittayne’
1649: The True Levellers Standard Advanced
1699-1741: Jethro Tull’s persistent innovating – the seed drill revolutionises European agriculture
C18th-19th: The Industrial Revolution
C18th-onward: Processes of industrial urbanisation
C18th-onward: The world’s first industrial city – Manchester
C18th-onward: London squares and parks
C18th-onward: Responding to the Industrial Revolution – Romanticism
1714-1837: In Command of the Seas, Leading to a Global Empire
1730-8: ‘Turnip Townshend’ – experimentation in agriculture
1746-onward: The Highland Clearances
1746-onward: The Cultural Impact of the Highland Clearances
1760s: Flooding the village of Mannings Hill for… a nice view
1767: Arguments for and against enclosure
1770-1855: The Wordsworths and the Cult of Nature
1770s-1830s: The Tolpuddle Martyrs
1793-1864: John Clare, poet of the countryside
1800-present: From candles and rushlights to Scottish night-sky therapy
1800-1914: Rural Resistance in Oxfordshire
1809-82: Influential places around mainland Britain for Charles Darwin
1838-1848: The Chartist Movement
1840s, before and during: A Potted History of Ireland Before and During the Potato Famine
1840s, before and during: Causes and Political Analysis of the Irish Famine
1845: A divided urban society – publication of Engels’ ‘The Condition of the Working Class in England’
1845-1850s: The Irish Potato Famine
C19th-today: A post-industrial psyche in a post-agricultural society
C20th-21st: Trashing the Waves
1930s-2001: Looking back on a farming past – and the economic forces ‘driving people from the land
1940s-present: The rise of a food production system now in need of redesign
1970: ‘Idiots in society’ – a Monty Python view of rural life
1994-2009: Wildly ambitious – debating the species to be reintroduced to Britain
2005-2007: ‘Spots of Time’ from the Cumbrian night
2008: Laying the foundations for the future – Transition Towns
2008: Returning to the Grass Roots – soil, sanity and society
31st January 2008: Contemporary life in and around London
February 2008: Separate Sightings of the mythical white hart and the white stag
15th September 2008: Signs of transformation in the planning system – the case of the Brithdir Mawr roundhouse
18th September 2008: The wild closing in on urban domesticity
14th November 2008: A New Hope – Victory in the High Court for UK Pesticide Campaigner
December 2008: Reconnecting with the grand narrative sweep of Britain’s past
22nd May 2009: Revolution in the air – can today’s politicians learn lessons from the Peasant’s Revolt?
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The following entries are overviews that run throughout the above chronology -
A Quick History of the British Landscape
Geology -
Climate -
Meteorological history -
