From the BBC.  The image was taken by NASA’s Terra satellite showing Britain in the clutches of a cold snap.

Last night proved to be the coldest night of the winter so far, according to the BBC, with temperatures reaching -22°C (-8°F) in one village in Sutherland, in the Highlands.  Supplies of road grit are running low in some areas, with councils restricting gritting to major roads only.

‘Icy River Nevis’ taken by HighlandSC

Wildlife is particularly hard hit by the weather.

Photograph of a goldfinch taken by Simball

This from the BBC -

[Sites like power stations] are likely to be sought out by water birds that normally forage for fish when their usual habitats of freshwater rivers and lakes become frozen over.

“Kingfishers, particularly, are having a tough time finding food at the moment,” says Grahame Madge of the UK-based Royal Society of the Protection of Birds (RSPB).

“Their strategy in weather likes this tends to be to move a short distance to the warmer waters near power stations or in city centres. It’s quite possible we will see higher numbers of kingfishers in London and other metropolitan centres”.

[...] Mr Madge says such cold temperatures force many birds to make a tough choice at this time of year – whether to stay put and see out the worst of the weather or use their last energy reserves to fly to warmer climes.

[...] But with freezing temperatures affecting much of Britain and northern Europe, those who do fly south hoping to find some ice-free conditions could be out of luck, he says.

“Birds will generally make short-distance movements when their energy levels are low,” he says.

“But those birds that fly even as far as southern Ireland at the moment aren’t going to find what they are looking for. They may have to go further into southern Europe.”

The RSPB has also noticed that Britain this year has become a refuge for higher numbers of bitterns, owls and other birds flying in from Scandinavia and northern Europe, hoping to find warmer temperatures.

But it is not just birds that are feeling the effects of the cold weather.

[...] At London Zoo [...]  the animals are enjoying some well thought-out protection from their keepers.

Those that need it have heaters, increased levels of food and – if you are a kinkajou (a member of the racoon family) – a sleeping bag.

The cold weather has created some unlikely bedfellows, senior keeper Jim Mackie explains.

The zoo’s two Aardvarks, who arrived this year, like to snuggle up together under the heater. They share the meerkats’ enclosure, and around five meerkats have worked out that by sleeping on top of the Aardvarks they can get even closer to the heat, Mr Mackie explained.

“We’d noticed quite a lot of interaction between the two species in the summer, but we didn’t see anything like this,” he said.

“It’s been quite an exciting sight to see. We don’t think there would be this much interaction between the two in the wild.”

While the zoo’s tropical animals have preferred to stay close to the heaters in recent days, some of the inhabitants have been enjoying the snow – particularly the young ones who have never seen it before.

“The coati [another member of the racoon family] had a brilliant time, charging around in the snow and trying to find the food we’d buried,” Mr Mackie said.

“The ferrets have also had a great time digging through the snow. But they soon get tired of it, once they get cold.”

One animal that is not getting tired of the snow is Mercedes, the new polar bear at Scotland’s Highland Wildlife Park, where temperatures have been as low as minus 20C.

“A lot of the wildlife here are huddling together right now and cutting down on their activity to stop burning energy,” explained the park’s Douglas Richardson.

“It’s quite the opposite with Mercedes. Right now, she’s spinning round on the pond and generally having a great time.”

Photo of the comedian Norman Maclean taken from The Urban Clansman, the blog of the Galgael Trust

From the Guardian -

Its freshly oiled pine hull is as fragrant as a wet winter woodland. Modelled on a thousand-year-old prototype, this hulking birlinn – a Gaelic longboat – will soon be ready to sail out along the Clyde and up the west coast in homage to the time when water was Scotland’s main thoroughfare. It is taking form in an old iron foundry in Glasgow’s Govan, home to a uniquely imaginative community project called the GalGael Trust.

Here, local volunteers teach carpentry, saw-milling and metalwork, as well as boat-building and sailing – the skills so valued in the once thriving shipyards that secured for this area its reputation as the workshop of the empire. It was the inexorable decline in demand for such skills that gifted Govan the reality it contends with today: paralysing levels of unemployment, chronic alcohol and drug addiction, and habitual violence on the streets. The fractured life stories of the men who come here to learn bear witness to all this.

The GalGael philosophy addresses what many an academic study has theorised: that deprivation has psychic as well as economic consequences; that social exclusion is ameliorated as much by a sense of place and heritage as it is by targeted benefits and instrumental interventions; and that hope flourishes in the most unlikely soil. Crucially, given Govan’s history, it recognises that the future is informed by the past.

Perched on a high-backed chair as expertly rendered as anything you’d find in Heal’s, Jinksy tells of 10 lost years sitting in the house, “becoming a vegetable”, after he was laid off as a council roadsweeper. Then a pal told him about the GalGael. “I’d lost trust in people, but there’s a family feeling here. I’ve always been an outside person and this brings you back to the land. It gives you an idea of place.” Over the years, the GalGael has helped hundreds like him to regain confidence in their working abilities, relationships and community.

Gehan, who set up the trust in the mid-90s with her late partner, explains how the act of building and sailing a boat in the same way that one’s ancestors did offers an immediate connectedness that is different from academically acquired history. The fact is that many city-dwelling Scots are only three or four generations removed from rural living, and connection to the land looms large in the national psyche. Many descendants of the half-million Highlanders driven off their crofts to make way for sheep-farming now live in poverty in Glasgow. While the Scottish land reform movement has scored recent successes with community buyouts like those on the isles of Eigg and Gigha, the GalGael is restoring an area of derelict farmland in Argyll.

It is thus entirely appropriate that some of the men working here have recently enjoyed a foray into acting, as extras in a television series on Scottish history. The History of Scotland, which concluded last Sunday on BBC Scotland, proved controversial, with many senior academics lamenting its broad strokes and glaring omissions. This reaction was perhaps inevitable, given the startling lack of popular treatment of Scottish history, as well as the legacy of poor and piecemeal teaching of the national heritage in schools. For many Scots, knowledge of their history begins and ends with William Wallace – and Mel Gibson’sBraveheart version of the man at that.

The 10-part series, fronted by the archaeologist Neil Oliver, was a watchable introduction, and avoided the usual shortbread-and-saltires mythologising, even tackling the country’s role in the slave trade. But it remains to be seen if this will serve to kick-start public examination of Scotland’s political, social and cultural past, or be seen as the history box ticked for another decade. It’s worth noting that on the same network Andrew Marr has been offering an examination of just the first few decades of British 20th-century history with the same amount of airtime that Oliver had.

Homecoming, a year-long festival celebrating the Scottish diaspora that concluded on St Andrew’s Day, prompted further examination of the national self-image with the news that the centrepiece Clan Gatheringevent in Edinburgh, which attracted claymore obsessives from across the globe, had made a £600,000 loss. Those clan chiefs, so beloved of our ancestry-minded American and Canadian cousins, continue to draw resentment over their collusion in the Highland clearances.

An organisation like the GalGael is local by intention, a bespoke vision that is constantly retuned and refreshed by its participants, rather than a one-size-fits-all template imposed from Holyrood or a charitable behemoth in London. To recognise its worth is not to submit to David Cameron’s big society rhetoric, but to see how small-scale originals like this one can only succeed alongside centrally governed support structures.

If it can teach us something nationally it is that, in understanding our past, we must face the faultlines of Highland or lowland, Catholic or Protestant, nationalist or unionist that have come to define the nation, though not always the people within it. And particularly at a moment when independence is once again top of the political agenda.

Moreover, if a sense of history is about a grasp of narrative and one’s place in it, this can only assist us in imagining the future. Last year theGlasgow 2020 project, funded by Demos, found that inhabitants of some of the most deprived areas continued to tell stories of optimism for the future of their families, friends and neighbourhoods. The true legacy of history can be hope.

From YouTube -

From the Galgael website -

Folk without an enriched sense of their culture are like trees with shallow roots… To our minds, this analogy describes the loss of identity and sense of meaningless that creates vulnerability to the vagaries of the worst excesses of modern life. A situation steadily worsened by the consistent undermining of the bonds of community.

Agencies picking up the pieces and the tab for tackling the symptoms of this rootlessness are essential. But beyond this – what is called for is nothing less than to reconvene a sense of ‘peoplehood’; deep roots for an identity that builds resilience, embodies shared values, and in the same breath, transcends narrow forms of nationalism.

The very name GalGael is our way of re-rooting these notions of identity in nourishing ground and recognises that there is both a bit of the stranger and a bit of the native in us all. In history, Gal Gaidheal were a 9thC people; the Gal – the ‘strange or foreign’ Norse, embraced by the Gael – the ‘heartland people’.

As a modern day people, GalGael folk have been re-visioning inclusive forms of community that build on our interdependence rather than slip into dependency culture, and that explore our collective responsibilities, not just our rights. From this stand point, we are reweaving the fabric of our families and communities, experimenting with notions of clanship, extended family and kinship.

‘by the people, for the people’ by kayodek

From the BBC -

The anger in the air is palpable. The ordinary people hold the political class in contempt.

The government is failing, as war and economic catastrophe are dealt with in increasingly unconvincing fashion by second-rate public servants. There is, for the first time in a generation, a sense of revolution brewing.

This is not today’s Britain. It is England in 1381, the year that witnessed one of the greatest popular risings in our history: the Peasants’ Revolt.

Between May and November that year, England was seized by spasms of popular rebellion, provoked by poll taxes and a disastrous war, and underpinned by the common belief that the government was a pack of scoundrels.

Towns and villages from Somerset to Scarborough rose against their rulers, beating and sometimes killing MPs, lawyers, landowners and politicians, tearing down their homes and vandalising their land.

Bloody revenge

At the heart of the rising was a march on London on Corpus Christi weekend (Thursday 13 to Saturday 15 June).

Traditionally this was a time of mystery plays and festive processions. In 1381, the main procession consisted of villagers from the Thames estuary marching along the pilgrim road between Canterbury and London, burning houses and taking political prisoners as they protested against their venal, incompetent masters.

The peasant’s revolt ransacked London before it was put down

When the protestors, led by their general Wat Tyler and the maverick preacher John Ball, reached London, they found they had significant common cause with the townsmen.

The London populace bore long-held grudges towards their own ruling elites – which included the oligarchic, super-rich merchant traders in the City as well as the hapless courtiers who governed in the name of 14-year old King Richard.

Common fury with the state of lordship bound rural and urban rebels in a compact to clean up government.

So the town mice opened their gates to the country mice, and together they all set about the cats.

At first there were organised protests, attacks on specific, symbolic landmarks: the Savoy Palace, home of the powerful and unpopular duke of Lancaster, was burned to the ground; the Temple, home of the legal profession, was sacked. Prisons were broken open and the Tower of London, where the government had holed up, was besieged.

Demonstrations became riots. A chopping block was set up at Cheapside, where the street ran sticky with the blood of the condemned.

Kind Richard II was only 14 years old when faced with the rebellion

The Archbishop of Canterbury had his head hacked off on Tower Hill. The Treasurer was murdered, as – in Suffolk – was a Chief Justice.

Some 140 Flemish merchants and their families were butchered on the banks of the Thames, in a shocking xenophobic massacre.

But for the luck of the young king, Richard II, and the fortitude of a few good men around him led by Mayor of London, William Walworth, the City would have been burned to the ground.

Tyler and his mob were eventually defeated at Smithfield, but it took nearly six months to calm the rest of the country.

Political revolt

The summer of discontent left a profound mark on the English political consciousness.

A few lines written, prior to the rebellion, by the Kentish poet John Gower, were suddenly recognised as an important tenet of government.

“There are three things of such a sort that they produce merciless destruction when they get the upper hand,” he wrote.

“One is a flood of water, another is a raging fire and the third is the lesser people, the common multitude; for they will not be stopped by either reason or by discipline.”

I have thought many times during the past months that our politicians would benefit from revisiting the events of the Peasants’ Revolt.

In many ways it is a tale of mutual misunderstanding: the ordinary folk thought the worst of their politicians, and politicians saw their people as an economic resource, to be taxed and tormented as the necessities of government demanded.

The Black Death was a major factor in fermenting anti-government feeling

This government, like the government in 1381, has been caught out by a global crisis of unprecedented severity.

In the fourteenth century it was the Black Death, which killed 40% of Europe’s population.

The government’s reaction – to impose labour laws that stifled economic recovery but preserved the social hierarchy, was vastly unpopular, for it prevented ordinary people from improving their lives.

Now, it is the collapse in global credit which has brought a different sort of misery to millions.

No doubt there are many differences between 1381 and 2009. They were medieval, we are modern. And history never repeats itself as exactly as historians sometimes wish.

But if I were an MP today, I would make it my business to learn the course and the lessons of 1381 by heart. Then I would give thanks that there are no longer any chopping blocks at Cheapside.

Dan Jones is the author of Summer of Blood.

On the history of turnpikes, from Old Hampshire Mapped -

The following chronological notes are culled from various sources; do not take them as a definitive list of events.

From Ware Online, about the history of Ware, the town where the first turnpike was built -

Ware was situated on the Old North Road, the main thoroughfare of medieval and Tudor England from London to York and Scotland. In the centuries following the Norman Conquest, the main traffic on this road was military, but in about 1400, the people themselves began to move more freely around England, either for trade or on that medieval equivalent Of tourism, the pilgrimage. Ware is mentioned in the most famous account of a pilgrimage, Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’, as being the the town from which the cook originated, and Ware was itself on the other main pilgrimage route, to the shrine of the Virgin Mary at Walsingham in Norfolk. One Tudor writer said that the road through the town was known as ‘Walsingham Way’.

To serve these pilgrims and travellers, virtually every building in Water Row (the south side of the High Street) was an inn at some time during the period from 1400-1700. There were other inns in Land Row and Baldock Street, as well as a few in Amwell End, but it was the inns of Water Row that were ‘great and sumptuous hostelries’, as described by Raphael Holinshed. The most important were the Crown, the White Hart, the Christopher, the Bull, the George and the Saracen’s Head. The inns have long since been converted into shops, but the waggonways, which are a feature of the High Street, remain as reminders of the great inns of the past. No wonder the Tudor poet, William Vallens, described his home town as ‘the guested town of Ware’ What led to the disappearance of the inns was another thriving Ware industry, malting. The passage of waggons bringing barley into the town for malting made the roads almost impassable for much of the winter, with the result that, in 1663, England’s first turnpike was set up at Wadesmill, in an attempt to control the malting traffic. Immediately, travellers began to find alternative routes. Before 1663, Samuel Pepys travelled to Cambridge by way of Ware – often complaining about the state of the road, particularly when he had to get down from the coach and fell into a ditch – but after the erection of the turnpike, he preferred to go via Bishop’s Stortford. Others went by way of Hatfield, on what became known as the Great North Road.

In an attempt to attract what was left of the coaching business, the Ware inkeepers offered new facilities. Riverside gardens were laid out with summerhouses, or gazebos, for the enjoyment of their guests. In addition, any visitor who wished to stay in an inn containing the Great Bed of Ware was treated to an elaborate and bawdy ritual. In their time, a number of Ware inns housed the Great Bed, which is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. It is thought to have been made as a sort of advertising gimmick for the Ware inns.

The malting industry dominated the life of the town from the 17th century, and Ware could justly claim to be the premier malting town in England. What gave malting in Ware the edge over other centres was its position between London and the barley-growing counties of Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, and also its situation on the River Lea with easy transport by barge to London. One of Ware’s specialities in the early years was brown malt – a malt which had been cured at a high temperature over a wood-burning kiln – and this became the main ingredient of ‘porter’ or ‘entire’, the main drink of London’s labourers during the 18th century. Brown malt earned Ware its superiority and its own quoted price on the London Corn Exchange. There are many former malthouses in the town, now converted to other uses, and the last working malting, Paul’s at Broadmeads, was a thoroughly modern, computerised plant. However, that too closed, in January 1994, thus bringing to an end the 600-year-old malting industry for which Ware was once famous.

From wikipedia, on the history of toll roads internationally -

Toll roads are at least 2700 years old, as tolls had to be paid by travelers using the Susa–Babylon highway under the regime of Ashurbanipal, who reigned in the seventh century BC.^[1] Aristotle and Pliny refer to tolls in Arabia and other parts of Asia. In India, before the 4th century BC the Arthasastra notes the use of tolls. Germanic tribes charged tolls to travellers across mountain passes. Tolls were used in the Holy Roman Empire in the 14th century and 15th century.

A 14th century example (though not for a road) would be Castle Loevestein in the Netherlands, which was built at a strategic point where 2 rivers met, and charged tolls to boats sailing the river.

Many modern European roads were originally constructed as toll roads in order to recoup the costs of construction. In 14th century England, some of the most heavily used roads were repaired with money raised from tolls by pavage grants. Turnpike trusts were established in England beginning in 1706, and were ultimately responsible for the maintenance and improvement of most main roads in England and Wales, until they were gradually abolished from the 1870s. Most trusts improved existing roads, but some new ones usually only short stretches of road were also built. Thomas Telford’s Holyhead road (now the A5 road) is exceptional as a particularly long new road, built in the early 19th century.

National toll-road differences

Main article: Toll roads around the World

Toll roads are found in many countries. The way they are funded and operated may differ from country to country. Some of these toll roads are privately owned and operated. Others are owned by the government. Some of the government-owned toll roads are privately operated.

Some toll roads are managed under such systems as the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) system. Private companies build the roads and are given a limited franchise. Ownership is transferred to the government when the franchise expires. Throughout the world, this type of arrangement is prevalent in Australia, South Korea, Japan, Philippines, and Canada. The (BOT) system is a fairly new concept that is gaining ground in the United States, with Arkansas, California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi^[2], Texas, and Virginia already building and operating toll roads under this scheme. Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Tennessee are also considering the BOT methodology for future highway projects.

The more traditional means of managing toll roads in the United States is through semi-autonomous public authorities. New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Oklahoma, and West Virginia manage their toll roads in this manner. While most of the toll roads in California, Delaware, Florida, Texas, and Virginia are operating under the BOT arrangement, a few of the older toll roads in these states are still operated by public authorities.

Payment of the road toll may be made in cash, by credit card, by pre-paid card or by an electronic toll collection system. In some European countries payment is made using stickers which are affixed to the windscreen. Some toll booths are automated. Tolls may vary according to the distance traveled, the building and maintenance costs of the motorway and the type of vehicle.

In France, all toll roads are operated by private companies, and the government takes a part of their profit.

Critics of toll roads

According to Gabriel Roth toll roads have been criticized as being inefficient in three ways:

1. They require vehicles to stop or slow down, manual toll collection wastes time and raises vehicle operating costs.
2. Collection costs can absorb up to one-third of revenues, and revenue theft is considered to be comparatively easy.
3. Where the tolled roads are less congested than the parallel “free” roads, the traffic diversion resulting from the tolls increases congestion on the road system and reduces its usefulness.

From wikipedia, on toll roads in the United Kingdom -

Medieval Pavage

Main article: pavage

In the 14th century, pavage grants, which had previously been made for paving the market place or streets of towns, began also to be used for maintaining some roads between towns. These grants were made by letters patent, almost invariably for a limited term, presumably the time likely to be required to pay for the required works.

Highway Repair

Responsibility for the upkeep of the roads seems to have rested with landowners, but was probably not easily enforced against them.

The Parliament of England placed the upkeep of bridges to local settlements or the containing county under the Bridges Act 1530 and in 1555 the care of roads was similarly devolved to the parishes as statute labour under the Highways Act 1555. Every adult inhabitant of the parish was obliged to work four consecutive days a year on the roads, providing their own tools, carts and horses. The work was overseen by an unpaid local appointee, the Surveyor of Highways.

It was not until 1654 that road rates were introduced. However, the improvements offered by paid labour were offset by the rise in the use of wheeled vehicles greatly increasing wear to the road surfaces. The government reaction to this was to use legislation to limit the use of wheeled vehicles and also to regulate their construction. A vain hope that wider rims would be less damaging briefly led to carts with sixteen inch wheels. They did not cause ruts but neither did they roll and flatten the road as was hoped.

Early Turnpikes

The first turnpike road, whereby travellers paid tolls to be used for road upkeep, was authorised in 1663 for a section of the Great North Road in Hertfordshire. The term turnpike refers the military practise of placing a pikestaff across a road to block and control passage, this would be “turned” to one side to allow travellers through. Most English gates were not built to this standard; of the first three gates, two were found to be easily avoided.

The early turnpikes were administered directly by the Justices of the Peace in Quarter Sessions.

Turnpike Trusts

Main article: turnpike trust

The first turnpike trust was established by Parliament through a Turnpike Act in 1706, placing a section of the London-Coventry-Chester road in the hands of a group of trustees.

The trustees could erect gates as they saw fit, demand statute labour or a cash equivalent, and appoint surveyors and collectors, in return they repaired the road and put up mileposts. Initially trusts were established for limited periods of often twenty one years. The expectation was that the trust would borrow the money to repair the road and repay that debt over time with the road then reverting to the parishes. In reality the initial debt was rarely paid off and the trusts were renewed as needed.

The end of the Trusts

The rise of railway transport largely halted the improving schemes of the turnpike trusts. The London-Birmingham railway almost instantly halved the tolls income of the Holyhead Road. The system was never properly reformed but from the 1870s Parliament stopped renewing the acts and roads began to revert to local authorities, the last trust vanishing in 1895. However, some bridges have continued to be subject to tolls.

The Local Government Act, 1888 created county councils and gave them responsibility for maintaining the major roads. The abiding relic of the English toll roads is the number of houses with names like “Turnpike Cottage”, the inclusion of “Bar” in place names and occasional road name: Turnpike Lane in northern London has given its name to an Underground station.

Modern Toll Roads

In recent times, the concept of charging tolls to finance the building of roads has been revived, but so far the only new toll road is M6 Toll. The opposite is the case in Scotland where all toll roads have been abolished as of February, 2008 ^[1].

Charles Darwin kindly posing for a picture… by tranchis

From the Darwin 200 website -

Darwin is now a household name whose ideas over the last 150 years have revolutionised our understanding of nature and our place within it.

Darwin challenged the thinking of the day because his observations – that every living thing is related and belongs to one big family – placed humans firmly within the natural world.

As the following quotes indicate, Darwin’s innovative thoughts are just as important to our lives today…

‘Charles Darwin’s concept of evolution through natural selection is one of the most illuminating scientific ideas of all time for understanding our biosphere and humanity’s place in nature. As an iconic figure, Darwin is matched only by Newton and Einstein – indeed, he has perhaps had a more pervasive influence on human culture than any other scientist.’ Lord Rees of Ludlow, The Charles Darwin Trust’s Science Advisory Panel

‘The two governing ideas of modern biology are first, the molecular basis of all life processes and second, the origin and evolution of all life processes by Darwinian natural selection.’
Professor E O Wilson, The Charles Darwin Trust’s Science Advisory Panel.

Through a combination of meticulous observation and innovative thinking, Darwin came up with an explanation for the incredible variety of living things: that evolution was driven by natural selection. By this process, organisms most suited to their environment survive and reproduce and pass their advantages to their offspring.

‘There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.’ Charles Darwin

Although Darwin had already presented his theory to fellow scientists, it was the publication of his book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, in 1859 that shook the rest of the world.

‘We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities… still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.’ Charles Darwin

Initially greeted with controversy, Darwin’s ideas now form the foundation of modern biology.

‘It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.’ Charles Darwin

A natural life

Charles Darwin was born on 12 February 1809. As a child he loved the outdoors and collecting beetles.

He abandoned his studies of medicine to study theology but then, when he was just 22 years old, joined a voyage around the world on the ship, the Beagle. During this five-year adventure, he keenly observed and collected hundreds of different types of plants, animals, fossils and rocks.

He spent the rest of his life carefully studying and interpreting what he had seen. Darwin came up with his original explanation for the variety of living things, the theory of evolution by natural selection, soon after his return from the Beagle voyage, but it was many years before he had accumulated enough evidence to publish his work.

‘I can remember the very spot in the road, whilst in my carriage, when to my joy the solution occurred to me; and this was long after I had come to Down. The solution, as I believe, is that the modified offspring of all dominant and increasing forms tend to become adapted to many and highly diversified places in the economy of nature.’ Charles Darwin

Although Darwin is the most familiar name associated with evolution, he was only persuaded to publish his work when another young scientist, Alfred Russel Wallace, came forward having independently come up with a similar explanation for how evolution occurs.

• Shrewsbury, Shropshire

Charles Darwin was born and raised in the family home in Shrewsbury and also attended school in the town.

The Mount

Charles Darwin was born in the Mount on 12 February 1809. The large Georgian house was built by his parents, Robert and Susanna Darwin. It has been used as offices but is currently being renovated and is due to open to the public in 2009.

St. Chad’s Church

Charles Darwin was christened at St Chad’s Church, which is now used as a venue for an annual Darwin Festival.

Shrewbury School

In 1818, aged just 9 years, Darwin was sent to Shrewsbury School, an Anglican boarding school in the centre of town. He boarded despite it being less than a couple of kilometres from his home, and only a few months after losing his mother.

Darwin hated the harsh environment of the school but made some good friends there. Charles, aged 12, wrote in a letter to a friend, ‘I only wash my fe[e]t once a month at school, which I confess is nasty, but I cannot help it, for we have nothing to do it with’.

His older bother, Erasmus, also attended the school and the brothers were renowned for their chemistry experiments, conducted in a self-equipped ‘Lab’ in an outbuilding of The Mount.

The school building has been renovated and now accommodates the town’s library with an imposing statue of Darwin outside.

The Bellstone

Darwin’s first introduction to geology was a granite boulder, called the Bellstone, situated in a courtyard in the town centre. As a child he was told that this sort of stone was only found much further north in Cumbria or Scotland and there was no explanation for how it ended up in Shropshire.

It was only when he studied geology at Edinburgh that Darwin learned that during the last ice age moving glaciers had transported massive rocks across the country.

An annual toast is now held at the Bellstone on Darwin’s birthday, 12 February.

St Chad’s Church, Montford

Darwin’s mother and father were buried in St Chad’s Church in the village of Montford about 10 kilometres from Shrewsbury. Darwin’s father, Robert Darwin was buried here in 1848.

• Maer Hall, nr Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire

Maer Hall was the Wedgwood family home, located near to the Wedgwood factory.

Maer Hall

Maer Hall was the family home of Emma Wedgwood, who was born there in 1808. The house was near to the Wedgwood factory owned by Emma’s father Josiah Wedgwood, who was also Charles’ uncle.

Charles Darwin was a frequent visitor in his youth. He greatly enjoyed the countryside for walking and shooting and the informal evenings with the Wedgwood family. It was in the fields around Maer that Charles first investigated the role of earthworms, recording that cinders spread on the surface became buried over several years.

After his return from the Beagle voyage, his attentions turned to courting Emma and they married in the church in the grounds. Charles and Emma continued to make frequent visits to Maer Hall with their growing family, spending many summer holidays there.

St Peter’s Church

Charles married Emma in 1839, two weeks before his thirtieth birthday, at St Peter’s church in the grounds of the Jacobean mansion.

Welsh holidays

During his childhood and student days, Darwin spent several family holidays in North Wales, staying, on different occasions, near Abergele, Tywyn, Pistyll Rhayader, Barmouth and Mount Snowdon. He enjoyed riding and beetle collecting.

After graduating from Cambridge, in 1831, he was Adam Sedgwick’s assistant on a field trip to North Wales surveying red sandstone in Llangollen, Ruthin, Conwy, Bangor and Capel Curig. He returned in 1842 to study the geology at Capel Curig, Bangor and Caernarfon. Darwin’s last visit to Wales was for a family holiday in 1869 to Caerdeon and Barmouth.

Edinburgh University

In 1825, aged 16, Darwin enrolled at Edinburgh University to study medicine, following his father and grandfather. Although it offered the best medical education in Britain, Charles found the lectures dull and the clinical studies distressing. He was horrified to witness the pain patients had to suffer when operated on with no anaesthetic.

During his second year, Darwin pursued his interests in natural history through a small student group called the Plinian Society. He became close to Robert Grant, a sponge expert, with whom he explored and studied the marine life of the coastline near Edinburgh. Grant moved on to University College, London, where he established the Grant Museum.

After two years Darwin finally abandoned his medical studies and left Edinburgh in 1827.

• Cambridge

Darwin studied theology at Cambridge University but also spent much time developing his passion for natural history.

Christ’s College, Cambridge University

In 1827, Darwin enrolled at Christ’s College, Cambridge University where he studied theology for just over three years.

During his time at Cambridge, Darwin continued to enjoy the countryside and spent much time with his cousin, William Fox, who introduced him to beetle collecting. He also became friends with William Paley, who promoted natural theology, and the geologist Adam Sedgwick.

In his last two terms Darwin spent much time with the Rev John Henslow, a professor of botany, and became known as ‘the man who walks with Henslow’.

It was Henslow, himself restricted by family commitments, who recommended Darwin as a suitable companion and naturalist for Captain FitzRoy on the Beagle expedition.

Darwin lived in the same first floor rooms in College from late 1828 until he graduated in 1831.

Today, the College Hall has a portrait of Darwin and a stained glass window depicting him.

A large bronze bust by William Couper, presented by an American delegation in honour of the centenary of his birth, is displayed in the Shrine in the college grounds.

Sidney Street

Darwin only moved up to Cambridge early in 1828, and at first lived in lodgings above a tobacconist’s in Sidney Street. He later moved into rooms in one of the college’s courtyards.

Fitzwilliam Street

Years later, after he returned from the Beagle voyage in 1836, Darwin revisited Cambridge many times. Needing time to sort his specimens from the voyage, he rented a house in Fitzwilliam Street for a few months, which can now be identified by a stone plaque.

• Plymouth, Devon

The Beagle set sail from Plymouth in 1831 with 22-year-old Darwin on board as the gentleman naturalist and companion to Captain FitzRoy.

HMS Beagle

Darwin spent two months in Plymouth before setting sail while Captain FitzRoy was supervising alterations to the ship. He stayed in lodgings in Clarence Baths with John Lort Stokes, one of the two survey officers with whom he would share a cabin on board.

The waiting and increasing anxiety about the impending voyage caused Darwin to refer to this time as ‘the most miserable which I ever spent’.

Darwin commented to Henslow on the ship’s cramped interior, ‘The corner of the cabin, which is my private property, is most woefully small. – I have just room to turn around & that is all.’

The Beagle finally set sail from the Devonport Dockyard in Plymouth on 27 December 1831 with Darwin on board.

• Falmouth, Cornwall

After five years spent circumnavigating the globe the Beagle returned to Falmouth harbour on 2 October 1836.

Epic voyage

During the voyage Darwin experienced extreme hardship and exhilarating discovery. Often having to cope with illness, hunger, tiredness, turbulent weather, natural disasters, and disagreements within the crew, Darwin dedicated his time to studying and collecting thousands of fossils, plants and animals previously unseen by his contemporaries back home.

• London Societies linked to Darwin

After his return from the Beagle voyage, Darwin developed contacts with many eminent scientists and scientific societies based in London.

Geological Society of London

Darwin was an active member of the Society as he was elected a Fellow in 1836, became a Secretary in 1838, and Vice-President in 1843. He had regular interactions with Charles Lyell, whose book, Principles of Geology, Darwin had fervently studied while on the Beagle voyage using it as a basis for developing his ideas on the formation of coral reefs.

Hunterian Museum, Royal College of Surgeons

After Darwin returned from the Beagle voyage, he needed to find people to identify the thousands of specimens he collected on his travels. In October 1836 he met Richard Owen, who was the new Hunterian Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons. Later that year he handed over his prized fossil mammals for Owen, a skilled anatomist, to identify. Owen’s assertion that the fossils belonged to extinct giant mammals of similar types to smaller living mammals in South America, provided Darwin with evidence of common ancestry.

Linnean Society of London

On 1 July 1858 Joseph Hooker and Charles Lyell read out Darwin’s and Alfred Russell Wallace’s papers on the tendency of species to form varieties and species by natural means of selection to a select group of scientists.

The timing was prompted by a letter Darwin received from Wallace a month before. Darwin was alarmed to find out that Wallace, who was collecting specimens in the Far East, had come up with almost the same theory as Darwin’s of evolution by natural selection. He was now forced to make his ideas public.

Hooker and Lyell arranged to read Wallace’s letter and extracts of Darwin’s unpublished manuscripts to the next meeting of the Linnean Society. Wallace was far away and Darwin’s youngest son had recently died of scarlet fever so they were both absent from the meeting.

Later that year, the president of the Linnean Society wrote in his annual report that the year had not been marked by any discoveries which “revolutionize science”.

The Natural History Museum

During the Second World War a number of Darwin’s fossil mammal specimens were taken to the Natural History Museum when the Hunterian Museum suffered bomb damage.

Today, the Museum stores hundreds of specimens collected by Darwin, including parrotfish preserved in jars of spirit, domestic pigeon skins, beetles, stuffed armadillos, giant ground sloth fossils, fragments of coral, and dried mosses and lichens.

There are many specimens from the Beagle voyage, including the finches and mocking birds from the Galapagos Islands that helped to crystallise his ideas. Darwin’s barnacle collections, which he studied later in his life to establish himself as a senior and serious systematic scientist, are also held at the Museum.

The Museum has recently acquired the Kohler Darwin Collection, the world’s largest collection of works by and about Charles Darwin, which includes a first edition presentation copy of On the Origin of Species.

Royal Institution of Great Britain

In 1880 Thomas Huxley gave an address on ‘The coming of age of The origin of species’, which was published in Nature. He talked of the significant accumulation of fossil evidence in favour of evolution that had occurred since 1859, when On the Origin of Species was first published.

Royal Society of London

Darwin was elected fellow of the Society on 24 January 1839. In 1853 he was awarded the Royal Medal for his exhaustive work on barnacles, and in 1864 he was awarded the prestigious Copley Medal for his outstanding researches in geology, zoology and botanical physiology.

Royal Zoological Society of London

Darwin became a fellow of the Royal Zoological Society of London in 1837. John Gould, who was then employed by the Zoological Society, described the birds Darwin had collected on the Beagle voyage. It was Gould who realised that the finches found on the Galapagos Islands belonged to a new group and that different species were confined to different islands.

In March 1838, Darwin saw his first ape in London Zoo, which had recently acquired an orang-utan named Jenny. Darwin observed a keeper teasing her with an apple and was fascinated by the similarity between the ape’s reaction and a child’s tantrum, later writing to his sister, that the ape ‘threw herself on her back, kicked & cried, precisely like a naughty child’.

• London locations linked to Darwin

Darwin lived in several locations in London and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

Great Marlborough Street

Darwin lived in rented accommodation here from 1837-8, soon after his return from the Beagle voyage.

Upper Gower Street

Number 12 Upper Gower Street, which later became number 110, was the first home of Charles and Emma Darwin after their marriage in 1839. Charles Darwin moved in on 31 December 1838, and Emma joined him after their wedding on 29 January 1839. They rented it, furnished, and called it Macaw Cottage after the gaudy colours of its furnishings.

Their eldest two children, William Erasmus and Anne Elizabeth, were born here. They moved out in September 1842.

The house was bombed in 1941 and the site is now part of the Department of Biology, University College London. A modern block called the Darwin Building stands on the exact site of Macaw Cottage.

Grant Museum

The Darwin Building, which bears a blue plaque commemorating Darwin, houses the Grant Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy. The collection was started by Robert Grant, an early mentor of Darwin’s at Edinburgh University.

Westminster Abbey

Charles Darwin was buried in Westminster Abbey in April 1882. His gravestone and a bronze memorial relief are inside the Abbey.

• Glen Roy, Scotland

Darwin studied the unique geology of Glen Roy when he returned from the Beagle voyage.

Parallel roads of Glen Roy

In 1838 Darwin made observations on the parallel roads of Glen Roy, and of other parts of Lochaber in Scotland, with an attempt to prove that they were of marine origin. He published his paper but later wrote, ‘I do believe every word in my Glen Roy paper is false’.

It is now known that the famous geological feature is the remains of ancient shorelines. They formed at the end of the last ice age when an advancing glacier pushed up the water level of a lake that filled the valley.

• Downe, Bromley, Kent

Darwin moved to Down House with his growing family in September 1842, and lived here for 40 years until he died in 1882.

Down House

Darwin bought the house, with 18 acres of land, from the vicar of Downe for just over 2000 pounds. Soon after they moved in, Charles and Emma began extending and renovating the house and gardens to create the home they wanted.

Down house is now owned by English Heritage and is open to the public

Darwin’s study

Darwin’s study at Down House remains much as it was when Darwin was alive.

The writing desk and chair were used by Darwin as he developed his theory of evolution.

Gardens and greenhouses

The gardens and greenhouses have been restored and some of Darwin’s experiments on orchids, carnivorous plants and honeybees have been recreated.

Sandwalk

Beyond the garden was a path around a small wood, that Darwin referred to as his ‘thinking path’ as he paced around it fives times every day at noon.

Emma Darwin, Charles’ wife was buried in Downe churchyard in 1896.

Downe Bank

Darwin’s observations here of orchids and their insect pollinators gave him evidence of co-evolution and led to the publication of his famous book Fertilisation of Orchids in 1862.

Experts now agree that Downe Bank is indeed the species-rich setting that inspired Darwin’s conclusion of On the Origin of Species where he refers to an ‘entangled bank’.

High Elms

This large estate of about 370 acres of woodland and species-rich chalk grassland is now a Local Nature Reserve. The land once belonged to John Lubbock, the renowned biologist and politician, who Darwin encouraged as a boy to study the local wildlife. He helped Darwin illustrate his great barnacle work and later wrote a book on the social insects.

Keston

Darwin used this area in his earthworm research, investigating their presence and absence in different parts of the heath.

Darwin also spent much time observing round-leaved sundew at Keston Bog. He noticed how insects became stuck to the leaves of sundew, which led him to investigate how it trapped and digested insects, pioneering work which led to the publication of Insectivorous Plants in 1875.

Keston Ponds were the most likely source of the mud from which Darwin germinated plants in a sequence of experiments into the geographical distribution of freshwater plants.

• Malvern, Worcestershire

Darwin had several long stays at this spa town between 1849 and 1851, and again in 1863.

Malvern spa

Darwin stayed at The Lodge on Worcester Road and took daily water cure treatments at Dr Gully’s hydrotherapy facility. This therapy involved cold showers, wet wraps, steam baths, strict diets and long walks in the countryside intended to stimulate the circulation and drive out toxins from the blood and organs.

Malvern Priory

His eldest daughter, Annie, was taken to Malvern for treatment in 1851, suffering from a fever, and died there aged 10. She was buried in Malvern Priory.

• Moor Park nr Farnham, Surrey

Moor Park was a water cure establishment that Darwin visited often between 1857 and 1859.

Moor Park

Darwin referred to Moor Park as, ‘Dr. Lane’s delightful hydropathic establishment’. As well as the water therapy and relaxation, Darwin enjoyed solitary walks around the beautiful grounds.

Although Moor Park House is not open to the public, there is a short heritage trail in the grounds.

• Ilkley, nr Otley, Yorkshire

Darwin was staying in Ilkley and taking water cure treatments when On the Origin of Species was published in November 1859.

Water cure treatments

He finished working on the proofs on 1 October then travelled to Ilkley on 2 October, recording in his diary, ‘I am worn out & must have rest…’ Darwin and his family stayed here at Wells Terrace while he took water cure treatments, which included cold water baths.

• Oxford

Oxford was the location of the infamous debate on evolution and religion in 1860.

Oxford University Museum of Natural History

In June 1860 the newly opened Oxford University Museum of Natural History hosted one of the most famous debates in scientific history. It was the ‘great debate’ between Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford and Thomas Huxley, the biologist and writer.

They argued furiously about Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection and the questions it raised about man’s place in the natural world and religious belief. Darwin himself was not well enough to attend the debate but Huxley was nicknamed ‘Darwin’s bull-dog’ for his ardent defence of Darwin’s work.

Today the Museum displays a statue of Darwin and some of the crabs he collected during his voyage on the Beagle.

From The Times -

Horses were moved over long distances in pre-Roman Britain, recent analysis has shown. Previous theories that horses were bred on specialised ranches are now joined by evidence that animals may have been traded to southern England from as far away as Wales or Scotland.

The absence of young horses’ bones from some Iron Age sites, such as the Gussage All Saints settlement in Dorset, suggested that they had bred elsewhere; the capture and breaking of wild animals, perhaps similar to the feral herds of the New Forest and Dartmoor, seemed a likely source. The high proportion of stallion bones, as at Danebury hillfort in Hampshire, was also an argument for non-controlled herds, since a domesticated herd needs few stallions and many mares.

On the other hand, Julius Caesar’s claim that the Iron Age ruler Cassivelaunus had 4,000 chariots, and thus 8,000 chariot horses, at his disposal led the late Peter Reynolds to infer that horse breeding was a large operation, carried on at what were effectively stud farms. The presence of foal bones at only a few Iron Age sites supports such a breeder-customer model.

Analysis of horse teeth from two Iron Age sites near Winchester now indicates that breeder and recipient may not have lived close together, although the sample is as yet too small for firm conclusions to be drawn. One tooth each from the Rooksdown and Bury Hill sites, dating to the later centuries BC, were assayed for strontium-isotope content, examining the ratio between strontium-86 and strontium-87, which varies with the local geology, soil and groundwater content, and which is fixed in the tooth enamel through the early years of life as the teeth form.

Reporting in Archaeometry, Dr Robin Bendry and colleagues note that comparison with the teeth of domestic food animals from the sites, which could be assumed to be locally bred, and also human burials from Winchester, showed that the Bury Hill horse had been bred locally, although whether it was tamed or domesticated was not indicated. The Rooksdown specimen, however, showed a different pattern: possible areas for its origin include Devon and Cornwall, Wales, parts of northwest England and Scotland, or even parts of the Continent. The investigators note that similarly distant origins have been documented for humans buried in the Stonehenge area, although almost two millennia older than the Rookswood horse.

“The data show that horses were moved over great distances,” they conclude, “evidence for long-distance movement perhaps through trade or exchange.”

Archaeometry 51: 140-150.

All photographs and text from the Guardian.

A male great bustard makes a courtship display. Great bustards disappeared from the UK in 1832 after game shooters made it extinct. This emblem of Wiltshire and the heaviest flying bird in the world (it can weigh up to 20kg) was reintroduced to Salisbury Plain in 2004, with eggs rescued from farmland in Russia. Great bustards need open grassland and arable fields where they feed on grasshoppers and cereal seeds; Photograph: Erich Kuchling/Rex Features

A beaver swimming in a Scottish river. Beavers were hunted to extinction in the UK by the end of the 16th century for their fur, glands for medicine and because their building of dams interfered with other land uses. Proposals to reintroduce this famous wetland engineer to Knapdale Forest in Scotland began in 1994. This was turned down in 2002 and again in 2005. A licence was granted in 2007 and the first beavers to return to Scotland for 400 years will be released this spring. Other proposals for reintroduction in England and Wales are being considered. The first beavers arrive in Scotland for the reintroduction programme that has started at a secret location. The beavers have all been electronically tagged; Photograph: A.Good/Rex Features

It’s been over 400 years since a wild beaver roamed an English river, but freedom will probably be short-lived for the lone male still at large after escaping – along with two rapidly recaptured females – a few weeks ago from an enclosure in Devon.

Unlike some parts of Europe, where beavers have been reintroduced by being chucked out of the back of a van, the return of once-extinct wild animals to the British countryside is treated with Byzantine feasibility studies, public consultations, legal wrangling, interminable arguments and meticulous planning. For example, it has taken since 1994 to reach acceptance on beaver reintroduction to Knapdale Forest, in Argyll and Bute, Scotland, with the first releases due this spring.

Ecologist and beaver reintroduction specialist Derek Gow, from whose enclosure the three beavers escaped, says: “It has been a long and tortuous process, and the success of reintroductions of beavers will be because of the ability to manage the species and habitats. We are involved in a feasibility study with South West Water. Beavers could help water filtration, removing pollutants and conserving water supply to reservoirs. They are ideal for ecosystem engineering, and they bring real environmental benefits.

“That’s how you sell the idea of reintroduction and persuade landowners. It’s all very well talking about conservation in cosy meeting rooms, but any landowners think conservationists are a devious lot. If we can’t engage with landowners and show them the benefits, reintroduction will be dead in the water. Nature conservationists have to get gritty and realistic.”

Also preaching realism is Tim Coulton, professor of population biology at Imperial College London, although he’s talking about probably the least realistic of the reintroduction targets: the wolf. “The reason for our report [a joint UK and Norway report on wolf reintroduction in Scotland for the Royal Society in 2007] was to look at the effect of wolves on the deer population of Scotland by simulating what had happened elsewhere. The debate on wolf reintroduction had been driven by anecdote and we wanted to inject some science to provide a more informed debate.”

Coulton appreciates that the motivations of many who support animal reintroductions may be aesthetic or romantic, and he does not believe that, even with economic subsidies, there will be strong enough support from sheep farmers for the reintroduction of wolves. However, he does see reintroductions as an important means to an end. “We have to decide what we want from our open spaces – large fields or diverse ecosystems, tourism, water quality,” he says. “Reintroductions can be a tool to achieve these ends. I suspect science rarely drives reintroductions, but it’s the role of science to provide data for a debate and raise warnings, not to decide. That requires a wider public platform.”

Steve Carver, senior lecturer in geography at Leeds University and a coordinator of the Wildlands Network, agrees. “Reintroductions must have grassroots support and cannot work as an authoritarian, top-down process,” he argues. “The reintroduction of the white-tailed eagle on Mull [in Scotland] has developed an industry around wildlife watching. People need to see the benefits of re-wilded landscapes.” He says different landscapes need different policies, with subsidies for restoring habitats.

The current reintroductions, and many of the candidates for a future return, do not require landscape-scale ecological restoration for their success. For example, the red kite has the highest population for 200 years in the UK. White-tailed eagles too can float over the existing landscape without its modification, while wild boar have introduced themselves to the English countryside very successfully, and great bustards like Ministry of Defence grassland and arable fields on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire.

The most iconic candidate for reintroduction, the lynx, could also arrive without any landscape restoration. This big cat seems happy to live in broadleaved woodland or conifer plantations, and it is estimated that the Scottish Highlands could support a population of 400 lynx. Its selling point is that it would keep down roe deer numbers, as well as foxes, the notorious predators of ground-nesting birds.

Carver says: “The reintroduction of lynx will depend on the success of the beaver, so I’m hopeful that, within 10-15 years, they may be reintroduced. Personally, I’d be happy going to my grave knowing they were back.”

Behind the reintroduction and the re-wilding agenda there is an important shift going on in the conservation world. “Traditional conservation has potentially seen its day,” Carver claims. “The old guard was focused on sites and species, and managed reserves for one species, not the whole landscape. There’s a reason for rarity. If we lose a few species, does it really matter if they’re common in other locations? The new paradigm in conservation is about habitats, landscapes and whole ecosystems.”

Facing a list of 1,149 priority wildlife species and 65 priority habitats that need concerted action to save them, the government’s chances of fulfilling its commitment to stop the loss of biodiversity before 2010 is hopeless. A new target of 2020 is being proposed, but that is likely to be just as hopeless. As traditional conservation becomes more difficult, with less money available and less public support in the current financial climate, the reintroduction of charismatic fauna offers conservation bodies a chance to engage with the public in ways that obscure species of plants and invertebrates in isolated nature reserves unfortunately don’t.

Defining moment

As well as this utilitarian approach to the value of animal reintroductions as economic tools, and the enhanced products and services of ecosystems, Andy Evans, head of the RSPB’s terrestrial research section, says: “There is a moral imperative to correct anthropogenic harm and a moral obligation to maintain habitats, and to improve them from damage caused by, for example, agriculture. Conservation, which has always been scale-dependent, is facing a defining moment.”

Ecologist and author Peter Taylor says: “The reintroduction of charismatic species is also a way of re-wilding the human mind, engaging people with nature on a deeper psychological level. But these reintroductions won’t happen unless all the community is involved, including hunting, shooting, fishing and farming interests.

“This kind of conservation is not helped by the dead hand of computer simulations, government consultations and accounts of the lynx being good for eco-tourism. In early natural history, there was a spiritual connection with nature. As a scientist, I think we need to reclaim something lost from scientific conservation. The lynx, the beaver and wild boar have become iconic emblems for that.”

Comeback contenders

Lynx
The Eurasian lynx, a secretive, powerful cat, is the most likely mammal predator to be reintroduced to the UK – although many say it is already here.

A Eurasian lynx mother sits in the grass while her two pups play in their outdoor enclosure in Germany. This secretive, powerful cat with tufted ears and a short tail weighing 25kg survived in Britain until 180AD. The Eurasian lynx is the most likely mammal predator candidate for reintroduction, although many say it is already established in some areas. It is estimated that the Scottish highlands could support a population of 400 lynx, where they would control roe deer and foxes; Photograph: Ronald Wittek/Corbis

Beaver
Hunted to extinction here by the end of the 16th century. A proposal launched in 1994 to reintroduce it to Knapdale Forest, Scotland, was turned down in 2002 and again in 2005. A licence was granted in 2007 and the first beavers to return to Scotland will be released this spring.

White-tailed eagle
By 1916, this huge bird, sometimes called the sea eagle, became extinct here through persecution. It was reintroduced to Scotland from Scandinavia in 1975 and there are now 42 breeding territories there. A study is being carried out on proposals to reintroduce it to East Anglia.

A white-tailed eagle seen in Scotland. In 1700 there were 200 pairs but by 1916 this huge bird, sometimes called the sea eagle, became extinct after persecution in the UK. It was reintroduced to Scotland from Scandinavia in 1975 and there are now 42 breeding territories there. A feasibility study is being carried out on proposals to reintroduce it to East Anglia;Photograph: /RSPB

Great bustard
Last year saw the first egg laid by a great bustard – the heaviest flying bird in the world – in the UK for 175 years. It was reintroduced to Salisbury Plain in a project that began in 2004 with eggs rescued from farmland in Russia.

Pictured here is the first female great bustard to lay eggs in Britain in 175 years; Photograph: HO/AFP

Wild boar
After an absence of 400 years, they have reintroduced themselves by escaping from boar farms damaged in the 1987 storm. Now well-established in south-east England and the Forest of Dean.

After an absence of 400 years, wild boar have reintroduced themselves by escaping from boar farms damaged by the 1987 storm. There are now populations in south-east England and the Forest of Dean; Photograph: Solent News/Rex Features

Grey wolf
The last wolf in the UK was killed in Scotland in the 17th century. Experience in other countries shows that reintroduction would help to regenerate vegetation and woodland.

The last wolf in the UK was killed in Scotland in the 17th century. According to recent population modelling if wolves were reintroduced to Scotland, their population would stabilise at 25 wolves per 1,000 square kilometres. Although wolf populations would have an impact on the high red deer population, experience in other countries shows the wider effect would be to regenerate vegetation and woodland, benefiting wildlife and helping to restore ecosystems; Photograph: Robert Pickett/Pickett

Large Blue butterfly
One of the most vulnerable butterflies in the world, it became extinct in the UK in 1975, but was reintroduced to Dartmoor in 2000 from Sweden.

The large blue butterfly became extinct in the UK in 1975 but was reintroduced to Dartmoor in 2000 from Sweden. This is one of the most vulnerable butterflies in the world. It lays its eggs on wild thyme, then the caterpillars are adopted by red ants who take them into their nests, where the butterfly caterpillars become predators of ant grubs before pupating and emerging as spectacularly bright blue adults; Photograph: Emma Daniel/PA

In his readable book, ‘And Did Those Feet – Walking through 2000 years of British and Irish History’, published this year, Charlie Connelly wrote about his fairly recent walks in the British Isles that retraced the steps of famous, seminal journeys from history.  Here is an excerpt from his extraordinary journey through Lincolnshire,  -

After an hour or so of heart-pumpingly terrifying slog, I suddenly became aware that the traffic had disappeared.  There was nothing to be seen in either direction and the sudden silence was as surprising as it was welcome – I could see for a fair distance in both directions and there was no traffic at all.  Then, to my amazement, I saw two people in the road.  The only light was from my own downward-pointing torch and the faint glow of the horizon, so I could  only see them in silhouette, but there were definitely two people walking towards me.  They were actually in the road on the same side as me, so facing any oncoming traffic that might appear; a man and a woman.  I couldn’t see their faces, but they looked quite young.  He was tall, stocky and appeared to be wearing a T-shirt, she was small, wore her hair in a ponytail and had a jacket folded over her arms.  While I was amazed to see anyone out there I was also a little relieved.  Seeing other people reassured me a little, just by the fact that I wasn’t the only pedestrian on the A15 that night.  I’d started to believe that I was the first person ever to walk this stretch, yet here were a couple apparently even worse off than me – at least I was vaguely well equipped.  It was a very cold night and I was well wrapped up; my panting, frightened breath came in big clouds.  They were just in a T-shirt and a blouse.  There must be an explanation for them being out here like this, I thought.  Their car must have broken down or something.  I expected to see it down the road somewhere, hazard lights winking.

‘All right?’ I asked as they drew level.

No reaction.  Not a flicker.  We were a good couple of miles from any kind of house or even turning in either direction; you’d have thought three people in such a similarly tricky predicament would have been pleased to see each other.  But they didn’t even acknowledge me.

‘What are you doing out here?’  Again, not a flicker of reaction.  They just carried on walking in the road as if I wasn’t there, passing within six feet of me.

In the time it took me to walk on a few paces and mutter ‘Well, bollocks to you then’ to myself, I realised that I had the advantage of a map.  I knew that there was nothing in the directin they were going for a good hour’s walk at least.  If they were going for help they wouldn’t find any that way.  I turned around to call after them.

Gone.  There was no sign of them.  It had barely been ten seconds since I’d passed them.  The road was completely flat in both directions and there were fields on either side with low hedgerows separating them from the road.  There was simply nowhere they could have gone, yet they’d totally vanished.  At that point the clouds parted and a big, fat yellow full moon appeared, heaving its way into the sky and illuminating the scene briefly before the clouds joined up again and the traffic resumed with as much ferocity as before.  I walked on as the roar of the traffic battered my eardrums, but the more I thought about it the more confused I became, particularly when I didn’t pass any kind of abandoned vehicle all the rest of the way.  It just didn’t add up.  It was a cold night, yet he was in a T-shirt and she had a jacket folded over her arms.  It was so cold you could see your breath in clouds.  Which is when I realised I hadn’t seen theirs.  Then there was the fact they didn’t acknowledge my presence, even though I’d spoken to them twice.  Out there in the dark, on the road with nothing around for miles, they’d not even nodded at me.

Much later, when I got home at the end of the journey, I looked up the A15 on the internet.  That part of it on the way to Sleaford turned out to be one of the most haunted stretches of road in Britain.  Page after page detailed ghostly experiences precisely where I’d seen those people.  In the late 1990s there had even been an entire episode of This Morning devoted to it.  None of the accounts seemed to tally with what I’d seen (there were frequent tales of motorists seeing a face suddenly looming up in their windscreens out of the darkness and disappearing just before impact, a couple of ghostly horsemen and the usual smattering of Roman soldiers) but it certainly made me wonder.  There could well be a perfectly reasonable explanation.  I may well have inadvertently embellished the tale in my memory – I was, after all, in a fairly agitated state anyway – but to this day I can’t explain what I saw out on the road that night.

It didn’t get me any closer to Sleaford either, and I still had a good couple of hours of frightened trudging ahead of me.  I was out there for so long that the torch batteries began to fail and the light that saved me from the lumps, clumps and bramble trip-wires began to dim.  Eventually, to my immense relief, the lights of a town appeared in the distance, and I can guarantee you right now that nobody, but nobody, has ever been pleased to see the Sleaford Travelodge as I was.

My route had taken me slightly east of Ermine Street, but I was still following a Roman road south when I left Sleaford the next morning.  As far as I could tell it was the most direct route to London so there was still a possibility that Harold passed that way too.  By lunchtime I was making good progress towards Bourne and on a pleasant sunny afternoon passed another big church in the middle of nowhere, this time at the convergence of some tracks rather than roads.  A man was mowing the churchyard and gave me a friendly wave, and a few hundred yards further along the track I found the most extraordinary thing.  There, in the middle of rural Lincolnshire, I found a little piece of Wales.  Just off the track, in front of a line of trees was a flat-fronted standing stone, about four feet high.  A small border in front of it was crammed with flowers and shrubs, some planted, some laid by visitors.  As I approached I could see there was an oval plaque on it and, to my surprise, most of it was in Welsh.  ‘GWENLLIAN’ it said across the centre, with ‘Merch Llywelyn Ein Llew Olaf’ in smaller letters above and the dates 12.6.1282 and 7.6.1337.  Beneath the name was an English translation, ‘Daughter of Llewelyn, Last Prince of Wales’.  In smaller letters around the edge, in English and Welsh, the inscription read, ‘Born at Garthcelyn Aber Gwynedd, at 18 months old she was abducted by Edward I and held captive here at Sempringham Abbey for the rest of her life’.  Another small plaque nearby said ‘In Everlasting Memory – daffodils planted in 1996 by Boston Welsh Society’, with another bearing the legend ‘Merched Y Wawr’, which, I would later learn, is the rough equivalent of a Welsh Women’s Institute.

I was intrigued by this small piece of Wales stuck here, far from main roads, in an apparently unremarkable backwater.  As for Sempringham Abbey, there appeared to be no sign of it as far as I could see; the OS map gave no clue that there was even a ruin here.

There was a crunching of gravel and a sleek black four-wheel-drive vehicle eased to a halt next to me.  A man and a woman got out, stretching and loosening as if they’d reached the end of a long journey.  They came and stood next to me at the stone, and for a while none of us said anything.

‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ said the woman eventually. ‘Such a tragic story.’  Her voice was awed, her accent definitely Welsh.

I had to confess that I had no idea what the stone was for; I’d just been passing.  When she told me that she and her husband had driven all the way from Cardiff just to see it I knew that there had to be something special about this place.

‘How much do you know about Welsh history?’ she asked.  Despite having once had a fiercely patriotic Welsh girlfriend, I had to confess that I didn’t know much.  Patiently she began to explain why there was this little monument to Welshness in the east of England.

‘Llewelyn ap Gruffydd had fought hard to become Prince of Wales,’ she began.  ‘He’d had to defeat his own brothers in battle in 1255 and then set about trying to remove the English.  Henry III had invaded Gwynedd in 1247, built castles and forced the local lords to kowtow to him.  After the battle Llywelyn appointed himself sole ruler of Gwynedd and proclaimed himself Prince in 1258.  Henry was fairly amenable to this at first and praised Llewelyn for his restraint, and eventually – in 1267, I think it was – Henry acknoweldged him as Prince of Wales.  Henry was then succeeded as King of England by Edward I, who wasn’t quite as tolerant of Llywelyn’s status.  But when Llywelyn married Henry’s niece Eleanor at Worcester in 1275, Edward gave the bride away and laid on the wedding feast.

‘However, it still rankled that Llywelyn had refused to attend his coronation and on five occasions between 1274 and 1279 he had refused to pay homage to the English king when asked.  Edward eventually invaded and Llwelyn led a fierce Welsh resistance.  Eventually, though, in the winter of 1282 Llwelyn’s army suffered a defeat in battle at Builth Wells.  Llywelyn was leaving the battle with a handful of followers when they were ambushed and he was killed.  When the English realised just who they’d got they cut off Llywelyn’s head and sent it to Edward, who had it displayed on a spike at the Tower of London, where it stayed for fifteen years.  He’s known today as Llywelyn the Last as he was the last Welsh Prince of an independent Wales.’

‘But what brings you here?’ I asked. ‘Why is this place so significant?’

‘Well, five months before he died Llywelyn had fathered a daughter, Gwenllian.  Eleanor had died in childbirth, so when Llywelyn was killed the baby was orphaned.  When she was eighteen months old she was spirited away and brough here, to Sempringham Abbey, as far from Wales and her heritage as possible.  The English didn’t want her knowing about her background and didn’t want the Welsh to have a figurehead to rally behind, so they sent her here to the nuns, where she lived until she was fifty-six.  Imagine that: living your whole life not knowing who you are.

‘This is such an important place for the Welsh now.  She could have been the continuation of our royal bloodline.  It’s such a terrible thing to do to someone, to take away their birthright, their whole life, yet few people outside Wales know about it.  The history books say that the Gwynedd dynasty, the last official independent Welsh royal family, ended with Llywelyn by actually it ended right here, it’s so unfair.’

Her tone was imploring.  Her voice was filled with injustice that echoed down seven hundred years of history.  When I explained why I was walking through this part of Lincolnshire countryside she clutched my forearm, looked pleadingly into my eyes and said, ‘You have to write about this.  Please write about this.  Promise me you’ll write about this, that you’ll tell her story.’

I promised.  She released my arm, wished me luck and they both climbed into the car.  Before they pulled away she wound down the window and called out, ‘When you walk across that little bridge there, look back at the stone and you’ll see,’ and with that the car was gone, heading back to Cardiff.

I walked the few yards to the little stone bridge across the stream that ran behind the memorial.  When I looked back at the stone I saw what she meant.  From that angle it looked exactly like a nun kneeling in prayer.

pp.114-19

Scottish history from Scottishweb -

Scotland’s history is dotted with battles and skirmishes around these fortifications, some of which have had a massive impact on the future of Scotland as a nation. There is one place however that stands out as a landmark both in its physical appearance and on the pages of Scottish history: Dunadd hill fort in Argyll, Scotland.

Dunadd could be regarded as the crowning place for the original Kings of Scotland. This fist of stone on the edge of Crinan Moss in Argyll, near the village of Lochgilphead, is believed to be the “capital” of the ancient kingdom of Dalriada. It makes for a perfect defensive position, prominating from a flat moss all around. The sides of the hill are terraced in such a fashion as to protect the small fort on the top.

It was built around 500AD at a time when Fergus MacErc and two of his brothers led a Scottish invasion from Ireland and established their kingdom of Dalriada with Dunadd as its seat. In climbing the hill its easy to appreciate how well defended it is. Several obstacles must be surmounted before reaching the top, which at the time was a solid built stone fortification.

On the slope near to the summit there are rocks containing what appear to be a carved out human footprint and a stone basin. There is also a slab of stone with a carved wild boar on it, as well as an inscription in Ogam writing. Its said that the would be king would place his foot in this stone ‘footprint’ during the crowning ceremony. This ritual was certainly a large influence on the Lords of the Isles, who based their ceremonial inaugurations on the said rituals at Dunadd.

Many items have been found in the three times the site has been officially excavated. Items such as beautiful broaches, quern stones and fine examples of metal working all tie in with the theory about Dunadd being the seat of the King.

However – to the north was still the kingdom of the Picts. Many years of Viking battering on the Pictish nation had taken its toll, and by 843 with Dunadd being an established political centre, Kenneth MacAlpin, the king of the Scots based at Dunadd, attacked the Picts in an attempt to gain rule over the Pictish kingdom.

He enjoyed success in his efforts and united the two kingdoms under his rule, thus becoming the first true king of all Scotland. As in the Huntingdon Chronicle – ” And so he was the first of the Scots to obtain the monarchy of the whole of Alba, which is now called Scotia “

Dunadd is an enchanting place and it is still easy to imagine the small hill teaming with people and life. It must have been a busy place in its day, and the remains of the work endured by its inhabitants remains there for us to see over a thousand years later.

The whole Kilmartin area is fascinating and littered with prehistoric and historic monuments. From castles and standing stones to brochs and burial sites, one could spend many days in the same area.

Scotland was born here -

From wikipedia -

Dunadd Hill Fort

Dunadd, ‘fort on the [River] Add’, is an Iron Age and later hillfort near Kilmartin in Argyll and Bute, Scotland, a little north of Lochgilphead (NR 836 936). At one time an island, it now lies inland near the River Add. The surrounding land, now largely reclaimed, was formerly boggy and known as the Mòine Mhòr ‘Great Moss’ in Gaelic. This no doubt increased the defensive potential of the site.

Originally occupied in the Iron Age, the site later became a seat of the kings of Dál Riata. It is known for its unique stone carvings below the upper enclosure, including a footprint and basin thought to have formed part of Dál Riata’s coronation ritual. Though it is an assumption only and not attested in contemporary written sources, similarly as the legend saying that Dunadd was the first location of Stone of Scone in Scotland. On the same flat outcrop of rock is an incised boar in Pictish style, and in inscription in the ogham script. The inscription is read as referring to a Finn Manach and is dated to the late 8th century or after.

Dunadd is mentioned twice in early sources. In 683 the Annals of Ulster record: ‘The siege of Dunadd and the siege of Dundurn [a hillfort near Loch Earn]‘ without further comment on the outcome or participants. In the same chronicle the entry for 736 states: ‘Óengus son of Fergus, king of the Picts, laid waste the territory of Dál Riata and seized Dunadd, and burned Creic [location unknown] and bound in chains two sons of Selbach king of Dál Riata], i.e. Dúngal and Feredach . .’.

The site was occupied after 736, at least into the 9th century. It is mentioned twice in later sources, suggesting that it retained some importance. In 1436, it is recorded that “Alan son of John Riabhach MacLachlan of Dunadd” was made seneschal of the lands of Glassary; the chief place of residence of the MacLachlans of Dunadd lay below the fort. In June 1506, commissioners appointed by James IV, including the earl and bishop of Argyll, met at Dunadd to collect rents and resolve feuds.

The site is an Ancient Monument, under the care of Historic Scotland, and is open to the public (open all year; no entrance charge).

Because Dunadd is mentioned in early sources, and is readily identifiable, it has been excavated on several occasions (1904-05, 1929, 1980) and has one of the most important ensembles of finds from any early medieval site in Scotland. These include tools, weapons, quernstones, imported pottery and motif-pieces and moulds for the manufacture of fine metalwork (especially jewellery).

Seed Drill, from Horse-hoeing husbandry by Jethro Tull, 4th edition, from 1752

From the BBC -

Jethro Tull was born in 1674 into a family of Berkshire gentry. He studied at Oxford University and Gray’s Inn in preparation for a legal political career, but ill health postponed these plans and, after his marriage in 1699, he began farming with his father.

At the time, seeds were distributed into furrows (‘drilling’) by hand. However, Tull had noticed that traditional heavy sowing densities were not very efficient so he instructed his staff to drill at very precise, low densities. By 1701, his frustration with their lack of co-operation prompted him to invent a machine to do the work for him. He designed his drill with a rotating cylinder. Grooves were cut into the cylinder to allow seed to pass from the hopper above to a funnel below. They were then directed into a channel dug by a plough at the front of the machine, then immediately covered by a harrow attached to the rear. This limited the wastage of seeding and made the crop easier to weed.

Initially the machine was only a limited success. In 1709 he moved to Prosperous Farm in Hungerford, and two years later decided to travel around Europe to improve his health and study agricultural techniques there. Upon his return in 1714, he perfected both his system and machinery. He pulverised the earth between the rows, believing that this released nutrients would act as a substitute for manure. While apparently successful – he grew wheat in the same field for 13 successive years without manuring – it is more likely that he merely prevented weeds from overcrowding and competing with the seed.

Tull’s other innovations included a plough with blades set in such a way that grass and roots were pulled up and left on the surface to dry.

Eventually, as agricultural improvement became fashionable, more interest began to be taken in Tull’s ideas. In 1731 he published his book, ‘The New Horse Hoeing Husbandry’, detailing his system and its machinery. It caused great controversy at the time, and arguments continued for another century before his eventual vindication. While several other mechanical seed drills had also been invented, Tull’s complete system was a major influence on the agricultural revolution and its impact can still be seen in today’s methods and machinery.

Tull died on 21 February 1741.

From Royal Berkshire History -

Jethro Tull was a major pioneer in the modernization of agriculture. He was born in Basildon in early 1674, the son of Jethro Tull Senior, a gentleman farmer of that parish, and his wife, Dorothy, the daughter of Thomas Buckeridge. He was baptised in the parish church there on 30th March.

At the age of seventeen, Tull matriculated at Oxford, to St. John’s College, on 7th July 1691, but appears to have taken no degree. He was admitted as a student of Gray’s Inn on 11th December 1693; and called to the Bar on 19th May, 1699. In his admission entry, he is stated to be of two years’ standing at Staple Inn, and to be the only son and heir apparent of Jethro Tull, of Howberry in Oxfordshire.

After being admitted as a barrister, Tull made a tour of Europe and, in every country through which he passed, was a diligent observer of the soil, culture and vegetable productions. On his return to England, he married, in 1699, Susannah Smith, of Burton Dassett (Warwickshire). They had two children named after themselves and he settled, with his new family, on his father’s farm at Howberry, in the parish of Crowmarsh Gifford, just across the Thames from Wallingford. Determined to improve agricultural methods and increase yields, he pursued a number of agricultural experiments there. By intense application, vexatious toil, and too frequently exposing himself to the vicissitudes of heat and cold in the open fields, he contracted a pulmonary disorder, which, not being found curable in England, obliged him a second time to travel, and to seek a cure in the milder climates of France and Italy. He returned, considerably improved in health, but greatly embarrassed in his fortune. Part of his property in Oxfordshire, he had sold and, before his departure for the Continent, had settled his family on a farm of his own, called Prosperous Farm, in the parish of Shalbourne, near Hungerford. There, he revised and rectified all his old instruments and designed new ones suitable to the different soils of his new farm; and demonstrated the good effects of his horse-hoeing culture. But though Tull was successful in demonstrating what might be done by improved culture, he was not able to turn it to his own advantage. His expenses were enhanced in various ways, but chiefly by the stupidity of the workmen employed in constructing his instruments, and in the awkwardness and maliciousness of his servants, who, because they did not or would not comprehend the use of them, seldom failed to break some essential part or other, in order to render them useless.

The drill-husbandry had been probably known and practiced for ages; but was first adopted upon a regular and permanent plan by Tull, who professed to have caught the idea from the vine-culture upon the Continent, and to whose ingenious mind the mechanism of an organ suggested the rudiments of an implement for the delivery of seed in drills. “It was named a drill,” he says, “because when farmers used to sow their beans and peas into channels or furrows by hand, they called that action drilling” and it could sew three rows of seeds simultaneously. Later, he devised a horse-drawn hoe to clear away weeds

Tull became a Bencher of Gray’s Inn on 5th May 1724. About this time, he was prevailed upon, by some of the neighbouring gentlemen, who were witnesses of the practical utility of his system, to publish his theory, illustrated by an account of it in practice, which he undertook to do, at no inconsiderable expense, and, at a time too, when he was much harassed in his pecuniary affairs. His first publication was a ’specimen’ only, in 1731; which was followed, in 1733, by ‘An Essay on Horse-Hoeing Husbandry’ folio; which was translated into French by Du Hamel.

In the course of thirty years culture of his own grounds under every disadvantage of ruined health and embarrassed circumstances, this enthusiastic genius reduced the tillage, seeding, and weeding of land to a system, which being founded in nature and philosophical truth, no length of time will be able to overturn. For, despite initial resistance to Tull’s revolutionary ideas, they were eventually adopted by large landowners and, in time, formed the basis of modern agriculture. Most subsequent drilling and hoeing implements were either copies, or improvements upon the invention of Tull; and his book, in which theory and practice are properly combined, was long in popular esteem. Whatever were his defects, it would probably be difficult to name a man, whose works have conferred a more solid and permanent benefit upon his country. Yet, whilst so many others, for services of a very different nature and tendency, have enjoyed the most splendid rewards, Jethro Tull, whose honest labours were to contribute to the feeding and the employment of countless millions, was suffered to pine out his days in misery and distress. His reward consists in being recognised by posterity as the illustrious ‘Father of British Agriculture’.

Tull died at Prosperous Farm on 21st February and was buried, in his native village of Basildon, on 9th March, 1741.

From wikipedia -

Tull was born in Basildon, Berkshire to Dorothy Buckridge and Jethro Tull and baptised there on March 30, 1674 ^[1]. He matriculated at St John’s College, Oxford at the age of 17 but appears to have not taken a degree. He was later educated at Gray’s Inn.

He became sick with a pulmonary disorder, and as he went in a search for a cure he travelled Europe seeking more knowledge of agriculture. Influenced by the early Age of Enlightenment, he is considered to be one of the early proponents of a scientific (and especially empirical) approach to agriculture. He helped transform agricultural practices by inventing or improving numerous implements.

Jethro Tull invented the seed drill, a device for sowing seeds effectively. At the time his workers did not like the idea because they thought they were going to lose their jobs. In fact, the Sumerians used primitive single-tube seed drills around 1,500 BC, and multi-tube seed drills were invented by the Chinese in the 2nd century BC.

Tull also advocated the use of horses over oxen, invented a horse-drawn hoe for clearing weeds, and made changes to the design of the plough which are still visible in modern versions. His interest in ploughing derived from his interest in weed control, and his belief that fertilizing was unnecessary, on the basis that nutrients locked up in soil could be released through pulverization. Although he was incorrect in his belief that plants obtained nourishment exclusively from such nutrients, he was aware that horse manure carried weed seeds, and hoped to avoid using it as fertilizer by pulverizing the soil to enhance the availability of plant nutrients.

Tull’s inventions were sometimes considered controversial and were not widely adopted for many years. However, on the whole he introduced innovations which contributed to the foundation of productive modern agriculture.

Tull published his famous book, The New Horse-Houghing Husbandry, c.1731, with the sub-title “an Essay on the Principles of Tillage and Nutrition”

Tull tried to persuade European farmers to adopt what he called ‘horse-houghing husbandry’, which involved growing crops in rows and hoeing them thoroughly. These may seem to be obvious and necessary processes to a modern reader. But they were not practiced in Europe until the eighteenth century and he was the major contributor in this conversion. The Chinese were doing this at least by the sixth century BC, and were thus a good 2,200 years in advance of the West in one of the most sensible aspects of agriculture. ^[2]

Tull died in Shalbourne, Berkshire (now Wiltshire), and is buried in the garden of St Bartholomew’s Church, Lower Basildon, Berkshire.