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https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/britain-cows-pig-sheep-paintings-livestock

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In 1802, London was home to a very special bull. It arrived in a specially designed carriage, after a tour of England and Scotland. At every stop, the ox drew crowds that came to stare at its massive size. Weighing nearly three thousand pounds, the existence of such a fat cow was a wonder.

The Durham ox was immortalized in a painting, and print reproductions sold by the thousands. But the ox was part of a much larger trend. Wealthy British landowners were breeding animals larger and fatter than ever before. Proud of their achievements and eager for recognition, they commissioned paintings of themselves and their livestock. And the public couldn't get enough of them.

The early 1800s was the peak of livestock painting. Often the subject was racehorses, painted in slender lines denoting their speed and grace. But for farm animals, corpulence was key. In the paintings, the cow, sheep, and pigs are massive, yet oddly supported by only four spindly legs. Sometimes, their owner is painted in as well, proudly looking over their creation. Other times the animal stands alone, seemingly ready to eat a nearby village. The simple style is often referred to as rustic or "naive" art, even though the subjects were animals belonging to a wealthy elite. The resulting images were part advertisement and part spectacle.

Fat cows, massive pigs, and obese sheep were prized as proof of their owners' success in breeding for size and weight. Gentleman farmers used selective breeding to create quick-growing, heavy livestock. Along with breeding, new farming and feeding practices also produced larger animals. Rich farmers participated in agricultural competitions and read new research. They were called "improvers," since they tried to improve on existing animal breeds. Methods such as feeding cows oil cakes and turnips for a final fattening up before slaughter became widespread. Even Queen Victoria's consort Prince Albert became an improver, showing off his prize pigs and cattle.

If an animal was especially large, its owner would use both exhibitions and art as self-promotion. This created a class of animal celebrities, such as the Durham ox, whose image was even used as a pattern for dinner plates. Exceptional animals could be sold for top dollar. But usually, only elite amateur breeders had the time and wealth to develop prize animals. Many noblemen and gentlemen owned large agricultural estates, and breeding was considered a high-class pastime. According to historian Harriet Ritvo, regular farmers were frequently warned in agricultural publications that trying to compete with the nobility's tricked-out cows was expensive.

Ritvo also notes that gentry farmers used patriotism to justify the competitions and self-promotion. If elites could breed and feed larger, fattier cows, then poorer farmers could eventually own them. With more meat to sell, rural communities would be more financially stable. The national security of the country would benefit, or so went the argument. Britain's population was quickly growing, and due to the prospect of frequent wars, having a secure food supply of fat animals was imperative. "Improvement" progressed quickly. The average weight of British cows increased by a third from 1710 to 1795.

Commissioned paintings and commercial prints often came with information like the animal's measurements and the owner's breeding efforts. According to animal studies professor Ron Broglio, the portraits were often exaggerated to emphasize the idealized animal shape, which usually consisted of "[providing] a bit more fat in crucial areas." For pigs, the ideal was an American football shape. Cows were rectangular, and sheep tended towards oblong.

Beyond making wealthy farmers famous, animal paintings and prints had a practical purpose. Breeders across the country could use a specific animal's image as a model for their own herd, since livestock that fit beauty ideals were worth much more.

Even today, the prize animals of yesteryear are compelling, but in a different way. Prints showing huge animals still hang in many a rustic-themed bar or inn, evoking a rural past. Many British pubs are even named after much-publicized cows such as "The Craven Heifer" and "The Durham Ox." But these days, the livestock paintings aren't a sign of prosperity or patriotism. Like dancing a minuet or competitive walking, they can seem so strange that they're hilarious. In late 2016, a pig painting by an unknown 19th-century livestock artist even became a meme.
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In 19th-Century Britain, The Hottest Status Symbol Was a Painting of Your Cow

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In 1802, London was home to a very special bull. It arrived in a specially designed carriage, after a tour of England and Scotland. At every stop, the ox drew crowds that came to stare at its massive size. Weighing nearly three thousand pounds, the existence of such a fat cow was a wonder.

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https://archive.ph/20130415205802/http://www.societyandanimalsforum.org/sa/sa1.2/quinn.html#selection-277.0-277.351

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‘Borrowed Breath’ series of 5 192x159x58cms

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https://www.stbarbe-museum.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/eerie/

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https://mvfilmsociety.com/2020/10/halloween-fright-the-wicker-man/

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Tate Britain, British Folk Art Exhibition

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https://bookworks.org.uk/publishing/shop/folk-archive-contemporary-popular-art-from-the-uk/

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https://bookworks.org.uk/publishing/shop/folk-archive-contemporary-popular-art-from-the-uk/

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misrepresentation / romanticisation of farms in childrens books

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misrepresentation / romanticisation of farms in childrens books

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https://www.animalsandsociety.org/research/sloth/sloth-volume-5-no-1-winter-2019/the-farm-myth-fantasy-farms-factory-farming/

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https://www.bahs.org.uk/AGHR/ARTICLES/60_1_9_BisschopEmmery.pdf

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https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/cows-really-lie-down-before-13374039

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https://journeys.dartmouth.edu/folklorearchive/spring19section2/farmers-folklore-s19/

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Our group will collect and examine folklore rituals related to farming. We selected this folklore because each group member had family ties to farming. Tyler's family owns a cattle ranch in South Dakota, Jack's father grew up on a dairy farm in rural Pennsylvania, Aaron's grandparents worked on a barrio in Texas, and Richard's father's family worked on farms in rural China. We found that there is a lack of students at Dartmouth with a rural upbringing, although some have experienced farming once arriving on campus. Farming also provides a rich tradition of oral and material folklore, because it has existed in the same fashion for a long period of time. We also compare farming folklore from different parts of the United States as well as other countries, and find that many of the folklore items contain similar themes regardless of their place of their origin.

Across cultures, we find the same themes of perseverance and steadfastness in farming folklore, as well as a sense of community. Due to the volatile nature of farming, often dependent on factors outside of the farmer's control, remaining a steadfast worker is a valuable skill, and this is reflected in farming folklore. We also see a connection with nature through superstitions that rely on animals for problems that humans cannot solve, likely a result of working so closely with animals.
Presentation: Items: Collectors:

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Our group will collect and examine folklore rituals related to farming. We selected this folklore because each group member had family ties to farming. Tyler's family owns a cattle ranch in South Dakota, Jack's father grew up on a dairy farm in rural Pennsylvania, Aaron's grandparents worked on a barrio in Texas, and Richard's father's family worked on farms in rural China.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-field_system

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-field_system

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_United_Kingdom#:~:text=Farming%20was%20introduced%20in%20the,plots%20near%20the%20family%20home.

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Agriculture in the United Kingdom uses 71% of the country's land area, employs 1% of its workforce (467,000 people) and contributes 0.5% of its gross value added ( £ 11.2 billion). The UK currently produces about 60% of its domestic food consumption.

Despite skilled farmers, advanced technology, fertile soil and subsidies, farm earnings are relatively low, mainly due to low prices at the farm gate. Low earnings, high land prices and a shortage of let farmland discourage young people from joining the industry. The average (median) age of the British farm holder is about 60 (as of 2016).

Recently there have been moves towards organic farming in an attempt to sustain profits, and many farmers supplement their income by diversifying activities away from pure agriculture. Biofuels present new opportunities for farmers against a background of rising fears about fossil fuel prices, energy security, and climate change. There is increasing awareness that farmers have an important role to play as custodians of the British countryside and wildlife.

British farming is on the whole intensive and highly mechanised. This approach is well-suited to the current distribution infrastructure, but can be less productive by area than smaller scale, diversified farming. The UK produces only 59% of the food it consumes. The vast majority of imports and exports are with other Western European countries.

Farming is subsidised, with subsidies to farmers totalling more than £3 billion (after deduction of levies).

Farming was introduced in the British Isles between about 5000 BC and 4500 BC after a large influx of Mesolithic people and following the end of the Pleistocene epoch. It took 2,000 years for the practice to extend across all of the isles. Wheat and barley were grown in small plots near the family home. Sheep, goats and cattle came in from mainland Europe, and pigs were domesticated from wild boar already living in forests. There is evidence of agricultural and hunter-gatherer groups meeting and trading with one another in the early part of the Neolithic.

The Saxons and the Vikings had open-field farming systems. Under the Normans and Plantagenets fens were drained, woods cleared and farmland expanded to feed a rising population, until the Black Death reached Britain in 1349. This and subsequent epidemics caused the population to fall; one-third of the population in England died between 1349 and 1350. In consequence, areas of farmland were abandoned. The feudal system began to break down as labourers, who were in short supply following the plague, demanded wages (instead of subsistence) and better conditions. Also, there were a series of poor harvests after about 1315, coinciding with some evidence (from tree rings) of poor weather across the whole of northern Europe, which continued on and off until about 1375. The population did not recover to 1300 levels for 200 to 300 years.

Jethro Tull, a Berkshire farmer, invented his famous rotating-cylinder seed drill. His 1731 book, The New Horse Hoeing Husbandry, explained the systems and devices he espoused to improve agriculture. The book had such an impact that its influence can still be seen in some aspects of modern farming. Charles Townsend, a viscount known as "Turnip Townsend", in the 1730s introduced turnip farming on a large scale. This created four-crop rotation (wheat, turnips, barley and clover) which allowed fertility to be maintained with much less fallow land. Clover increases mineral nitrogen in the soil and clover and turnips are good fodder crops for livestock, which in turn improve the soil by their manure.

Between 1750 and 1850, the English population nearly tripled, with an estimated increase from 5.7 million to 16.6 million, and all these people had to be fed from the domestic food supply. This was achieved through intensified agriculture and land reclamation from the Fens, woodlands, and upland pastures. The crop mix changed too, with wheat and rye replacing barley. Nitrogen fixing plants such as legumes led to sustainable increased yields. These increased yields, combined with improved farming machinery and then-new capitalist ways of organising labour, meant that increased crop production did not need much more manpower, which freed labour for non-agricultural work. Indeed, by 1850 Britain had the smallest proportion of its population engaged in farming of any country in the world, at 22%.

Farmers were one of the groups of society that contributed significantly to the numeracy revolution achieved in Europe during the early modern era. During the 18th century, a large share of farmers had the ability to basic numerical skills as well as the ability to read and write (literacy), both of which are skills that were far from widespread in the early modern period. This is unsurprising for countries such as England, where farmers developed particularly high human capital skills because of rapid occupational changes - they became a minority that produced the food for the majority of the population. One possible explanation for this phenomenon is the strong link between nutrition and cognitive abilities. A constant amount of nutrition was almost always available to farmer families, they could feed themselves even during times of famine by increasing the share of their products that they consumed themselves instead of selling them on markets.

Enclosures

Open fields divided among several tenants originally had the advantage of reducing risks by giving all farmers diverse soils and crops so no one faced famine when others prospered. But the system was inefficient. Poor farmers got as much land as good farmers. By the 18th century enclosures came in poorer regions where several landholders were more willing to sell land. After 1760, though, parliamentary legislation permitted the enclosure of wealthier lands that had more complex structures of ownership. The result was an added £4 million to England's national income.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, enclosures were by means of special acts of Parliament. They consolidated strips in the open fields into more cohesive units, and enclosed much of the remaining pasture commons or wastes. Enclosure consisted of exchange in land, and an extinguishing of common rights. This allowed farmers to consolidate and fence off their own large plots of land, in contrast to multiple small strips spread out and separated. Voluntary enclosure was also frequent at that time.

At the time of the parliamentary enclosures, most manors had seen consolidation of tenant farms into multiple large landholdings. Multiple larger landholders already held the bulk of the land. They 'held' but did not legally own in today's sense. They also had to respect the open field system rights, when demanded, even when in practice the rights were not widely in use. Similarly each large landholding would consist of scattered patches, not consolidated farms. In many cases enclosures were largely an exchange and consolidation of land, and exchange not otherwise possible under the legal system. It did also involve the extinguishing of common rights. Without extinguishment, one man in an entire village could unilaterally impose the common field system, even if everyone else did not desire to continue the practice. De jure rights were not in accord with de facto practice. With land one held, one could not formally exchange the land, consolidate fields, or entirely exclude others. Parliamentary enclosure was seen as the most cost-effective method of creating a legally binding settlement. This is because of the costs (time, money, complexity) of using the common law and equity legal systems. Parliament required consent of the owners of 4/5-ths of the land ( copy and freeholders).

Depression and prosperity

This peaceful period included a twenty-year depression in agriculture 1815 to 1836. It was so severe that landlords as well as tenants suffered financial ruin, and large areas of farmland were entirely abandoned. The ancient landlord and tenant system was unsuited to new-style, capital-intensive farms, which caused concern in Parliament. Parliament began to improve the legislation, for example by distinguishing between farm improvements that the tenant should fund, and those the landlord should fund.

From 1836 until Parliament repealed the Corn Laws in 1846, agriculture flourished. The repeal of the Corn Laws steadied prices, though agriculture remained prosperous. At that time, Parliament was concerned with the issue of tenant right, i.e. the sum payable to an outgoing tenant for farm improvements that the tenant had funded and, if crops were in the ground when the tenant left, compensation for their value. This was down to local custom which might vary from place to place. In 1848 a parliamentary committee examined the possibility of a standardised system, but a Bill on the matter was not passed until 1875.

The Board of Agriculture was established by Act of Parliament in 1889. Although rationing during the First World War was limited to the end of 1917 and 1918, a change of mood arose about food security, and the Ministry of Food was created in 1916. There was a national feeling that a man who had fought for his country should be entitled to retire to a smallholding on British land that would provide him with a livelihood. This led to various initiatives, collectively called Homes for Heroes. By 1926 agricultural law had become openly redistributive in favour of ex-servicemen. County Councils had compulsory purchase powers to requisition land they could let as smallholdings. Ex-servicemen were the preferred tenants. The tenant could then buy the land and could ask the Council to lend them money to fund the purchase as a mortgage. The Council could not refuse without the Minister of Agriculture's permission.

In 1919 the Board of Agriculture and the Ministry of Food were merged to form the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, which later became the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF). MAFF was in turn the predecessor of DEFRA.

In 1938 88% of wheat was imported, 96% of butter, 76% of cheese and about half the eggs and meat.

Before the Second World War started, Britain imported 55 million tons of food a year. By the end of 1939, this had dropped to 12 million, and food rationing was introduced at the start of 1940. It did not completely end until July 1954. The government tried to encourage people to grow their own food in victory gardens, and householders were encouraged to keep rabbits and chickens for the table. There were 1.5 million allotments by 1943. Potatoes became "the food of the war". Because so many men had been conscripted into the army, women were drafted in to work the land; they were called the Women's Land Army, or less formally, "land girls".

Famously, the Government responded to a temporary wartime oversupply of carrots by suggesting that the RAF's exceptional night-flying was due to eating carotene. The ruse worked: consumption of carrots increased sharply because people thought carrots might help them see in the blackout, thus taking the pressure off other food supplies. But with so much of the agricultural labour force fighting, pressure on food supplies worldwide increased throughout the war. The government estimated that in 1945 world meat consumption would exceed supply by 1.8 million tons and that only wheat would be "available in abundance". The Prime Minister suggested that if necessary, food supplies could take priority over supplies for the military, and considered the possibility of famine in the occupied territories after the war.

By this time the then-European Economic Community (now the European Community)'s Common Agricultural Policy and the value of the green pound was having a direct impact on farming. The Agriculture Act 1986 was concerned with the value of the milk quota attached to land, and particularly how it ought to be shared between landlord and tenant. Nowadays, milk quotas no longer exist, but other subsidies (largely rolled up into Single Payments) still must be divided between the parties.

The National Farmers Union (NFU) was begun by a group of nine Lincolnshire farmers and, as the "Lincolnshire Farmers Union", held its first meeting in 1904. By 1908 they were called the National Farmers Union and were meeting in London. During the Second World War, the NFU worked hand in glove with the Ministry of Agriculture to ensure food security. Rationing continued after the war and it is a measure of the NFU's influence at that time that the Agriculture Act 1947 committed the government to undertake a national review of the industry every year in consultation with the NFU.

The Royal Agricultural University, which was the first agricultural college in the English-speaking world, opened as the Royal Agricultural College in 1845. It was granted its royal charter shortly after its founding. By the latter half of the nineteenth century, as farming grew more complex and methodical and as productivity increased, there was a dawning recognition that farmers needed agricultural education. Thanks to government financial support for agricultural education in the 1890s, the Royal Agricultural College was followed by Writtle College in 1893 and Harper Adams University College in 1901. Meanwhile, the West of Scotland Agricultural College formed in 1899, the East of Scotland Agricultural College in 1901, and the North of Scotland Agricultural College in 1904; these colleges amalgamated to form the Scottish Agricultural College in 1990. Professor John Wrightson opened his private Downton Agricultural College in 1880; it closed in 1906 as it was unable to compete with the publicly funded state colleges.

Total income from farming in the United Kingdom was £5.38 billion in 2014, representing about 0.7% of the British national value added in that year. This is a fall of 4.4% in real terms since 2014. Earnings were £30,900 per full-time person in 2011, which represented an increase of 24% from 2010 values in real terms. This was the best performance in UK agriculture since the 1990s. Agriculture employs 476,000 people, representing 1.5% of the workforce, down more than 32% since 1996. In terms of gross value added in 2009, 83% of the UK's agricultural income originated from England, 9% from Scotland, 4% from Northern Ireland and 3% from Wales.

The UK's egg-laying flock is in decline. It fell by 5.5% in one year from June 1999 to May 2000. In 1971, there were 125,258 farms with egg-laying hens and by 1999 this was down to 26,500.

When in the EU, UK farmers received more than £3 billion a year via the Single Farm Payment. This is roughly £28,300 per farm, although this includes around £3,000 of environmental subsidies, such as for planting woodland. Following Brexit a new subsidy scheme is being introduced with a proposed reduction in direct payments with an increase in payments tied to specific environmental or developmental criteria.

Many British soils are quite acidic, and a large proportion of British farm land needs repeated applications of alkalines (traditionally lime) to remain fertile. Nitrites are soluble, so rain rapidly carries them away. Acid rain increases soil acidity, but even normal rain tends to be slightly acid, increasing the natural acidity of British soil. Rainfall in Britain exceeds the rate of evaporation. This means that in freely drained areas, soil base material is washed away, which leads to a higher concentration of organic acids in the ground. This relatively high soil acidity is one of the factors that lead to liming. Lime tends to counteract soil acidity, and with fine particulate soils such as clays, also encourages the formation of a better soil crumb structure that will aerate and help with drainage. Its benefits have been known, if not scientifically understood, since Roman times.

Soffe (2003) summarises the acidity of British soils as follows:-

Owing to high rainfall in the UK, less freely drained areas tend to become waterlogged. Wet land may be unable to bear a tractor's weight, and drainage makes soil lighter and more easily worked, improves crops' ability to absorb food because there is more root surface area, stimulates helpful micro-organisms and allows accumulated poisons to be carried away. In Britain field drains are traditionally open ditches, but increasingly, covered pipes have been used in more modern times. Earthworms are important for creating small drainage channels in the soil and helping to move soil particles.

No appreciable plant growth takes place at temperatures below 4 °C. The growth rate increases as temperature rises, up to a maximum limit which is of no relevance to the British Isles. Dark soils tend to absorb more heat, and are therefore preferred.

As crops grow, they absorb nutrients from the soil, so land fertility degrades over time. However, if organic matter poor in nitrogen but rich in carbohydrate is added to the soil, nitrogen is assimilated and fixed. Fertility increases while land is under grass, which helps to accumulate organic matter in the soil. These factors mean that soil is traditionally improved by means of liming, draining, and allowing to lie fallow. It is traditionally fertilised with manure, nitrogen, phosphates, and potash.

Manure, nitrogen and Nitrate Vulnerable Zones (NVZ)

170 million tonnes of animal excreta ("slurry") is produced annually in the UK. This slurry can pollute watercourses, draining them of oxygen, can contain pathogenic microorganisms such as salmonella, and creates an odour that causes complaints if stored near people. Pigs and poultry in particular, which tend to be produced intensively on large holdings with a relatively small land area per animal, create manure that tends to be processed. This is done either by removing the liquid component and transporting it away, or by composting it, or more recently, by anaerobic digestion to produce methane which is later converted to electricity.

Nitrogen from soil gets into the water, and can be hazardous to human health. EC Directive 80/778/EEC and 91/676/EEC both mention a ceiling acceptable level of nitrates of 50 mg/litre, which is also the level recommended by the World Health Organization. In several places in Britain, particularly in the midlands and the south-east, nitrate concentrations occasionally exceed this level and the government has brought in regulations to control nitrate levels in the water. The regulations governing designated Nitrate Vulnerable Zones (NVZ) aim to protect ground and surface water from contamination with nitrates and manure. Around 68% of English farmland, 14% of Scottish farmland and all of Welsh farmland is within a NVZ. The NVZ rules control at what time of year farmers may apply nitrogen or manure to the land and oblige them to keep strict records of nitrogen-containing substances used. They also regulate slurry and manure storage.

The Welsh Government introduced an all Wales NVZ in 2021. Previously, 2.4% of Wales' land was designated as a NVZ. Environmental and fishing groups welcomed the new rules. It will be rolled out, pending a review by the Senedd, over the next three years. The review came after major political backlash from opposition parties and farmers.

Arable farming is the production of crops. Crop growth is affected by light, soil, nutrients, water, air, and climate. Crops commonly grown in the United Kingdom include cereals, chiefly wheat, oats and barley; root vegetables, chiefly potatoes and sugar beet; pulse crops such as beans or peas; forage crops such as cabbages, vetches, rape and kale; fruit, particularly apples and pears; and hay for animal feed. From 1992 until 2004, or 2006 for organic farms, there were subsidies for not growing any crops at all. This was called set-aside and resulted from EEC farming policies. From 2007 onwards, set aside subsidies in the UK were withdrawn.

Climate change will have positive impacts on crop production in Ireland. The combined effects of higher concentration, warmer spring/summer temperatures and lengthened growing season will all be beneficial to certain types of crop production, specifically grains and barley and detrimental to other crops, such as potatoes.

In 2009, 3,133,000 hectares (7,740,000 acres) of cereal crops were sown in the UK. There were 581,000 hectares (1,440,000 acres) of oil seed rape, 233,000 hectares (580,000 acres) of peas and beans, 149,000 hectares (370,000 acres) of potatoes, and 116,000 hectares (290,000 acres) of sugar beet. Winter crops tend to be planted around mid-September, and spring crops as soon as the soil is ready. Each year the country produces about 6.5 million tonnes of barley, of which 1.5 million are exported, 2 million used in brewing and distilling activities and the remainder fed to livestock. The country also produces 14 to 15 million tons of wheat each year, of which farmers kept 3.9 million tonnes as stock in February 2012. In 2008, 750,000 tonnes of oats were produced, in 2011-2012 613,000.

During 1999-2003 production of barley ranged from 6,128,000 to 7,456,000, wheat from 11,580,000 to 16,704,000 and oats from 491,000 to 753,000.

Consumption of oats by the human population compared with livestock is proportionally higher in the UK than in European countries, 455,000 tonnes as forecast by farm officials during 2012; with 163,000 tonnes fed to livestock during 2011-2012.

From 2002 to 2003, of the cereals grown, 31% of barley, 36% of oats and 34% of wheat were used for human consumption.

Ploughing is not always regarded as essential nowadays, but the plough can improve soil by inverting it to improve soil aeration and drainage, release nutrients through weathering, and expose harmful pests to predators. It is also an effective method of weed control. Ploughing depth in Britain varies between 5-6 inches in some limestone regions to up to 18 inches in deep stoneless silt land. Most British ploughs are designed to turn a furrow of up to about a foot deep, which is relatively shallow compared to some other countries, where furrows of up to 16 inches are common. Other machines used to prepare land include cultivators (to break up land too heavy for a normal plough), harrows (to level the surface of ploughed land), rolls or rollers (used for firming the soil), sprayers and dusters (used to spread herbicides, fungicides, insecticides and fertilisers).

Reaping is the process of harvesting a crop. Traditionally reaping was done with the scythe and reaping hook, but in Britain these have been entirely superseded by machinery. Combine harvesters, so called because they both harvest and thresh the crop, are common. Other machines used include mowers, reapers, binders, harvesters, pea cutters and flax pullers. Once reaped, some crops are brought directly to market. Others need to be threshed to separate the cash crop from the straw and chaff. Wheat, oats, barley, beans and some kinds of small seed (e.g. clover) typically need to be threshed.

Since the Second World War, scientific and technical progress and the removal of tenancy-based restrictions on choice of crop have given British arable farmers a great deal more freedom to plan cropping sequences. Strict crop rotation is no longer technically necessary or even financially desirable. Factors that influence crop sequences include the soil type, weather, the price and availability of labour and power, market outlets, and technical considerations about maintaining soil fertility and crop health. For example, some vigorous crops such as kale or arable silage will, when liberally fertilised, tend to outgrow and smother weeds. Many pests and diseases are crop-specific and the more often a particular crop is taken, the greater the buildup of pests and diseases that attack it. The farmer will therefore try to design a sequence to sustain high yields, permit adequate weed control, service market needs, and keep the soil free from diseases and pests.

As a direct result of climate change, harvesting is coming earlier in the year. The increased temperatures and levels allow this to happen. This means crops can be harvested well in advance of the heavy rain season.

Most diseases of crop plants result from fungus spores that may live in the soil and enter through roots, be airborne and enter the plant through damaged areas or landing on leaf surfaces, or are spread by pests. These spores tend to affect photosynthesis and reduce chlorophyll. They often make plants look yellow and affect growth and marketability of the crop. They are most commonly treated with fungicides, and may be called mildews, rusts, blotches, scabs, wilts, rots or blights. European Union regulations on pesticides are changing, and several important pesticides currently in use will no longer be available. This has potentially quite serious implications for British agriculture.

Climate change is bringing with it the earlier onset of winter rain. These very wet soils during spring time will also lead to unwanted pest and disease problems during the plating season.

Two of the most serious diseases currently affecting crop plants are colony collapse disorder (CCD), a somewhat mysterious effect that is wiping out honeybee colonies worldwide, and varroa destructor, a parasitic mite that also affects honeybees and may be a contributor to CCD. Honeybees pollinate 80% of plants worldwide. In 2007, up to 80% of the bee colonies in some areas were wiped out. Honeybees pollinate crops worth about £200 million a year, and their total contribution to the economy may be as high as £1 billion.

Historically weed control was by hand-pulling of weeds, often during "fallowing" (which means leaving the land to carry no crop for a season, during which time the weeds can be found and removed). In 1896 it was found that a copper sulphate solution would kill broad-leaved weeds without seriously damaging young cereal plants. Other chemical weedkillers were soon discovered and now common chemical weedkiller ingredients include sodium chlorate, copper chloride, sulphuric acid, dinitroorthocresol and dinitrobutylphenol. Hormone-based weedkillers are used to kill weeds more selectively. Although most weeds are vulnerable to at least one of these substances, eradicating all the weeds from a particular area will usually need several different weedkillers. The use of pesticides has declined, and British farmers now use about a third less pesticides than they did in 1983. The crop needing most pesticides is wheat.

Pastoral farming is the breeding of livestock for meat, wool, eggs and milk, and historically (in the UK) for labour. Livestock products are the main element of the UK's agricultural output. The most common meat animals in the United Kingdom are cattle, pigs, sheep and poultry. Overwhelmingly, British wool comes from sheep, with only a few goats or alpacas bred for exotic wools such as cashmere or angora. The vast majority of milk comes from cattle, and eggs from chickens.

There are about 17,000 dairy farms in the UK, largely in the west. Average herd size is 86 cows in England, 75 in Wales and 102 in Scotland. Most cows are milked twice a day, and an average dairy cow yields 6,300 litres a year. The most important dairy cattle breed is the ubiquitous British Friesian, which has largely replaced the Dairy Shorthorn in British dairy herds thanks both to its high milk yield and the relatively high quality of the beef it produces.

The UK once produced roughly as much beef as it ate, but this changed in 1996 because of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). The BSE crisis led to regulations preventing animals more than 30 months old from entering the food chain, which meant cull cows could no longer be sold for beef. Just under 6 million cattle over this age were destroyed. A Calf Purchase Aid Scheme, under which a further nearly 2 million calves were slaughtered, ended in 1999. In 2002, the UK produced 72% of the beef it ate. Important beef cattle breeds include the Hereford, which is the most popular British beef breed, and the Aberdeen Angus. The once-widespread Beef Shorthorn is now a relatively uncommon sight.

Over 41,000 farms in the UK produce sheep, but more than half of breeding ewes are on hill or upland farms suitable for little else. National Parks and heather moors such as the Lake District, the Pennines and Snowdonia in Wales are dominated by sheep farms, as are the Scottish Highlands. In the lowlands, pockets of sheep farms remain. Romney Marsh (which gave its name to the Romney sheep) and The Downs in Kent are famous for their sheep. Sheep farming in Wales encompasses both upland and lowland areas.

The number of sheep farmed in the UK peaked in 1998 at 20.3 million, as a result of the Sheepmeat Regime, a relatively generous EU support initiative first begun in 1980. Numbers declined following the 2001 outbreak of foot and mouth, and the UK temporarily lost its place as Europe's largest producer of lamb, although this was recovered later. (Although it is Europe's largest producer, the UK is nevertheless a net importer of lamb, often from New Zealand.)

Nowadays many ewes are housed indoors for lambing, which costs more but facilitates earlier lambing with lower mortality and replacement rates. It also rests and protects the grassland, leading to better early growth and higher stocking rates. Sheep are also important in helping to manage the landscape. Their trampling hinders bracken spread and prevents heather moor from reverting to scrub woodland. Wool production is no longer economically important in the UK, and nowadays, sheared fleeces are often treated as a waste product.

Pig farming is concentrated in Yorkshire and East Anglia. About 4,600 farms produce pigs, and the UK is 90% self-sufficient in pork, but only about 40% self-sufficient in bacon and ham, which reflects a traditional British preference for these cuts. Nowadays many pig farms in the UK breed intensively farmed hybrids of types like the Large White, British Landrace, Welsh or British Saddleback, and formerly popular breeds like the Cumberland and Small White are extinct. Wild boar are sometimes farmed. They are currently covered under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976 and farmers need permission from their local authority to keep them.

The UK pig herd is declining, and there are now some individual pig farms in the US that have more sows than there are in the UK as a whole. Pigs often used to be kept indoors throughout their lives, but welfare concerns and increased costs have led to more outdoor units, and by 2002 30% of sows were outdoors. In many countries sows are kept tethered in individual stalls, but this system was banned in the UK in 1999 on animal welfare grounds. Indoor sows are housed in groups. Each sow produces an average of 24 piglets a year and will be pregnant or lactating for 340 days a year. This intensive production wears the sows out, and about 40% of them need to be replaced each year.

A major byproduct of pig production is slurry. One sow and her piglets can produce ten tonnes of slurry a year. Because regulations limit how much slurry can be loaded onto a given area of land, this means that each sow with her progeny will manure at least 0.8 hectares. This is a problem because pig manure is mildly toxic, owing to the use of copper as a growth enhancer.

The UK has about 73,000 goats, mostly as milk producers; this number is relatively small by EU standards. Venison production in the UK is mainly from red deer, with a few fallow deer as well, but there are only about 300 venison-producing farms. As noted above, there are about 26,500 farms with chickens. However, more than half the UK's eggs come from fewer than 400 flocks, mostly with more than 50,000 birds each. Other livestock and poultry farmed on a smaller scale include game birds, ducks, geese, turkeys, ostriches and rabbits. In this way, the UK produce annually 22 million turkeys.

Designated notifiable diseases under the Diseases of Animals Act include anthrax, foot-and-mouth disease, fowl pest, bovine tuberculosis, BSE, scrapie, swine vesicular disease, Aujeszky's disease, bovine leukemia virus, rabies and warble fly. Under the Zoonoses Order conditions that can be transmitted to humans, such as brucellosis or salmonella, must also be notified.

The United Kingdom suffered outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease in 1967 and 2001, with a less serious outbreak in 2007. There was also an outbreak of bluetongue in 2007. The most serious disease to affect British agriculture was BSE, a cattle brain disease that causes a similar disease in some humans who eat infected meat. It has killed 166 people in Britain since 1994.

A current issue is the control of bovine tuberculosis, which can also be carried by badgers. It is alleged that the badgers are infecting the cows. A scientific report for the government recommended a selective cull of badgers, which immediately met with opposition from other scientists. The government is currently consulting on this issue. As of 16 September 2011, a total of 27 online petitions had attracted 65,000 signatures opposing the plan.

Animal welfare as an issue is increasingly important to the European Union. Although welfare-conscious husbandry can have economic benefits to the farmer, because a happy animal puts on weight more rapidly and will reproduce more easily, the mere fact that an animal is gaining weight or reproducing does not necessarily indicate a high level of animal welfare. Generally there is a tension between the minimum acceptable level of animal welfare for the consumer, the price of the product, and an acceptable margin for the farmer. This tension is resolved by food labelling that enables the consumer to select the price they are prepared to pay for a given level of animal welfare. So for example, many consumers prefer to buy free range eggs even where these are more expensive than eggs from battery hens. Nowadays, there are various welfare assurance schemes in response to consumer pressure. The use of battery cages in now illegal in the European Union, due to the severe impacts the cages can have on the well-being of hens.

Organic farming is farming without chemical fertilisers, most pesticides, genetic modification, or the routine use of drugs, antibiotics or wormers. In the United Kingdom it is supported and encouraged by the Soil Association. The Food Standards Agency says that organic food offers no additional nutritional benefits over the non-organic kind, though the Soil Association disputes this. However, there are definite benefits in terms of on-farm conservation and wildlife. In the UK as in most of northern Europe, organic crop yields can be 40%-50% lower than conventional, more intensive farming and labour use can be 10%-25% higher.

The Organic Aid Scheme egg came into effect in 1994, providing grants to fund farmers wishing to convert to organic farming. By the end of 1997 about 30,000 hectares (74,000 acres) had been converted under the scheme, at a cost of £750,000. In 2000 it increased to 525,000 hectares (1,300,000 acres), and between 1996 and 2000, the number of organic farms increased from 865 to 3500. The global market for organic food is worth £1.2 billion a year and is increasing. The UK's share of the European organic farming market is about 10%.

Biofuels are fuels derived from biomass. They can be used in their pure form to power vehicles, but most commonly they are blended with traditional fuels such as diesel. In 2003, the European Union saw biofuels as an answer to several problems: climate change, energy security and stimulating the rural economy, and agreed the Biofuels Directive to see that production was kickstarted. In 2008, the Gallagher Review expressed concern about the effects of the biofuels initiative and identified the conversion of agricultural land to biofuels production as a factor in rising food prices. The current recommended option is that farmers should use marginal or waste land to produce biofuels and maintain production of food on prime agricultural land.

Biofuel crops grown in the UK include oilseed rape (which is also grown for other purposes), short-rotation coppices such as poplar or willow, and miscanthus. Unfortunately biofuels are quite bulky for their energy yield, which means processing into fuel needs to happen near where the crop is grown; otherwise, most or all of the benefit of biofuels can be lost in transporting the biofuel to the processing area. Such local processing units are not generally available in the UK, and further expansion of this market will depend on politics and industrial finance.

About half of all farmers in the United Kingdom supplement their income through diversification. On average diversification adds £10,400 to a farm's revenue.

There is grant funding available for diversification schemes, as well as other initiatives to improve competitiveness in the farming sector, through the Rural Development Programme for England. The scheme runs until 2013, is managed through Defra and has been delivered to date through Regional Development Agencies. Expenditure on the Rural Development Programme for England will remain around £3.7 billion for the 2007-13 programme period, compared with the original planned budget of about £3.9 billion.

It was first suggested that farmers could be paid for "producing countryside" in 1969, but the real beginning of positive agri-environmental policy came with the Agriculture Act 1986. The Countryside Stewardship Scheme and local equivalents were run by the Countryside Commission and the Countryside Council for Wales from 1991 until 1996, when they came under ministry control. Nowadays schemes to encourage farmers to think about wildlife conservation and to farm in an environmentally friendly way abound, though actual payments to farmers to support this are comparatively modest.

When EU subsidy regime changes in 2013, farmers will receive a greater proportion of their payments from "management of natural resources and climate action." This forms one of the three "principal objectives" of the reformed Common Agricultural Policy which is under consultation until March 2012.

In the 1930s land with vacant possession cost an average of £60 per hectare. In 1996 it cost £8,795 per hectare. In the same period retail prices rose by a factor of 35, but agricultural land prices rose by a factor of well over 100. The most extreme change was in 1972, during which year the price per acre more than doubled. Today farming land remains scarce and much in demand, and the market continues to rise. Thus the only option for someone who lacks capital for land purchase but wants to farm is to rent land as a tenant farmer. Rents increased by 24% in the year to 25 March 2011. The average across all farms in England, Wales and Scotland is now £70/acre, up from £57/acre; dairy farms cost £80 per acre on average, and arable farms now cost £99 per acre.

Historically tenant farmers, as peasants or villeins, had been exploited and starting in 1875, successive governments enacted legislation to protect them. This trend culminated in the Agricultural Holdings Act 1986, which consolidated and built on a century-long trend in the law. This Act was so onerous towards landlords that they were reluctant to let land. It became so hard to obtain a tenancy that the farming industry supported reform, which was enacted in the Agricultural Tenancies Act 1995. Nowadays most new tenancies in England and Wales are Farm Business Tenancies under the 1995 Act, but the 1986 Act tenancies that are still in force may allow for succession, and can sometimes be passed down through up to two generations of tenant. The most common route of entry into farming is to succeed to a holding, whether as owner or tenant, so a person's ability to farm is often determined by their family background rather than their skills or qualifications.

It is an objective of public procurement in the UK "to support our agricultural industry", at the same time as "providing value for money within public procurement".

Local government authorities have powers under the Smallholdings and Allotments Act to buy and rent land to people who want to become farmers. Fifty County Councils and Unitary Authorities in England and Wales offer tenancies on smallholdings (called "County Farms") as an entry route into agriculture, but this provision is shrinking. Between 1984 and 2006, the amount of land available as County Farms shrank from 137,664 hectares (340,180 acres) to 96,206 hectares (237,730 acres), a reduction of 30%. The number of tenants on these smallholdings shrank by 58% in the same period to about 2,900. County Farms yielded an operational surplus of £10.6 million to local authorities in the financial year 2008-9. Some local authorities dispose of County Farms to obtain capital receipts. Somerset County Council proposes to sell 35 of its 62 County Farms.

As of March 2009, 39% of County Farms were of 50 acres (20 ha) or smaller, 31% of 50 acres (20 ha) to 100 acres (40 ha) and 30% of 100 acres (40 ha) or more.

1. ^ Baten, Joerg; Tollnek, Franziska. "Farmers at the heart of the 'human capital revolution'? Decomposing the numeracy increase in early modern Europe". The Economic History Review.

2. Beyond the National Farmers Union Archived 26 April 2012 at the Wayback Machine, Open I, published 16 March 2002. Retrieved 4 January 2012.

3. The National Farmers Union, Corporatewatch, published July 2003. Retrieved 4 January 2012.

4. Carrie de Silva, ^ A Short History of Agricultural Education and Research, Harper Adams University, (2015) pps. 96-97

5. ^ Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (UK) (November 2020). The Path to Sustainable Farming: An Agricultural Transition Plan 2021 to 2024 (PDF) (Report). UK Government.

6. Holden, N.M; Brereton, A.J; Fealy, R; Sweeney, J (2003). "Possible change in Irish climate and its impact on barley and potato yields" (PDF). Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. 116 (3-4): 181-96. Bibcode:2003AgFM..116..181H. doi:10.1016/S0168-1923(03)00002-9.

7. Dr P Berry et al November 2006. Pesticide Residue Minimization Crop Guide. Food Standards Agency.

8. ^ Shrestha, S.; Abdalla, M.; Hennessy, T.; Forristal, D.; Jones, M. B. (2015). "Irish farms under climate change - is there a regional variation on farm responses?". The Journal of Agricultural Science. 153 (3): 385-398. doi:10.1017/S0021859614000331. S2CID 84633699.

9. Britishwildboar.co.uk: ^ Archived 21 April 2011 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 20 November 2010.

10. ^ The Telegraph, Bluetongue spreads from cattle to sheep, published 14 October 2007. Retrieved 19 June 2010.

11. ^ Sir David King: Bovine Tuberculosis in Cattle and Badgers Archived 20 June 2010 at the Wayback Machine, report of the Chief Scientific Advisor to the Secretary of State, originally submitted 30 July 2007. Retrieved 20 November 2010.

12. ^ "Animal Welfare in the UK, an introduction". ukagriculture.com. Archived from the original on 3 December 2010.

13. ^ "Executive Summary of the Gallagher Review". Renewable Fuels Agency. 6 July 2008. Archived from the original on 4 October 2010.

14. ^ DEFRA (21 January 2014). "Diversifying farming businesses". Government of the United Kingdom.

15. ^ Public and Corporate Economic Consultants (PACEC) (2014). "The Value of Shooting" (PDF). The British Shooting Sports Council.

16. ^ "DEFRA". Rural Development Programme for England. Archived from the original on 16 March 2011; Rural Development Programme for England

17. Williams, Fiona: ^ Barriers Facing New Entrants to Farming-An Emphasis on Policy. Aberdeen: Land Economy Research, SAC. Retrieved 18 June 2010. Archived 19 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine

Curry, Donald (November 2008), The Importance of County Council Farms to the Rural Economy (PDF), DEFRA, archived from the original (PDF) on 6 November 2009

Agriculture in the United Kingdom (PDF), DEFRA, 2009, archived from the original (PDF) on 23 January 2013, see also Agriculture in the United Kingdom, 2011 at the Wayback Machine (archived 2012-11-13)

Diversification in Agriculture 2004 (PDF), DEFRA, archived from the original (PDF) on 30 August 2011

Mason, Simon (1984), Agrarian Britain, 1700-1980 (short survey), Blackwell History Project

Spencer, Aubrey John (1927), Spencer's Smallholdings and Allotments Acts 1908-1926 (third ed.), London: Stevens and Sons

Watson, James; More, James (1949), Agriculture: The Science and Practice of British Farming (ninth ed.), Edinburgh and London: Oliver and Boyd

Allen, Robert C. "English and Welsh agriculture, 1300-1850: outputs, inputs, and income." (2006). online

Allen, Robert C. (1994). "Agriculture During the Industrial Revolution," in The Economic History of Britain since 1700, Vol. I: 1700-1860, ed. by Roderick Floud and Donald McCloskey, pp. 96-122.
also in Roderick Floud, Jane Humphries, and Paul Johnson, eds. The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain (2014); vol 1 pp 96-116.

Campbell, Bruce M.S. and Overton, Mark. (1991). "A New Perspective on Medieval and Early Modern Agriculture: Six Centuries of Norfolk Farming c. 1250-1850," Past & Present #141, pp. 38-105.

Clapham, Sir John. A concise economic history of Britain: from the earliest times to 1750 (1949), passim.

Coleman, D. C. The Economy of England, 1450-1750 (1977), pp. 31-47, 111-130.

Daunton, M. J. Progress and poverty: an economic and social history of Britain 1700-1850 (1995), pp. 25-121.

Ernle, Lord. English Farming: Past and Present (Heinemann, 1961).

Floud, Roderick, and Paul Johnson, eds. The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain: Volume 1, Industrialisation, 1700-1870 (2004) pp 96-116.

Hoyle, Richard W., ed. The Farmer in England, 1650-1980 (Ashgate Publishing, 2013)

Hopcroft, Rosemary L. "The social origins of agrarian change in late medieval England." American journal of sociology (1994): 1559-1595. in JSTOR

Kussmaul, Ann. Servants in husbandry in early modern England (Cambridge University Press, 1981)

Langdon, John (1982). "The Economics of Horses and Oxen in Medieval England," Agricultural History Review, Vol. 30, pp. 31-40.

Langdon, John. Horses, oxen and technological innovation: the use of draught animals in English farming from 1066-1500 (Cambridge University Press, 2002)

Martins, Susanna Wade. Farmers, landlords and landscapes: rural Britain, 1720 to 1870 (Windgather Pr, 2004)

May, Trevor. An economic and social history of Britain, 1760-1970 (2nd ed. 1995), passim

Orwin, C. S. A History of English Farming (1949), 153pp online

Overton, Mark. The Agricultural Revolution: The Transformation of the Agrarian Economy: 1500-1850 (Cambridge University Press. 1996)

Overton, Mark: Agricultural Revolution in England 1500-1850, BBC, last updated 5 November 2009. Retrieved 17 June 2010.

Rule, John. The vital century: England's developing economy 1714-1815 (1992) pp. 39-92.

Taylor, David. Mastering economic and social history (1988), textbook chapters 2, 23.

Thirsk, Joan, ed. The agrarian history of England and Wales (8 vol 1978) to 1939; the standard scholarly history; highly detailed

Thomas, Richard, Matilda Holmes, and James Morris. ""So bigge as bigge may be": tracking size and shape change in domestic livestock in London (AD 1220-1900)." Journal of Archaeological Science 40.8 (2013): 3309-3325. online

Woolgar, C.M., Serjeantson, D., Waldron, T. (Eds.), Food in Medieval England (Oxford University Press, 2006)

Clapp, B.W. ed. Documents in English Economic History: England since 1760 (1976).

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Agriculture in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia

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Agriculture in the United Kingdom uses 71% of the country's land area, employs 1% of its workforce (467,000 people) and contributes 0.5% of its gross value added ( £ 11.2 billion). The UK currently produces about 60% of its domestic food consumption.

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lake district

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https://www.righttoroam.org.uk/

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We are campaigning to bring a Right to Roam Act to England so that millions more people can have easy access to open space, and the physical, mental and spiritual health benefits that it brings. To get updates and to get involved, please sign up below.

By signing up for communications you consent to us further contacting you about our campaigns and how you can get involved

We're campaigning to extend the Countryside & Rights of Way (CRoW) Act so that it covers more of the countryside as well as more activities, both on land and water.

We want to see Right to Roam extended to woodlands, all downland (much is currently still excluded), Green Belt land, rivers and river banks. We'd also like to see access rights broadened beyond rambling to include a right to kayak, swim, and wild camp.

This campaign is about sharing. We want to share the countryside with each other, and with its owners. And it is sharing that will spread the message. Please on and , please share our videos and posters amongst your friends, and please sign up to this website to receive more information on how you can help share the message that nature should be open for public access.

Din is a popular choice on business and tech sites. It's also a good font for creating page titles with impact.

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We are campaigning to bring a Right to Roam Act to England so that millions more people can have easy access to open space, and the physical, mental and spiritual health benefits that it brings. To get updates and to get involved, please sign up below.

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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/28/who-owns-england-guy-shrubsole-review-land-ownership

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he question posed by the title of this crucial book has, for nearly a thousand years, been one that as a nation we have mostly been too cowed or too polite to ask. Since the Domesday Book set the standard for a comprehensive land ownership survey - in part so the conqueror could hoover up some of the choicest millions of acres for the crown and its appetite for the hunt - England has never properly addressed the issue. The last major attempt at land reform, which involved a census of ownership, was attempted by the Liberal government of David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill in 1909; it led to constitutional crisis, neutered proposals and partial data. One of the most telling facts in Guy Shrubsole's book is the revelation that the Land Registry - a body that George Osborne wanted to privatise - possesses details of the ownership of only 83% of England's green and pleasant plot. Knowledge of the other 17% remains out of bounds even to parliament.

Secrecy about ownership has become deliberately entwined with "an Englishman's home is his castle" nonsense. That particular phrase has less weight when you consider that only 5% of English land is owned by householders, while 18%, by Shrubsole's calculations, is in the control of corporate structures and offshore companies, many of them opaque. In France, you can pitch up at your local town hall and ask to see, free of charge, a map of who owns what in your neighbourhood. In England such a request carries a fee and is often frustrated by vague legal niceties around compulsory registration. For an individual to discover all that is known about land ownership in England would cost more than £72m.

There has, as a result, been some serious journalistic legwork in Shrubsole's endeavour. An environmental campaigner for Friends of the Earth, he has used multiple freedom of information requests and a large network of crowdsourced informants and number crunchers to build up a credible picture of the pattern and detail of who owns what. Even so, he has come up against plenty of virtual Keep Out and No Trespassing signs, and some of his findings necessarily rely on best guesswork.

The land monopolist has only to sit and watch his property multiplying in value, without effort or contribution

Winston Churchill, 1909

Shrubsole became obsessed with the great unspoken question in part because of a walking knowledge of the countryside in which he grew up. He was born in Newbury in Berkshire and was 10 years old when the eco-warrior protests about the town's bypass became a national news story in 1996. His parents kept some beehives in the woodland of the vast Sutton estate through which the bypass would run. Seeing first-hand as a boy how the bee population was threatened not only by motorways but also by the pesticides produced at the local Bayer plant, he learned to question the received wisdom that ancient barons, such as Sir Richard Sutton, who traced his lineage back to the time of the Domesday Book, were best thought of as duty-bound custodians of the landscape.

West Berkshire was a perfect microcosm of many of the issues this book seeks to address. We might like to imagine that mass trespass battles over "right to roam" were fought and won in the 1930s onwards. It remains the case, however, that only 10% of land in England is open access, and that proportion shrinks to 1.5% in Berkshire. Shrubsole could see this on Sunday walks. There was, for a start, a significant amount of off-limits MoD land, not least at Greenham Common; but far more significant was the land held by corporate family structures, including the Yattendon estate, 9,000 acres owned by the Iliffe family, much of it planted to supply 80,000 Christmas trees annually; or the Englefield estate, 14,000 acres in the prime M4 corridor owned since the 18th century by the Benyon family (which also owns De Beauvoir Town in north London).

The latter calls into question other myths around land ownership in this country. One is that the "landed interest" is a neutered force in our politics, undone by death duties and socialism. Richard Benyon, current owner of Englefield (and in receipt of £278,180 taxpayer-funded farm subsidies), is the richest of the current crop of Conservative MPs with estimated wealth of £110m. Another competitor for that title is Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Enle-Erle Drax, who sits in the Commons for South Dorset. Drax, an ardent Brexiter, owns the 7,000-acre Charborough estate, originally established with profits from the sugar and slave trades. The estate is bounded by the longest wall in England, made up of 2m bricks; the public get to look beyond the wall for two days a year, when tea and cake is served to locals. In campaigning for Brexit, Richard Drax (as he judiciously calls himself) argued a strong anti-immigration line, stating: "I believe, as do many of my constituents, that this country is full."

Englefield House, which has been in the Benyon family since the 18th century. Photograph: Joan Wakeham/Rex/Shutterstock

The impression that we are a small and overcrowded island, that property is scarce and worth a lifetime's work and debt to come by, that a little patch of suburban garden should reasonably be the aspiration of any true-born Englishman, has long been advanced by politicians of different stripes and for different reasons. You can rest assured, however, that the nation does not look very crowded from the Palladian windows of Englefield House or from Drax's mullioned pile at Purbeck. Two-thirds of land in the UK as a whole - 40m acres - is owned by 0.36% of the population; 24m families, meanwhile, share the "urban plot" of 3m acres. The notion of the country being "full" is a political fantasy.

When once asked how young entrepreneurs might succeed in Britain, the late Duke of Westminster, Gerald Grosvenor (owner of 131,000 acres, including much of London's Belgravia and central Liverpool), observed, drily, that they should "make sure they have an ancestor who was a very close friend of William the Conqueror". Though Shrubsole estimates that the recent sell-off of ancestral lands to the "new money" of hedge-funders and oligarchs accounts for perhaps 17% of the total in England, 30% rests in the hands of the feudal Norman "cousinhood", whose offspring have until recently preserved their birthright with a Downton-esque doggedness.

It is fascinating to be reminded that it was Winston Churchill, a Marlborough born, of course, at Blenheim Palace, who best articulated the iniquities of that inheritance. Shrubsole provides a compelling history of the challenges to land ownership of the last century or so, beginning with Churchill's 1909 book The People's Rights. The relevant pages of that title might stand as a manifesto for all of the imbalances of our economy in the decades that have followed. "Land is by far the greatest of the monopolies," Churchill argued, "... the land monopolist has only to sit and watch complacently his property multiplying in value, sometimes manifold, without either effort or contribution on his part; and that is justice!"

The 1909 "People's Budget" argued for a 20% land tax to be levied on future unearned increase in land values. The hundred-odd years war that budget set in train, between the landed and their tenants, had its moments of egalitarian triumph - the advance of the National Trust, for example - but in recent decades with the growth of offshore investment vehicles and the unchecked rise in wealth of the 1%, the balance has turned back towards the landowners.

You could see the results of that failed campaign, as Shrubsole convincingly does, as the roots of many of our contemporary difficulties - "the housing crisis is a land crisis". The laundered cash that has poured into London property, much of which lies empty, has been facilitated by a taxation system that largely ignores the productive and commercial value of land. In the shires, there is a radical shortage of building plots and a critical housing problem, while legacy landowners are subsidised to exploit the estates granted to them when the country's entire population was equal to that of present-day Greater Manchester.

Shrubsole ends his fine inquiry into these issues with a 10-point prospectus as to how this millennium-long problem might be brought up to date, and how our land could be made to work productively and healthily for us all. This ranges from obvious political measures to prevent landowners hoarding land and leaving property empty to a "public register of trusts" that would close loopholes around inheritance tax; also included are the need to reinvigorate buried pieces of legislation such as everyone's "statutory right to an allotment" (we devote 10 times more land to golf courses). Any reform must begin, however, he argues, with a determined end to the secrecy around ownership. His book makes a good start. If we really want to "take back control" we might start by thinking about the ways we share out the nation's primary sovereign resource, "this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England".

Who Owns England?: How We Lost Our Green and Pleasant Land and How to Take It Back by Guy Shrubsole is published by William Collins (£20). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99

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Who Owns England? by Guy Shrubsole review - why this land isn't your land

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he question posed by the title of this crucial book has, for nearly a thousand years, been one that as a nation we have mostly been too cowed or too polite to ask.

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https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/may/05/anonymous-anti-capitalist-awe-inspiring-crop-circles-benjamin-myers-great-art

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https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/may/05/anonymous-anti-capitalist-awe-inspiring-crop-circles-benjamin-myers-great-art

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right to roam campaign poster
https://www.righttoroam.org.uk/

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The Will o' the Wisp and the Snake by Hermann Hendrich (1854–1931)

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http://anillustratorsinspiration.blogspot.com/2011/04/narrowboats-vardos-and-roses.html

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http://dustyburrito.blogspot.com/2013/10/merrie-england-tim-walker-shoots.html?ssp_iabi=1677543959701&m=1

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Merrie England Tim Walker UK Vogue July 2011 3 copy 4

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http://dustyburrito.blogspot.com/2013/10/merrie-england-tim-walker-shoots.html?ssp_iabi=1677543959701&m=1

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Merrie England Tim Walker UK Vogue July 2011 9

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https://www.messynessychic.com/2016/09/13/the-pagan-wild-men-of-europe/

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https://lucypratt.com/work/

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https://www.ignant.com/2016/11/10/brooke-didonatos-surreal-pictures/

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https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/where-begin-with-folk-horror

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https://folklorethursday.com/folklife/lore-of-the-harvest/

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b008j4jk

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https://www.oakhousefoods.co.uk/blog/blog/2019/05/03/the-maypole-what-does-is-it-and-what-does-it-signify/

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https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/3694/a-five-point-guide-to-british-folk-art

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https://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/news/our-pick-standing-stones-and-circles/

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https://www.art-prints-on-demand.com/a/giles-james-william/the-cottesmore-prize-heif.html

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MR James portrays the landscape – especially the English landscape – as constituted by uncanny forces, and part-buried sufferings. Illustration by David McConochie Photograph: The Art Market

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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/10/eeriness-english-countryside-robert-macfarlane

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https://www.britannica.com/topic/livestock-farming

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https://whylivestockmatter.org/

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https://www.driftwoodjournals.com/best-beaches-on-the-gower-peninsula-wales-a-locals-guide/

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https://www.saddlersresidential.co.uk/property-details/SAD1713460/kent/westwell/westwell-lane

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Ben Wheatley’s film A Field In England: ‘There was something in that landscape that plainly terrified me.’ Photograph: Dean Rogers

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https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2020/september/on-penda-s-fen

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https://www.artfund.org/pages/art-quarterly

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https://www.littletoller.co.uk/the-clearing/poetry/can-folk-horror-tell-us-landscape-adam-scovell/

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https://www.blackboxbelfast.com/event/ghouls-on-film-presents-blood-on-satans-claw-1971/

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https://www.instagram.com/p/CpTpnJ9ou3a/

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https://www.instagram.com/p/CpjLj8-JuaV/

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https://www.instagram.com/p/CprnnfpqZsk/

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https://www.instagram.com/p/CpLJLNTuYp0/

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https://www.instagram.com/p/CHTPHJDnPYS/

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https://www.instagram.com/p/CpMuzngNpyE/

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https://www.instagram.com/p/CbLT8B7ps8Y/

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https://www.instagram.com/p/CpC-da1O6Im/

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Postcard illustration by Randolph Caldecott from c. 1914 for the poem "The Three Jovial Huntsmen", depicting the huntsmen encountering a "boggart"

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https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/explore-rewilding/what-is-rewilding/rewilding-the-uplands

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https://www.accesscard.online/providers/folk-by-the-oak/

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https://www.antiquestradegazette.com/print-edition/2021/august/2504/news/wassail-bowl-sets-record-for-ewenny-slipware-as-sir-kyffin-hits-new-high-at-welsh-auction/

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https://www.iamcountryside.com/sheep/14-ways-to-cut-costs-on-the-sheep-farm/

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https://www.naturettl.com/top-10-locations-for-landscape-photography-in-the-uk/

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https://www.countryfile.com/go-outdoors/august-countryside-photography/

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01c9wdd

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https://www.ryedalefolkmuseum.co.uk/collection/farming/

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https://www.ryedalefolkmuseum.co.uk/collection/farming/

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Yule goat

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Paul Bommer

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The Wicker Man

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Polish paper cutting Karol Klowoski

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Gower Gleanings HM Tucker

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https://britishfolkartcollection.org.uk/explore-the-collection/farming/

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https://britishfolkartcollection.org.uk/explore-the-collection/farming/

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https://britishfolkartcollection.org.uk/explore-the-collection/farming/

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https://britishfolkartcollection.org.uk/explore-the-collection/farming/

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https://britishfolkartcollection.org.uk/explore-the-collection/farming/

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https://britishfolkartcollection.org.uk/explore-the-collection/farming/

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http://mary-herbert.com/

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http://mary-herbert.com/

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http://mary-herbert.com/

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Wild man or monster born on the borders of England and Normandy from the manuscript "Histoires Prodigieuses" by Pierre Boaistruau in 1560

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a crowned fairy king seated on a hedgehog drawn by a young girl holding a giant daisy, accompanied by dancing fairies by Charles Altamont Doyle 19th century

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"One Good Thing" by Esther Pearl Watson 2019

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COMET (unknown artist)

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THE LANTERN PARADE Thomas Cooper Gotch 1918

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I have been interested in folk culture and folklore for the majority of my life, and it is something I have delved into for fun more and more over the past few years, collecting books on the subject matter and visiting folk-related museums and galleries where I’ve found openings across the UK. Other than folk-themed art I have made in my own free time, which recently have been looking at the Padstow ‘Obby ‘Oss and the Green man, as well as a series of folk horror films, I have enjoyed finding ways to bring in this interest to the foundation course. For example, for the’ family fortunes’ Wassail Bowl Project, I delved into looking at folk traditions and practices relating both to my own Welsh heritage and eating/drinking rituals, and gained a much deeper insight into the subject area through extensive research and testing, and found it captivating. This has been the project that I’ve been most happy with the outcome of, partially due to my enthusiasm for the topic, but also due to the time I devoted to create a finished and communicative collection that explored the connection between British folklore and our every-day lives in a way I hadn’t seen done before. Thus, in my FMP I feel that using similar mediums and techniques, such as collating and editing found images, utilising written language, typeface, symbol design would be effective ways to visualise my ideas. Narrative and sequence is inherent to folk and its collection of tales, so I also believe that sequential image making and story-telling with film could be very effective. However, I also think that the best way I can explore the topic of British folk is through more literal making and craft; sculpting, weaving, sewing, whittling 3-dimensional outcomes, and considering how best to use materials from nature, in order to engage with techniques traditional to British folk art itself.

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For my FMP, I will be looking into British folklore and folk culture’s connection to the countryside, agricultural living and the soil. A key influence of this choice has been my enthusiasm for folk horror films, such as Robin Hardy’s 1973 “The Wickerman,” and the important part that the rural landscape plays in effectively creating the genre’s eerie and unsettling atmosphere. Beginning to delve into the reasons behind this (most of which are linked to our rapidly changed and changing relationship with the natural land) have revealed some interesting research starting points to my research, such as the impact of psychogeography, environmental tension and the transition between the natural old ways and the coming of modernisation in the UK. I am starting to see how the way we perceive and define “British folk” is intrinsically linked to how we choose to interact with the natural world around us, and would like to investigate this further.

Another significant factor of why I chose to look at this topic regards my particularly folk-influenced and “outdoors-y” childhood, growing up attending petting farms and folk festivals in equal measure, (largely due to my dad’s music taste), with my most vivid and nostalgic memories being of dancing barefoot on grass, canoeing down streams in Norfolk and making Cheerio offerings to the fairies in my garden. Growing up, I never really lost the sense of whimsy and excitement I found in both spending time in nature and how, for me, that was always somehow linked to this naive and undefined concept of “folk” instilled in me by my family, who raised me on music, tales and atmosphere of a world that felt very magical, and would often fuel my imaginary games. This idea of a distinctly British folk-and-nature-influenced childhood of the early 2000s is something I’d love to find a way to define and visualise. This context also definitely played a part in why I find folk horror films so enthralling now, engaged by the genre taking a theme or environment that is to me somewhat familiar and comforting, synonymous with childhood entertainment, and flipping it on its head to portray something unmistakably creepy and fear-inducing.

Influenced by this, I have begun researching into the idea of ‘eeriness’ and ‘uncanny’ in British landscape culture as a whole, whether to do with the past suffering buried in the land from conflict and injustice through history, to the contemporary crisis about the state of the natural world and how we are becoming increasingly disconnected and isolated from it. In the documentary “Woodlands dark and days bewitched,” analysing the pillars of successful folk horror films, it ascribes the genre’s fascination with nature to societal fears about “the mysterious power and possible danger in the countryside,” an idea that I feel drawn to explore further. Also mentioned is how the politically radical view in folk horror concerns this idea that we ought to bury our land-based past in favour of modern industrialisation, or risk reverting backwards into a “time of superstition and madness,” highlighting the problem with prejudices of upper/middle class people towards lower class people working on the land, whom they deemed as more savage. The political issues concerning British folk and folk culture in the countryside are something that certainly cannot be brushed over in my project.

Aside from folk horror and the eeriness of the landscape, the countryside in general has always played a crucial role in folk song and folk art, as well as folk tales, with the materials, both metaphorically and literally, deriving from nature. I find British agricultural environments particularly intriguing, confirmed by our recent trip to help out on the Nama Yasai Farm in Lewes, and the ways it allowed me to connect with my subject in person through working in the soil with my hands. I have found that folk culture in farming and husbandry is rich due to folk’s firm roots in rural communities. Many traditions, beliefs and superstitions associated with folk (and oftentimes paganism) regard how people have navigated the challenge of developing a working relationship with nature for our own means, such as through practising rituals to herald sun for a good harvest, or making corn dollies. Stemming from this also, are folk traditions surrounding produce and food, which have particularly piqued my interest recently, especially in my project about the Welsh wassailing tradition of ritual drinking, eating and singing to orchard trees. Thus, farming folklore is an area I feel enthusiastic about pursuing further.

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The works that begun my interest in this subject matter were films of the folk horror genre, beginning with the defining ‘Unholy Trinity’; Robin Hardy’s “The Wickerman,” Piers’ Haggard’s  “Blood on Satan’s Claw,” and Michael Reeves’ “Witchfinder General.” All three of these films prove relevant to understanding the relationship between British folk and the natural land due to their strong and constant emphasis on how the rural landscape isolates its communities and individuals enough to skew dominant moral and religious systems and encourage the most unnatural acts of violence and horror to take place. The idea in each is that the older ways of communities past still thrive in isolated parts of England’s soil, and that we should avoid them at all costs. In the documentary “Woodlands dark and days bewitched,” it also talks about the influence of psychogeography; the psychological relationship between people in a place and the imprints they leave on it (almost a sort of ‘genius loci’ or spirit of place.) Thus, folk horror is about a contemporary person walking in nature and interpreting this resonance as a threat. For example, the documentary speaks of how the low camera angle often used in films such as ‘Blood on Satan’s Claw’ and ‘The Wickerman,’ gives the impression that evil is rising from below. The politically radical view presented, as previously mentioned, concerns how we ought to bury our land-based past in favour of modern industrialisation, or risk reverting backwards into “a time of superstition and madness.” However, Vic Pratt, in the film, argues that folk horror is instead entwined with “back to the land” movements, reflecting “a general societal anxiety that the town is overtaking the countryside” and relating more to our modern fears about environmental tension and the climate crisis. Thus, these films and the documentary stated have helped me gain insight into how and why the relationship between folk and the natural landscape make an effective subject for the horror genre, and can leave an deeply eerie or disturbing impression on a viewer.

However, there is more to the connection between folk and land than what we see in horror film. I have also started looking at various examples of British folk art, such as those that were on display in the Tate Britain’s exhibition of the same name in 2016. Folk art is often described as the output of untrained artists working outside of the metropolitan, whose worldview doesn’t necessarily fit within the borders of art history. As a result, a lot of it speaks to rural tradition, such as one painting at the exhibition, “Country Procession” c1790 by an unknown artist, showing a horse-drawn procession through the countryside. There is also a lot of farming-specific folk art at the British Folk Art Collection that I have come across, many of which are oil paintings featuring extremely stocky-looking prize rams, heifers or bulls, which supposedly were a response to the demand for animal portraiture from the 1750s onwards, after improvements in animal husbandry and selective breeding took place. In these cases, animal portraiture was a means of advertising the quality of a farmer’s stock, and artists were required to exaggerate the animal’s proportions so that spindly legs, small faces but very fat bodies were the norm. I find this an appealing, comical and intriguing example of what can be defined as a British agricultural folk art phenomena, and a visual language I would love to mimic and understand more thoroughly in my project.

In contrast, I have also been looking at contemporary artists responding to the theme of folk and the land, and one that particularly stuck for its extremely effective visuals which, to me, feel very evocative of both the kind of whimsical and fantastical but equally eerie and desolate impression I get from the British countryside, is Mary Herbert. Her use of smudged soft pastels creates a fuzzy and almost dissociative haze atop her natural landscape scenes, an effect that is closely reminiscent of the way I felt about the elusive and ungraspable magic of folk in my distant childhood memories. One piece of hers I find particularly striking is “In The Soil, In The Night Garden” 2020, featuring rows of red and orange shapes symbolising livestock, crops, viscera and pottery, buried in black soil beneath sprawling plants. I feel that this piece demonstrates a dark and eerie yet simultaneously beautiful picture of the components of the folk culture of those living on this rural soil, across generations.

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olk horror sounds like a contradiction in terms, like a blend of Aran knitwear and paranoia, morris-dancing and carnage. Mark Gatiss popularised the phrase, which is apt, since The League of Gentlemen helped seed the genre's recent revival. The League found the funny in The Wicker Man, though it wasn't hard to locate: it was always difficult to take seriously a movie where a strutting, bewigged Christopher Lee sonorously orders Edward Woodward, disguised as a dour jester in a Punch costume, to: "Cut some capers, man! Use your bladder!"

According to Gatiss, folk horror's central trinity consists of three films from the late 1960s and early 70s: Michael Reeves's Witchfinder General, a brooding tale of sadism and revenge in East Anglia during the civil war; Piers Haggard's Blood on Satan's Claw, in which a cult of adolescents hundreds of years ago commit a series of murders in order to incarnate Satan in the countryside; and Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man, about a policeman lured into being a human sacrifice for island-dwelling pagans.

However, a new wave has appeared in the last decade. It includes: Ben Wheatley's Kill List, which begins like Get Carter, with hitmen out on a job, and ends with a terrifying twist; David Keating's eerie, gory Wake Wood, about a couple who move to a village after the death of their daughter; and, in print, Andrew Michael Hurley's recent sombre masterpiece The Loney, in which a family go on a pilgrimage to a shrine, seeking a cure for the elder brother.

Folk horror, which is the subject of a new season at the Barbican, presents the dark dreams Britain has of itself. The films pick up on folk's association with the tribal and the rooted. And our tribe turns out to be a savage one: the countryside harbours forgotten cruelties, with the old ways untouched by modernity and marked by half-remembered rituals.

Lascivious gaze ... Blood on Satan's Claw. Photograph: Tigon/RGA

It is a place that is both enticing and threatening. The films are symptoms of the disease they purport to diagnose: manifestations of our troubled, citified response to anything natural, beautiful and not mechanical. Sometimes, these works seek to unnerve us through fear while still reaching for an enchanted vision of landscape and rural peace. But the ecstatic quietness of Samuel Palmer's paintings of Shoreham, or Wordsworth's universal Cumbria, do not sit well with gothic shudders. The anxiety undoes the idyll and, rather than imagining a visionary Britain, folk horror evokes a land haunted by the past, by old nightmares, by sex.

They may lurch into the ludicrous, but with surprising earnestness these films nonetheless play out a three-way philosophical debate: between enlightened rationalism, orthodox Christianity and renewed paganism. Sex is at the heart of this debate: just as these films both adore and recoil from natural beauty, so human loveliness entrances and repels them.

Hence the repeated moment when a young, beautiful blond woman (Linda Hayden in Blood on Satan's Claw, Britt Ekland in The Wicker Man) tempts some ascetic outsider, like a pale imitation of Salome trying to seduce John the Baptist. So we have tight-lipped Woodward sweating in his neatly ironed pyjamas while a nude Ekland cavorts and croons in the neighbouring bedroom.

In the best of such films, in Kill List for example, the conspiring coven are merely jokers busy manipulating the lonely dupe, and duping the audience in the process. The agnostics and Christians are perplexed and doubtful, while the pagans and satanists are smugly knowing. They're in on the gag.

The films feature a recurring archetype: the arrival of a stranger, the discovery of a secret cult, then a vicious murder, perhaps a sacrifice, designed to propitiate pagan gods. The metropolitan visitor, the outsider from the mainland, comes into a situation strange to them and to us. Here the enlightened laws of the nation do not pertain. In these forgotten spaces, there are other laws: rules and rituals that are both familiar remnants of some tribal memory yet utterly strange. The locals understand, while we do not. Their rootedness in place becomes uncanny. Once, almost everyone was so rooted. But now - in the discontinuous world of modernity, where relationships are casual and work comes and goes - such belonging feels strange and even sinister.

Sadism and revenge in East Anglia ... Witchfinder General. Photograph: Allstar/AIP

As the stories progress, that solitary figure gets caught up in a myth and a rite. Alan Garner's marvellous novel The Owl Service, which was adapted for TV, follows this pattern: it's based on a Welsh myth about a woman created from flowers who betrays her husband and is turned into an owl. Here, as in other folk horror tales, being inside a myth is terrifying, a fall from the industrialised, supermarket world into one possessed by abysmal powers. In these dramas, The Golden Bough turns gothic.

For, if it were only a matter of sex versus asceticism, we'd just have a load of re-enactments of Lady Chatterley's Lover. But in folk horror, the crowd destroys the individual. You are not up against some forlorn witch, but a cult. It is not the government that's out to get you, but your neighbours. You are going to be killed, but you cannot protest, for it is the will of the people. The majority prevails.

But this victory for "decent people" looks manic: the grins are forced, all doubt is suppressed. In their portrayal of the crowd, these films display a kind of power worship - the mob over the individual. Later, we may side with another crowd, the revengers, but that identification will be just as dehumanising. As long as there is blood and suffering, we are supposed to be satisfied.

In two works on one edge of the genre - David Rudkin's BBC drama Penda's Fen and Peter Shaffer's play Equus - sexual confusion is also at work. But, although there is horror, there is no murderous crowd. To the jaded psychiatrist in Equus, the young man he is treating possesses an enviable ecstasy, even if the youth's sexual feelings and instinct for worship are directed at a horse. Behind all Freudianism, the play taps the root of a connection to the wild.

Penda's Fen, meanwhile, somehow manages to bring together Edward Elgar, a coming out in 1970s rural England, religious doubt, cold war paranoia, and an encounter between a grammar-school boy and the last pagan king of England. It is a dream of renewal: the countryside stands against cold rationality, against industry. Like Equus, which was filmed in 1977 and recently revived with Daniel Radcliffe, this is folk horror at its most fruitful . The connection - the religious experience - belongs to a solitary figure. There is no crowing crowd. These are not stories of coercion, nor of human victims, but of selves "dark, true, impure and dissonant" as Rudkin has it. In both, a lonely boy tries to summon up a mystical intensity, as vision and reality blur.

What's different, and striking, here is that it is almost a rule in folk horror that the supernatural is banned. In The Wicker Man or Kill List, no one expects some gloomy god to appear. The evil is entirely human. There is no divine appearance in Kill List, no conjuration, just bleakly absurd acts of extreme aggression, suicidal and murderous all at once.

In fact, in the folk horror revival, the mystery no longer draws on fecundity and rebirth. Now the secret is violence. Wheatley is undoubtedly the master here. Both Kill List and A Field in England, his psychedelic fable set during the English civil war, transform cinema into a nightmare imbued with history and politics. Although he lives a drab suburban life, one built on and paid for by violence, Kill List's returned soldier protagonist has become an essentially murderous man. He and his partner may think they are crusaders, King Arthur's knights executing horrible people, but we quickly realise they are just vicious killers themselves.

When they finally appear, the cultists are empty, faceless, uninterested in their own self-preservation, thanking the men who torture them, charging carelessly into a hail of bullets. Only mayhem, cruelty and violence engages them. As one, they politely applaud each extreme act of violence, their bland automatic approval part of the ritual.

Ultimately, this ghastly applause tells us that the cultists are the cinema audience. The pagan rite we are witnessing is the film itself. A sense of complicity was always part of folk horror. The gang-rape and murder in Blood on Satan's Claw begins from the victim's point of view, but then plays out through the watching mob's lascivious gaze. The killing crowd in these movies is us.

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Cults, human sacrifice and pagan sex: how folk horror is flowering again in Brexit Britain

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olk horror sounds like a contradiction in terms, like a blend of Aran knitwear and paranoia, morris-dancing and carnage. Mark Gatiss popularised the phrase, which is apt, since The League of Gentlemen helped seed the genre's recent revival.

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If I was to sketch out a day spent engaging with landscape and place to realise a wide range of phenomenological experiences and responses of mind, body and spirit - maximum topography - how would it look? Well, in the spirit of Rousseau, it would be an excursion on foot of course (if lacking the epicness of Werner Herzog's trek from Munich to Paris as chronicled in Of Walking in Ice, the ethos of letting oneself drift, 'a falling forward becomes a Walk', would be the same). But not just any walk, variety and unpredictability would be the key. So maybe it would commence in an urban setting; the grittier the better, with the right mix of post-industrial decay and renewal and diverse architectural styles, juxtaposed with a sheen of surface functional banality to expertly peel back, revealing the layered temporal stories behind the bland facade. A detour would be made into a stalwart and defiantly Amazon-baiting second-hand bookshop with a capacious 'topography' section and a number of musty volumes purchased, something antiquarian, something to saviour from the 60s or 70s and a long lost nature writing classic. City would morph into country as suburb, urban green space and anarchic edgeland are navigated - both a route-march along a harsh, litter-strewn and anti-pedestrian roadside and a meander through an oasis of unexpectedly lush and mysterious greenery would feature in this liminal, transitional phase.

As the countryside authentica is reached, guidebook spoon feeding would be disdained in favour of more spontaneous route-finding, perhaps using an antique Ordnance Survey map and attempting to trace nineteenth century topography on the ground. Along the way some reminders of harsh rural realities would no doubt be observed: a sighting of baseball-capped men digging for badgers, improbable fly-tipping, maybe a suspicion of dogging. But a number of viscerally profound moments would also be experienced. Catching the eye of a fox or deer and joining in a lingering stock-still stare. Sensing lives lived and gone whilst rooting around a ruined farmstead or water mill, where unidentifiable rusted ironware or the colours of a cracked tile become refracted relict reminders of the past. A feeling of magic in the air as wind and light switch and shift, changing the mood of the tree- and field-scape. As the gloaming hour approaches and fatigue sets in, having clambered up a rocky stream-bed and scrambled through holloway undergrowth in Rogue Male style, a hill-top clearing would be chanced upon with views over several counties as shadows lengthen across endless fields, as pylons and rail lines and infrastructure become magical objects of gaze. A good place for a night's wild camp. Sleep would be fitful, muffled nocturnal (spectral?) sounds invading thoughts of the day's encounters, accompanied by a soundtrack of wyrd-folk, pastoral electronica and Ralph Vaughan Williams, and readings from Reliquiae (a journal of old and new work spanning landscape, ecology, folklore, esoteric philosophy and animism).
During the walk ambulatory clear-headedness would provide space for musing on a range of landscape-related topics whilst the miles were clocked-up: the links between the Parliamentary enclosure of common land and present day urban-rural division, how is an innate knowledge of fungi and wild flowers achieved, would Edward Thomas have favoured Nick Drake or the Incredible String Band, and such like. Along the way observations, smart phone photographs of arresting or unusual features and vistas and appropriate quotes from the landscape canon would be tweeted to an eclectic and discerning band of followers; observations and visual representations of the day to be later blogged or instagramed and debated on-line, perhaps included in a talk at a left-field festival, conference or pub social, or even forming part of the content of a crowd-funded book.

What would this mash-up journey into landscape immersion represent? Would it just be the ploughing of a mildly eccentric lone furrow? Creating an irrelevant line made by walking in the spirit of Richard Long, ephemeral self-indulgence whilst the real heft of landscape discourse and reality swells elsewhere: local campaigners mobilising against unbidden corporate uniformity or statist grand plans; photogenic academics revealing the results of their research through television series and tie-in book; exciting plans underway for the return of the wolf and rewilding nirvana; hip new ruralistas setting up boutique bunkhouses, offering foraging before breakfast, coasteering followed by artisan bread, craft ale and star gazing. Would this be just another example of a wannabe Self or Sinclair, strong on effort and perspiration but lacking their esoteric vocabulary or ecstatic sneer?

Or is there something in the wind, a fresh approach that this imaginary excursion partly encapsulates and, in fact, also links the other activities cited above. Perhaps not new ideas or concepts (the basics were all birthed in ancient Greece or long before), nothing that could be labelled a movement or a philosophy (the times are too post-modern for anything so quaint); but maybe an emerging coalescing - an alliance - of varied ways of thinking about, of looking at, of experiencing our spatial surroundings; their past, present and future. An antidote to the narrow focus that has often been the Achilles heel of much landscape discourse, characterised by a lack of cross-fertilisation between different disciplines and areas of interest (and often the absence of a feel for the range of emotions that being out in a landscape triggers). An echo of the view of Christopher Milne, searching for a personal philosophy and to find his own path away from his famous father's shadow as outlined in If there is the prospect here of a new aesthetic approach to landscape, then its worth pondering what components, however tangentially, combine to provide its origins, form and quintessence; to trace the foci and ley-line linkages (and talking of the ley, Alfred Watkin's The Hollow on the Hill, taking a lead from Richard Jefferies who "could be on one occasion the naturalist, observing and recording, and on another occasion the philosopher-poet, sensing and dreaming. One does indeed need to be both, for the one complements and enhances the other".
The Old Straight Track (1925) is an example of what we are getting at here. The central ley lines theory of the book is eccentric, discredited, farcical - but that's not the point. As Robert Macfarlane's introduction to the 2 014 edition unfurls "... the ley vision - with its mixture of mysticism, archaeology and sleuthing - re-enchanted the English landscape, investing it with fresh depth and detail, prompting new ways of looking and new reasons to walk").

"With this stone and this grass, with this red earth, this place was received and made and remade. Its generations are distinct but all suddenly present." Raymond Williams

Interestingly, to discover this new vista it is necessary to go back, back to multiple pasts. Landscape as a mirror for reflecting on humanity's relationship with and manipulation of the natural world has deep antecedents; and its the mingling of these temporal layers of envisioning that is of interest here. The late 1960s and early 1970s seem to be a particular touchstone, a launching off point for a more eclectic approach to landscape; and not, I think, just thought of as such because I was born in the midst of this period and have nostalgia pangs for a time that never was as golden as it seems from this distance (my earliest memories of sitting in sunlit meadows are untroubled by the realities of Enoch Powell and industrial strife). Of course, this was a time of seismic societal change in culture, politics and economics, in the way people lived. And contemporary representations and responses to landscape and sense of place reflected this, though at the time without any conscious esprit de corps or awareness of common threads or interest.
By way of illustration a seemingly amorphous and random collection of landscape aesthetics from the period might include: the sense and scenes of a decaying industrial infrastructure central to films such as Get Carter (1971)and Kes (1969); John Betjeman's televised elegies, in the teeth of the march of modernity, to disappearing or seemingly threatened features of England's architecture and landscape, typified by A Bird's Eye View (1964-1969) and Metro-land (1973); a triptych of cult folk-horror films, reinterpreting themes of a rural pagan past: Witchfinder General (1968), Blood On Satan's Claw (1971) and The Wicker Man (1973); an empathetic, ecologically aware, less sentimental and more anthropomorphic engagement with nature as exemplified by the writings of Richard Mabey and J.A. Baker's book The Peregrine (1967); a new and more accessible discipline of landscape archaeology emerging from its high academia landscape history and historical geography roots, with practitioners such as Mick Aston and Christopher Taylor keen to range between study and field; the pastoral folk rock and psych-folk stylings of the likes of Fairport Convention, Pentangle, Incredible String Band, Waterson-Carthy, Shirley Collins and Vashti Bunyan; and, of course, foregrounded at this time was a general back to the land, 'good life' strand of counter-cultural hippiedom. All are examples of reinterpretation or reappropriation of the past in a time of great change, sometimes in a somewhat reactionary or idealistic way, often breaking new ground.

It is perhaps only with the passing of time that the paths between these varied perspectives can be navigated and identified as a loose network; a pattern that can be plotted and pieced to provide some kind of cohesive narrative. And a rich seam revealed at the heart of this new landscape vision is the heuristic weirdness just below the surface of even everyday and seemingly tamed terrain - Deep England (and Deep Wales, Deep Ireland, Deep Scotland, and, well, Deep anywhere). Back to the 70's polestar and two cultural artifacts, from many examples, serve to illustrate. The 1974 BBC Play For Today , written by David Rudkin and directed by Alan Clarke, is now much exalted, talked and written about; remarkably so given that it is not available on DVD and so rarely seen. A British Film Institute release with comprehensive and thoughtful accompanying booklet has become de rigueur for such treasures and will surely come. In the meantime impatience has been salved by the publication of a pamphlet, The Edge is Where the Centre Is, marking a rare screening of the film in 2014 on the anniversary of the death of the Ango-Saxon King Penda in AD 655. Found within is a synopsis of the story by Rudkin himself, which could serve to represent and encapsulate many of the themes essayed here:

"In the pastoral landscape of Three Choirs England, a clergyman's son, in his last days at school, has his idealistic value-system and the precious tokens of his self-image all broken away - his parentage, his nationality, his sexuality, his conventional patriotism and faith...

Below the slopes of the Malvern Hills, he has encounters with an angel, and with a demon, with the ghost of Elgar, the crucified Jesus, and with Penda, England's last pagan king. In the final image, he turns away from his idealised landscape, to go into a world and adulthood with a value-system more anarchistic now, and readier to integrate the contradictions of experience."

David Gladwell's film, capitalistic development) is instinctively aligned with a more conservative will to preservation" with "an attempt ... to show the coexistence of all things in time". The images in the film of the bodies of villagers from previous generations rising from the grave, reawakening the village past, are a reminder of the supernatural and hauntological undercurrents that have always effected perceptions of the landscape: Requiem For A Village (1975) has received the BFI treatment. As with Penda's Fen, and with echoes of William Blake and William Morris, Requiem is a meditation on societal change in the countryside that combines, in Rob Young's words, "the contradictions of an English radical tradition in which opposition to the encroachment of 'the scrape' ( ie The Owl Service (1969), based on Alan Garner's influential book of the same name, Robin Red Breast (1970) and Children of the Stones (1977). "we had eyes for phantoms then". A theme also taken up at the time in television productions such as

Once this terrain has been surveyed and mapped, other features and relics that provide signal traces, from before and since, can be unearthed, excavated and added; the layers enriching the sense of commonality and communion. Who would be the historical Arch-Druids that have formulated this stratigraphy? An irrelgular yet inspiring collection of mystic topographers, antiquarians, Utopians, visionary poets, folklorists, landscape historians and archaeologists, and proto-psychogeographers; often linked by their divergence from accepted norms and doctrines. , and whose work was given further lustre by the classic
Musing on landscape is as old as humanity - countless un-named, unknown shamen and sears must have held their tribes in thrall with vivid stories and imagery inspired by the flora, fauna and topography of their surroundings long before even Vergil and the Classical poets came on the scene with their flourishing tales of magick, milieu and mind: "Happy too the man who knows the gods of the country, Pan, and old Silvanus, and the sister Nymphs". Through dark days and into the Renaissance the flame was carried by the likes of John Leland, driven to madness by his topographical quest; Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers of St George's Hill, their doomed attempt to establish a 'Common Treasury' of land for all; and Sir Richard Colt Hoar and the empirical antiquaries "speaking from facts not theory", birthing archaeology whilst pillaging barrow and chapel.

The Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian epochs are awash with visionaries who have helped sculpture landscape sensibilities ever since. Titans for whom a surname is all that is required: Blake, Dickens and Darwin; Turner and Constable; Tennyson, Wordsworth and Keats; the Brontes and Hardy; Kipling, Conan-Doyle and Buchan; Ruskin and Morris; Emerson, Muir and Thoreau; the list goes on. Perhaps less heralded, but deeply influential on the hypothesis laid out here are the quintet of John Clare, Richard Jefferies, Edward Thomas, Arthur Machen and MR James. Clare, the 'peasant poet' and authentic voice of rage and lament in response to the often discordant societal and economic changes he observed in his corner of Northamptonshire countryside; Jefferies and Thomas, chroniclers of not only the natural history but also the human life of the fields, woods, villages, tracks and downs of Southern England, based on intimate knowledge and capacious walking; James, the master of concise ghost stories for which physical setting was an integral actor solitude and woods and deep lanes and wonder" of the British countryside. BBC Ghost Stories for Christmas televisual adaptations of the 1970s; and Machen, a more mystical voice, bringing liminal enchantment to the "

The transitional zone bridging Edwardian supernatural Arcadia and Utopian dreaming and our own age is the somewhat fusty and buttoned-up world of the first half of the twentieth century or so, though of course this period also witnessed such pioneering landmarks as the poetry of Auden and Eliot, J.B. Priestley's guide book amongst the shelves of a second-hand book shop. In parallel to this more populist fare, the influential groundwork of landscape archaeology and history was being carried out, culminating in two influential works of 'muddy boots' empirical research: O.G.S. Crawford's Hoskins' story of how the English landscape developed from pre-history to the modern period is one of the ever expanding collection of re-issues of 'classic' but oft overlooked or out of print landscape and nature titles by the estimable English Journey, the art of Paul Nash and Eric Ravillious and, eventually, the polymath travel writings of Patrick Leigh Fermor (though describing Fermor as a 'travel writer' is like labelling George Orwell as a political writer, too confining to be useful). We have come a long way since the more orthodox topographical guides of this era. Such works were essentially descriptive accounts of the main points of interest in a given area, with historical, geographical or folkloric detours along the way, rarely straying from the traditional 'heritage' norms of ancient monuments, picture postcard villages and country house piles. However, they have become much loved artifacts. There is great pleasure to be had in poring over the highways and byways, black and white photos or hand drawn maps of a Batsford or a King's England
Archaeology in the Field (1953), making innovative use of aerial photography to read the patterns in the landscape, and The Making of the English Landscape (1955) by W.G. Hoskins, certainly the most read (and one of the most readable) book on landscape history ever published, which uses the memorable analogy: "One may liken the English landscape, especially in wide view, to a symphony, which it is possible to enjoy in an architectural mass of sound ... ", but that "only when we know all the themes and harmonies can we begin to appreciate its full beauty, or to discover in it new subtleties every time we visit it".
Little Toller Books. This series provides a freshness and, hopefully, a new readership to works by W.H. Hudson, Henry Williamson, Clare Leighton, Kenneth Alsop and many more; re-enchanting what was perhaps fading from view as quite an orthodox canon; enabling these writings to be seen for what they are, a surprisingly diverse and eclectic record of lives lived in close harmony with the land and its players.

"It is clear that inherited landscape myths and memories share two common characteristics: their surprising endurance through the centuries and their power to shape institutions that we still live with." Simon Shama

At root in this analysis of a coming together is a sense of response, both practically - to rally and contribute to trying to turn back the tide and champion positive bonds between humanity and nature - but also to articulate anew how we feel about the spaces we inhabit, however much we may be abusing them. As Simon Shama articulates in The idea of engaging with landscape as an all-encompassing, multi-faceted concept - shape-shifting and supple - drawing on diverse influences and perceptions does seem to be becoming embedded in discourse at the macro, policy level. The landmark Council of Europe is designed to be used by policy-makers across the EU when decisions and legislation with an impact on the protection, management and planning of landscape are made. How real and practical this underpinning is in practise is debatable and problematic, particularly at a time of imposed austerity, but it demonstrates a direction of travel towards a more holistic and imaginative approach. That landscape is not just about castles and country houses, National Parks and nature reserves, the works of Constable and Turner, is a doctrine that is slowly but surely gaining currency. At the launch of the Council for the Protection of Rural England's recently announced policy initiative, So this might all seem very interesting and Orphic, but what purpose other than the pursuit of an arcane form of hipsterdom does a rebooted, polyglot aesthetic that attempts to feed from all of these diverse landscape perspectives from the past serve? I think it can be argued that the freshness of an approach that assimilates and reinvigorates what has gone before in this way challenges existing orthodoxies regarding our relationship with heritage, landscape, nature and place. It may be that there is also, perhaps unconsciously, a need for a reaction against the general sense of gloom that often pervades considerations of the human relationship with and impact on the natural environment. Headlines of degraded habitats, depleted and recklessly consumed resources, dwindling flora and fauna, disengagement with nature, melting ice-caps - the list goes on, a seemingly turbo-charged, and irreversible, descent into a self-inflicted dystopia. magisterial wander across landscapes, continents, centuries and genres, examining the relationship between humankind and landscape: "... it is a journey through space and places, eyes wide open, that will help us keep faith with a future on this tough, lovely old planet". Landscape and Memory (1996), his
is deliberately inclusive - covering, for instance, both urban and rural, outstanding and degraded landscapes and also recognising the impact of both human and natural processes, cultural and quality of life perceptions. In place for over a decade, the Convention European Landscape Convention "Landscape. What a word. Earthy, yet artificial. Infinite and specific. Historic, modern. Deeply personal and collectively shared".
Landscapes for Everyone, Nick Crane reflected on this theme:

Of course, many of the dynamic processes that lead to flux and change in society and the landscape are far removed from the influence or ken of policy-makers and legislators. Economic forces, shifts in attitude and taste and a host of other factors and individual or collective decisions will shape the countryside and urban spaces that we inhabit, how we use and think about them, in the future as much as government policy. However, as we appear to be entering a period of political uncertainty i n Britain as elsewhere, with support for and confidence in traditional political parties and institutions retreating like the tide from a beach, it is worth contemplating the relevance of the so-called guerrilla gardening and the rewilding movement. The types of activities, in fact, that are advocated in 'Green surge'. One can speculate on whether the progressive environmental agenda of the Green Party is going to get a look in amongst the cacophony of the conventional, the unambitious and the reactionary emitting from the wider political spectrum. But quietly, incrementally there are stirrings below the 'Westminster village' radar that are part of the mosaic described here: a reaction against the corporate and the bland, grassroots activity that builds on the best from the past and the now, moulding it into something fresh and forward-looking; radical spirit abroad in the landscape once more. Practical (and political) innovations abound: the new coalitions of environmental groups such as Transition Town movement, , local community action to take control of pubs, shops and post offices, the anti-fracking New Networks for Nature campaign, a revival in community food growing and permaculture schemes,
If the momentum of these examples of the radical ordinary is to be harnessed then buzz words such as 'p lace-making' and 'localism' that have entered the lexicon of official-speak need to be backed-up by credible actions. Now that the genie of devolution is well and truly out of the bottle - to an advanced stage in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and a creeping scourge of broken political elites in England - then it is not just Nigel Farage and his John Bull UKippers who have an opportunity to force the agenda.R eal England: The Battle Against the Bland, Paul Kingsnorth's 2008 rallying cry for "... a future in which England wakes up again and steps back from the precipice ... a future in which the many wonderful things I have seen are not wiped out but are preserved, promoted and enriched as part of a living landscape".

Less obviously eco-political, but I think still linked, is the trend towards re-imagined outdoor leisure. Rejecting static caravan and Caravan and Camping Club sites - with their joyless amenities, suburbanised trimmed lawns and crazy golf - the upward curve is with wild camping, old-school camper vans, festivals, camp fires and sites that cater for those seeking a simpler engagement with the natural environment (with, it has to be said, a hint of Some might sneer at the whiff of lifestyle marketing attached to the likes of Nuts in May liberal middle class wankiness: take it away Keith and Candice Marie). Allied to renewed enthusiasm for 'proper camping' are a host of other activities such as wild swimming, gorge-walking, foraging, micro-adventures. here is more afoot here than 'staycation' and glamping Sunday supplement flavour of the month. Cool Camping, but I think t

"Take me back to beautiful England/ And the grey, damp filthiness of ages/ Fog rolling down behind the mountains/ And on the graveyards, and dead sea-captains." Polly Harvey

How much does a coalescing of the landscape aesthetics discussed here really inform the developments just described? Can we justifiably point to a paradigm shift in landscape perception? An awakening to a common treasury? Perhaps, but many things are entangled here and it is, of course, hard to see the wood for the trees when navigating the present. If its not possible, at this point in time anyway, to mould a case for a manifesto that is or can be meaningful in terms of shaping the management of landscape or popular perceptions of it, it may be that the lasting impact of what is described here is at an altogether smaller scale; a focus on the small heart of things, to borrow the title from Julian Hoffman's book.

Look around and there are many contemporary examples of this composite way of seeing, of being in, landscape. Some are broad church, some have overtly socio-political agenda's, others are perhaps more frivolous. Trace the connecting threads weaving past and present, sometimes strong and clear, sometimes gossamer thin and shadowy, and we may just be on to something here. Of course, any such loose assemblage needs a locus of key texts, advocates and practitioners to articulate a coherent voice. To many the W.G. Sebald's The roll-call of other writers, poets, artists, musicians, film-makers, campaigners and, dare I say it, bloggers and social media contributors who inhabit this space is, like The Orb song, a huge ever growing pulsating thing. I would cite those described in the following paragraphs as particularly important waymarkers for me in journeying towards landscape epiphanies (an on-going perambulation). They articulate, in the words of Peter Ackroyd's examination of the roots of English cultural history,
magnus opus for contemporary emerging landscape philosophising is "a recognition of the landscape as an organic being with its own laws of growth and change". The Rings of Saturn, published in 1995. Here we have a ground-breaking narrative of a long walk along the East Anglian coast that becomes a portal for evocations of and meditations on an array of times, places and people. A work that sprinkles magic dust on even the most prosaic of scenes. See that line of fishermen's tents along the beach near Lowestoft? (apply sonerous German accent) "It is as if the last stragglers of some nomadic people had settled there, at the outermost limit of the earth, in expectation of the miracle longed for since time immemorial, the miracle which would justify all their erstwhile privations and wanderings." Wow, now that feels deep. Did Werner Herzog and Sebald ever get together before his untimely death? They are surely two peas in a Teutonic pod. Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination,

The shadow of Iain Sinclair - "the writer as walker par excellence" - and his resurrection of the 'Cockney visionary' spirit of Blake and Defoe, edges its way across the picture here. Of course, this treatise would be remiss indeed if it did not venture, or rather drift, into psychogeographical domains. In recent years the term 'deep topography' has been coined to describe the writing and research of landscapists such as Nick Papadimitrou; a nuanced off-shoot of the more high profile landscape leftfieldism of psychogeography: a word and practice in danger of becoming an overloaded band-wagon of fecundity. Essentially, we are in the territory of metaphysical exploration of the intersection between landscape, human activity (historical and modern), psychological reaction and the natural world; more specifically liminal spaces, often in an urban or edgeland context away from the familiar and the well-trod. And we are on foot, rooting out the places that are overlooked, neglected or invisible to the casual eye.

With origins in the derive of the Dadists and Situationists of mid-twentieth century Paris, psychogeography has generally remained resolutely urban in focus; in some ways almost anti-rural, certainly uninterested in the conventionally sublime or aesthetically pleasing aspects of the countryside (though, a s Edward Chell so inventively and perceptively shows us in his Soft Estate book and exhibition, there is a "connective visual experience" between the Picturesque designed landscapes of the eighteenth century and much modern infrastructure) . Such an approach can be prey to easy caricature as the haunt of earnest devotees seeking out and eulogising the most desolate and God-forsaken parts of London and the capital's outermost extremities. In reality, and stripping away the chaff, there is much to admire in a fresh way to read and interpret geographical space and bring together normally disparate subject matter. But there has tended to be only tentative interaction with the more orthodox disciplines of landscape ecology, history, archaeology etc. The question arises: is not any spatial entity just as equally ripe for psychogeographical enquiry? To bring this approach into the fold of this thesis there is a need for indiscriminate practise of deep topography, wherever the path may lead. An exemplar that sets a template to follow would be The New English Landscape, Ken Worpole and Jason Orton's 2013 exploration of the "bastard countryside" of the estuary indented, marsh rich and semi-industrial Essex coastline - a liminal wonderland at once on the doorstep of, but also estranged from, the Great Wen of London.

Seemingly more orthodox but coaxial to such modish cultural geography is nature writing; moribund not so long ago but in the midst of an on-going new golden age. A bridge and direct link between both the urban experience and an earlier generation of environmental writers is provided by the late flowering of output from Richard Mabey. Since Mabey first published his, at the time, groundbreaking books such as
The Unofficial Countryside in 1973 many of the scruffy, neglected and wild enclaves of the natural and semi-natural in urban areas and edgelands have been transformed - for good or ill. The flowering of 'new nature' writing in recent years has included a vigorous and tenacious off-shoot focusing on such places. The prime example being Edgelands: Journeys into England's True Wilderness by Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts, an updated tramp across the territory covered by Mabey, taking its lead from Marion Shoard's influential 1992 essay, Edgelands.
As well as a biography of Gilbert White (eighteenth century "parson-naturalist" and author of the Ur-text of British natural history writing, Natural History and Antiquities ofSelborne) Mabey's prolific output has included
Food For Free and Weeds which presage or advocate the practical yet intimate and respectful interaction with the natural world that is at the core of much of the best of modern ecology and natural history prose. My own favourite Mabey work is though Nature Cure, his inspirational treatise on the positive impact of the natural world and sense of place on the human condition. In musing on his struggle to re-energise his relationship with landscape and the natural world in order to fight of depression, Mabey reaches a watershed moment:

"I began to wonder - I hope not just rationalising my own naivety - if wilderness was really what I wanted, or should want ... what I missed was some common ground between the wilderness and the thoroughly domesticated, some accessible country - real and metaphysical ... I realised that what touched me most was not wilderness as a special, defined place, but the quality of wildness...the untidy, energising edge of all living systems."

It is a measure of the current strength of this genre that there are a number of authors who are able to match Mabey's high quality output. I have become something of a biblio-junky for this type of thing in recent years and curate book shelves heaving with tomes by Robert Macfarlane, Roger Deakin ( is a particular favourite), Mark Cocker, Tim Dee ... But wait, these are all white males, as have been the vast majority of names included in this piece so far. The subjects of landscape, sense of place and nature are hardly unique in this respect but it is worth pausing for thought here. In fact and of course, there are, and have always been, many fine female writers in this field. The above list of the books on my shelf would have gone on to include Rebecca Solnit, Kathleen Jamie, Sarah Maitland and many others. Nevertheless, it is somewhat dispiriting to realise that voices that are fairly uniform in terms of cultural background and gender still tend to dominate. Melissa Harrison, author of I have previously written about poetry and the landscape on this blog ( Wild Wood: A Journey Through Trees Clay and who I would also add here, has recently written perceptively on this subject, citing not only the struggle that female writers often have to enter this arena, witness the 70 years it took for Nan Shepherd's The Living Mountain to be published and then widely recognised as a landscape classic, but also the different perspectives and approaches that are lost if women writers (and for that matter those reflecting gay, black, migrant, working class or any other experiences from society at large) are not heard. This point perhaps exemplified by the recent success of Helen MacDonald's an anthology open in the sun), chronicling a vibrant contemporary strain of poetry echoing the outpouring of prose writing on themes of place, the natural world and our relationship with it in recent years. Much of this output feels radical and non-conformist, in the best traditions of the poetry of the past that has weathered well (and, as an aside and for whatever reason, it does seem that female voices are much more well-represented). For instance, new poetry figures large in EarthLines magazine, the journal Terrain and the Dark Mountain network of "writers, artists and thinkers in search of new stories for troubled times". The web and new media have also opened up opportunities for poets to share their work more easily. Collectives such as Longbarrow Press ("poetry from the edgelands") utilise on-line audio channels like SoundCloud to give voice to their output; neat symmetry with the oral traditions of poetry, which is generally best appreciated aloud. H is for Hawk, which deals with the author's relationship with a goshawk in the context of the death of her father. And here we have come full circle, back to Richard Mabey and his candid writing on his own mental health. What I think characterises much of the best of this work is an unforced desire to bring personal experience and memory, and the landscape and the natural world together; to recognise the intertwinedness of all things.

Fiction also appears in this vista. A useful primer to how we have got here is Cynan Jones and (my current read) Ben Myers Writing Britain: Wasteland to Wonderland, a book accompanying the 2012 exhibition of the same name at the British Library that examined how the landscapes of Britain permeate great literary works through the ages. One contemporary pathway that's worth exploring, and adds to the canon, is the run of novels such as God's Own Country (2008) by Ross Raisin, The Dig (2014) by 'shadow language' (2014) to this list. A crowd-funded novel bristling and boiling with imagery and imagination that both brings life to the gloom, old gods and shock of late period Anglo-Saxon England and also resonates with more contemporary anxieties; a so-called difficult read that crashed its way into the mainstream through its sheer heft. Beastings (2014) that have been compared to the visceral narrations of landscape, of nature that characterise the work of Ted Hughes and Cormac McCarthy. The cadence of the writing, seemingly awkward at first, draws the reader into the landscape, pulls you away from the passive gaze of an outsider. I would also add Paul Kingsnorth's

This well-spring of written words may generate much of the vibrancy that pulses through the sense here of a fresh perspective on old stories, but there are other ebbs and flows. The Caught by the River collective, ever-expanding from its nucleus of fishing and musical themes, is a regular contributor to this feeling of vigour. Its anthology, On Nature: Unexpected Ramblings on the British Countryside, seeks to provide "a kaleidoscopic vision of Britain" through multifarious contributions from the likes of Stuart Maconie, Bill Drummond and Tracey Thorn but makes it very clear that engagement with the landscape is not just about writing, "its about watching and listening, digging in, taking part"; a culture for practical aesthetes to thrive in, whether through immersion in deep topographical wanderings or other forms of creativity or activism.

"Summer has come in/ Loudly sing, Cuckoo!/ The seed grows and the meadow blooms/ And the wood springs anew/ Sing, Cuckoo!" Sumer is Icumen In (Anon.)

For how hard it is/ t o understand the landscape/ as you pass in a train/ from here to there/ and mutely it/ watches you vanish. W.G. Sebald

The philosophical, artistic and cultural convergences outlined above offer a corrective to easy tropes such as 'landscape as palimpsest': the concept of an orderly, layered history of temporal stratification, each successor wave of change wiping clean the earlier canvass, leaving only relict features of what went before. In fact, landscape is relentlessly unruly, more muddled and haphazard juxtaposition than ordered linear succession. It will not behave, even when we try to manage and mould it, to bend it to our will. Nor should landscape be seen simply in terms of the visible present-day and historical topography. It is also immersed in a soup of past realities, memories and myths, what Iain Sinclair has termed "fictions of memory". Taking this idea further, geographer Doreen Massey has described landscape as "... a multiplicity of trajectories"; connected and unconnected stories that "... are not buried in a layered past, but are bursting through to speak to us now. They are on-going, unfinished stories that, in their unfinishedness address our today". Given this multi-faceted context our responses to landscape need to mirror this compexity. To this end Robert Macfarlane's expansive and fluid definition of landscape in The Old Ways (2012) blows away the cobwebs of received wisdom and tired orthodoxy, and is worth repeating as it eloquently accords with what is articulated here:

"Landscape is not something to be viewed and appraised from a distance, as if it were a panel in a frieze or a canvas in a frame. It is not the passive object of our gaze, but rather a volatile participant - a fellow subject which arches and bristles at us, bristles into us...it is dynamic and commotion causing, it sculpts and shapes us not only over the courses of our lives but also instant by instant, incident by incident. I prefer to take 'landscape' as a collective term for the temperature and pressure of the air, the fall of light and its rebounds, the textures and surfaces of rock, soil and building, the sounds, the scents and uncountable other transitory phenomena and atmospheres that together comprise the bristling presence of a particular place at a particular moment."

In my orbit of landscape discourse it feels like there are many who see a new world rising out of the - often half-forgotten or mis-represented - memories and realities (real, imagined and co-opted) of terrains and places, like Milton's vision of Creation in Paradise Lost or, to get even more Biblical, the righteousness of the Book of Revelation: "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth". An alternative to the contemporaneous emptiness of the path towards plastic lives in a seemingly homogenised, 'Globalised' world. At once spiritual, esoteric and felt but also grounded, fabricated and everyday, and no less magical for that; for as Jonathan Meades has clarion-called, "We are surrounded by the greatest of free shows. Places. Most of them made by man, remade by man".

A re-imagined sense of landscape and place is needed to underwrite fresh responses to the world around us. The promiscuous, easy navigation across boundaries and borders that is the key touchstone of this analysis might just be what is required. A final riff of connections as illustration. A seemingly nostalgic and escapist retreat to the twilight inter-war world of the 1976 film adaptation of Geoffrey Household's (Peter O'Toole reprising TE Lawrence as an old school adventurer hiding out from the Nazis in his overgrown Dorset holloway) could lead seamlessly to - and was part inspiration for - Robert Macfarlane's book , album cover designer for Radiohead and Tom Yorke; which takes us up to Holloway, which has begot a forthcoming short film by folk horror champion Adam Scovell ( Celluloid Wicker Man) and is illustrated by Stanley Donwood David Kelly):
Harrowdown Hill (sylvan scene of the tragic death of

; especially for those who wish to follow Robert Frost's maxim in his celebrated poem
This video sparks thoughts of M.R. James' The Road Not Taken: A View From A Hill (another scene of a hanging; and an album title for The Owl Service) juxtaposed with Patrick Keiller mapping of the 21st century geographical and political landscape through his The Robinson Institute work and the aforementioned English Magic exhibition curated by Jeremy Deller. An obvious companion piece here is the fundamental and wide-ranging analysis of the new English landscape outlined in Doreen Massey's Landscape/space/politics: an essay. From Boys Own adventure to socio-political critique in eight easy moves, covering much diverse ground on the way. Now that, surely, is what a fecund and vibrant sense of landscape should be all about

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less travelled by, and this has made all the difference".

Postscript: As already mentioned, nothing is new. The Roman altar pictured, recovered near the Antonine Wall bares the inscription GENIO TERRAE BRITANNICAE, translated as "to the presiding spirit of the British countryside". These three Latin words, whispers in the wind across two millennia, encapsulate all that has been described here. If this sentiment spoke to people's relationship with their landscape then, it is surely even more important now and for the future to keep this spirit alive.

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Of Walking in Ice. Jonathan Cape.
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Now All Roads Lead to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas. Faber and Faber.
The Making of the English Landscape. Penguin.
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Watkins, A, 2014. The Old Straight Track: Its Mounds, Beacons, Moats, Sites and Mark Stones. Head of Zeus.
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If I was to sketch out a day spent engaging with landscape and place to realise a wide range of phenomenological experiences and responses of mind, body and spirit - maximum topography - how would it look?

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The books that turned us into readers | Celebrating World Book Day 2023

Greetings, dear readers, from Hoxton Square. Today marks World Book Day here in the UK and in Ireland. World Book Day encourages children to read for pleasure, and develop a love of books and reading. The charity offers every child and young person the opportunity to have a book of their own. Over the past 26 years, World Book Day has inspired a life-long habit of reading in children in the UK and Ireland - and, indeed, around the world - a truly noble endeavour.

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Greetings, dear readers, from Hoxton Square. Today marks World Book Day here in the UK and in Ireland. World Book Day encourages children to read for pleasure, and develop a love of books and reading. The charity offers every child and young person the opportunity to have a book of their own.

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HfOPvelubCTEe8XAV26_81joi8bnsr8uez5TChr0d0I/edit

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"One Good Thing" by Esther Pearl Watson 2019

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THE LANTERN PARADE Thomas Cooper Gotch 1918

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COMET (unknown artist)

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William Price in druidic costume, with goats by Alfred Charles Hemming 1918. (of a famed welsh doctor and nationalist, heretic and archdruid, flamboyant and radical figure - he avoided wearing socks and primarily drank champagne. He was a pioneer of social health care and passionate advocate of vegetarianism and animal welfare. His cremation of his infant son also eventually led to the widespread acceptance and legalisation of cremation in the UK! (just quite cool tbh)

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KACHINA DOLL by Jane Iverson (about spirits in the religion of the Pueblo Native American culture) - believed to visit villages in spring and summer, capable of using their powers for human benefit

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a crowned fairy king seated on a hedgehog drawn by a young girl holding a giant daisy, accompanied by dancing fairies by Charles Altamont Doyle 19th century

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Wild man or monster born on the borders of England and Normandy from the manuscript "Histoires Prodigieuses" by Pierre Boaistruau in 1560