4.1 Historic landscapes (2 of 3)
Cornwall, therefore, provided the first very successful use of historic landscape characterisation at county scale, and has thus validated the approach developed as a result of the English Heritage historic landscape project. The uses to which the Cornwall historic landscape map are already being put include all the targets for uses and users that were defined at the start of the English Heritage project, and are starting to provide case studies of how characterisation leads directly to conservation and planning decisions. It also demonstrates conclusively that such an approach, rooted wherever possible in the local and the commonplace, and referring to everyone's locality as well as to special places, offers the rewards of greatly enhanced public awareness and support for the continued conservation and management of the historic landscape.
Although very successful, the Cornwall approach should not yet be considered the final stage in the development of this methodology. Subsequent projects have borrowed heavily from the Cornish work, but have taken it in new directions. Where necessary, each project has tailored methods to suit local circumstances, in terms of regional and local landscape diversity, and in terms of the particular requirements of various local authorities and communities which have different needs reflecting the pace and direction of economic change.
In Avon, where the work was almost entirely funded by the old county council with minimal help from English Heritage, the process proceeded parish by parish. This procedure enabled local experts to contribute their considerable understanding of the landscape within the overarching framework of the strategic methodology. During the project, the typology used in Cornwall was modified to suit local needs, for example adding new types to reflect the Avon Levels, while greater attention was given to variations in the character of post-medieval enclosure and to land use immediately predating enclosure, an aspect developed further in the adjoining Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty project.
Another benefit of the Avon project was that it was carried out to the boundaries of the 1974 county of Avon immediately before its abolition and replacement by four separate unitary authorities; the value of the map is therefore enhanced by providing a regional context to decisions within the new smaller authorities. The Avon map was digitised as a second stage of the project, thus enabling the data to be manipulated and rearranged in different patterns, and against varying backdrops.
The Cotswold project, because it took as its boundary that of one of the larger Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, broke new ground in covering parts of several counties. Its main innovation, however, was in mapping directly onto a Geographic Information System (GIS) rather than digitising the information as a separate and secondary stage. Later projects (such as Hampshire) have followed this experience, and the future aim will be for all projects to map directly onto a GIS. The immediate result of the use of a GIS in the Cotswolds has been the ability to recognise that simplified zones (interpretations of the basic map), can be generated relatively rapidly whenever required, and, most importantly, for a variety of purposes. Historic landscape types can be amalgamated to answer specific queries (eg the distribution, location, and significance of meadow and grassland in relation to settlement and field patterns), and either simplified or extrapolated to produce, for example, late medieval reconstructions. In addition, the map can be simplified in scale and detail to form part of a map at national level.
It is now feasible to work with more complex and sophisticated typologies (if necessary) without fear of attendant data-handling problems. The Cotswolds typology, for example, developed a hierarchical structure: level A denoting current land-use type (eg eighteenth-century parliamentary regular enclosure); level B denoting, where 'known', the preceding land use (eg open fields, common grazing); and level C (rarely used) denoting more local characterisation. GIS mapping allows these finer distinctions to be displayed, or ignored; if displayed, they can be analysed at any of the levels. Reconstruction of the extent of open fields in the fourteenth century, for example, thus becomes a realistic prospect.
In the Peak National Park, the historic landscape characterisation map moved into a closer exploration of time-depth. Reconstructions of past landscapes, although , are useful in providing some generalised depth to the all-important current' historic-use map. This aim lay behind experiments in the Peak project to produce period maps asspeculativeseriestime well as 1990s' maps. The Peak project had twin objectives: to build on Cornwall's experience, but also to contribute to English Heritage's Monuments Protection Programme research on the landscape context of Derbyshire's lead-mining industry, in particular how the interrelationship between mining and agriculture has affected the visible landscape.
For this a stronger emphasis on chronology was needed. The process of mapping past landscapes was facilitated by the existence of substantial collections of historic estate maps in the archives of Chatsworth and Haddon. These have made possible the production of time-slices' to be produced for c 1650, 1750, 1800, and 1850 as well as c 1995. These period maps are of course not complete, and gaps in historic coverage increase the further back in the extends, but it is now proving possible to fill the gaps by extrapolation from map to map, which is made easier by the increased understanding of the landscape's history that has been generated during the course of the project.
 |
 |