Eastern Britain Research Articles

Overseas movements of British and Irish Sand Martins

Sand Martins from western Britain (with Ireland) and eastern Britain tend to be geographically segregated while they are in France, though this is not apparent further south. The spring migration route through North Africa and the Mediterranean has been extended eastwards since 196611967, perhaps in response to Sahelian drought.

Status of Large Gulls Nesting on Buildings

Some 3,000 pairs of Herring Gulls are now known to be nesting on buildings, mainly in coastal towns they are increasing most rapidly in eastern Britain, where recruitment is taking place from natural colonies. A smaller number of Lesser Black-backed Gulls has occupied rooftops in the Bristol Channel region.

RADIOCARBON DATES FROM LATE‐DEVENSIAN DEPOSITS, NANT FFRANCON, CAERNARVONSHIRE

SUMMARYTwo radiocarbon dates near the beginning and end of the Allerød interstadial (conventional pollen zone II) show that the timing for the event in the mountains of North Wales was similar to that elsewhere in Britain and Europe. The occurrence of a pre‐Allerød interstadial, almost certainly equivalent to the Bølling (conventional pollen zone Ib), is confirmed. Other sequences for the same period from lowland North Wales and elsewhere in Western Britain differ from the Nant Ffrancon sequence in that evidence for cooling between the Bølling and Allerød is missing, but some sequences from inland mountainous areas, or in Eastern Britain and the Continent are very similar to the Nant Ffrancon sequence.

Variation in the trophic structure and species composition of some invertebrate communities in polluted kelp forests in the North Sea

The absence of species from kelp holdfast habitats is used to establish changes in invertebrate community structure in polluted coastal waters along the shores of North Eastern Britain. The study shows the following changes: (1) Approximately 45% of the species complement studied in clean-water habitats are missing from polluted habitats. (2) Rare species are lost and food chains are missing. (3) Dislocations of the marine food web occur: removal of parts of the primary producer to herbivore food chain; suppression of some carnivores; removal of some omnivores and selection of certain suspension feeders. (4) No new species appear in polluted communities. (5) Recombinations of resistant species compensate for the reduction in energy flow through a damaged food web by proportionally increasing the suspension-feeding pathways. (6) The ecological equilibrium of the suspension-feeding groups which are responsible for maintaining the damaged food web are in a delicate state of balance. The further loss of 1 large food chain could result in the collapse of the remaining fragments of a polluted-water invertebrate community food web.

Changes in Organochlorine Contamination of the Marine Environment of Eastern Britain monitored by Shag Eggs

Changes in Organochlorine Contamination of the Marine Environment of Eastern Britain monitored by Shag Eggs

The Siting and Development of British Airports

No airport in this country is much more than fifty years old; many have been altered out of all recognition in the past fifteen years, and most are still in? adequate in some respect to handle today's traffic, let alone the traffic of tomorrow. Few industries can match the growth rate of aviation, which shows every sign that it will continue to expand in the future. If we consider the two extremes, we find, first of all, that club and private flying is not only growing, but changing in character as more and more walks of life in our affluent society contribute members. The Guardian for 7 February 1967, amongst its other comments on a fine week-end, noted that Biggin Hill had recorded 1228 flights on the previous Sunday. Not only numbers, but the scale of activity is changing, e.g. much more interest is evident in using aircraft for day or week-end visits, instead of just for local flying. This is helped by more sophisticated aircraft and an increase in radio aids available for small aircraft. At the other end of the scale, scheduled airline traffic continues to increase at the rate of 10-15 per cent per annum for passenger traffic, and 20-25 per cent per annum for air cargo, depending upon the routes studied. This represents a doubling of traffic approximately every five years. It is not surprising that so many of our towns and cities are so keen to establish their own airfields, encouraged by the realization that air travel is becoming a normal means of transport for a greater number of people each year. It is, therefore, a little disturbing to find so little consideration of the part aviation will play in the future in such documents as the National Plan (1965), the White Paper on Transport Policy (Ministry of Transport, 1966), or many of the Regional Surveys already published. It is true that rapid growth makes forecasting difficult, but the delay in decisions as funda? mental as a national airport programme or the third London airport, may jeopardize the industry's future. It is impossible for me to discuss the whole field of airport development, and I shall be mainly concerned with the pattern of airports as a whole, together with some aspects of individual airports. Present airports and their traffic.?Figure 1 shows the pattern of airports in this country, including military as well as civil fields. This is the complete picture from which we shall have to abstract, but it is not without interest, since many of our civil airfields began life as military ones. The measle-like rash that you see on the map is very much a legacy of war, and it is worth noting the strong concentration of military airfields in eastern Britain, part of the reason, no doubt, why civil airfields have been rather thin on the ground in this area. Like their predecessors, the Iron Age camps, many of the airfields now squat mutely on flat hill tops, no longer required for military purposes. Some have passed from the Air Ministry to the Ministry of Aviation (now subsumed within the Board of Trade), and some are currently being pressed upon local townsfolk by the latter as desirable properties. One wonders if Belgic chieftains also tried to sell their camps to unsuspecting Romans.

Late-Weichselian conditions in south eastern Britain: organic deposits at Colney Heath, Herts

Peat erratics in gravel at Colney Heath, near St Albans, have been shown to have a radio-carbon age of 13560 years ± 210. Detailed pollen analyses, identifications of macroscopic plant remains and identifications of Bryophyta are now presented and linked with reports upon Coleopteran remains already published. These results are shown to be closely similar to those of other river terrace deposits of the region including the Lea Valley Arctic Plant Bed, the Barnwell Station Plant Bed, and stages of the Nazeing (Lea Valley) deposits. Radiocarbon dates place all these within the late Weichselian and it appears that all were formed and preserved by temporary and local changes in the valleys, rather than as a result of general climatic shift. They may be taken to reflect the general late-Weichselian fauna and flora that persisted south of the ice-sheets in Britain during the later part of the last glaciation, and they are the antecedent stage to the now well-known late-Glacial Period. The late-Weichselian vegetation of this region was apparently without woodland, although dwarf shrubs including arctic birch and dwarf willows were abundant, there was a considerable variety of dry-land plants, including many heliophytes and plants of open ground, and aquatic and marsh plants were present in abundance and variety. The plant lists include many of strongly northern or arctic alpine range, but there are already present a few species with decidedly southern range, as well as many widely ranging species. A few species of both oceanic and continental range are also present. The plant evidence accords with that from the animal remains.

Settlement Patterns in Anglo-Saxon England

The scientific study of rural settlement in Britain was initiated in 1883 when Seebohm published The English Village Community. In this study he argued for a continuity between the Roman villa and the Anglo-Saxon vi1lage. In 1897, however, Maitland published his Domesday Book and Beyond by way of rejoinder to Seebohm’s views. Thereafter it became customary for historians, geographers and archaeologists alike to regard the nucleated settlements of the English lowlands as Anglo-Saxon creations, implanted by groups of free English settlers in a countryside emptied, by force or fear, of its Romano-British occupants. Of late this hypothesis, which lays so much stress on Germanic as distinct from earlier achievements, has come under criticism from several quarters. Archaeologists are increasingly conscious of the survival into the Dark Ages of a British tradition in ornamentation even in England. As a philologist, Jackson has adduced sufficient linguistic evidence to undermine, even for eastern Britain, the old theory of the nearcomplete extermination of the Celts and has argued for a bilingual phase when English settlement was being effected. On a narrow front in the Cotswolds the historian, Finberg, has cogently portrayed various facets of continuity between the Roman villa and the adjoining village at Withington. On a broader front, Aston has demonstrated the limitations of Maitland’s thesis on the origin of the manor; he suggests that the primary Anglo-Saxon penetration of England was carried out not by freemen, each owning one hide of land, but under lordly direction and was therefore organized by large estates. The vacuum created by this sapping of the traditional view of Anglo-Saxon settlement has not been filled by the adoption of a convincing alternative hypothesis. This absence of an alternative is largely due to fundamental misconceptions about the organization of that Celtic society which occupied England before the advent of either Romans or Saxons. The purpose of this article is to remove these misconceptions and, by so doing, to show that the basic patterns of settlement distribution in the English lowlands date from at least Celtic times.

Effect of Floods on the Oyster Grounds of Eastern Britain

Effect of Floods on the Oyster Grounds of Eastern Britain

Iron Age Camps in northwestern France and southwestern Britain

In recent years considerable attention has been devoted to the problems of the Early Iron Age in the British Isles; and, amongst these problems, that of the relationship between the insular and the continental cultures of the period has not become simpler or clearer as the British evidence has accumulated. How far, and in what manner, were the various Iron Age cultures of Britain derived from the continent? How far, and under what conditions, were they due to local initiative in Britain itself? Until questions such as these can be answered approximately, it will remain impossible alike to estimate the real achievement of the later prehistoric civilization of the island and to visualize the full significance of the adjacent civilization of northwestern Europe. The problem is not an easy one. The agricultural and therefore local basis of most of the Iron Age economy of Britain encouraged the strong local differentiation of cultural forms, and this local individuality was enhanced by the fashion in which the major tracts of open and habitable chalk or greensand tended, in ancient times, to be isolated by expanses of dense and often impassable forest. And, similarly, an intrusive element from overseas might easily take root in a particular area of southern or eastern Britain without directly affecting other areas within a relatively short map-distance.

The Fenland Frontier in Anglo-Saxon England

It would seem that the Anglo-Saxon invasion of a great part of eastern Britain in the fifth century radiated fan-wise from the gateway of the Wash and of the Fenland Gulf. If this is true, it is not surprising. The position of the continental base of the Anglo-Saxons made the area a natural entry into the Midland plain; and the invaders, with the Wash behind them, gazed upon no unfamiliar scene. The region into which they came may not have been so different from their former homeland on the flats of northern Germany, the homeland which Bede tells us they had so completely deserted. They penetrated by way of the Fenland rivers, up the Nene, the Welland, the Ouse, and the Witham, and this big spread was supplemented to the north and to the south by the smaller river entrances, the Bure, the Yare, the Waveney, the Humber and so on. The archaeological finds, as plotted by Mr Thurlow Leeds, are located along the courses of navigable streams and their tributaries, and are disposed concentrically around the Fenland. Dr Cyril Fox has moreover indicated affinities, during the earlier Saxon period, between the opposite shores of this marshy gulf. All had changed, however, when the tribes emerged into the light of history. The Fenland basin, characterized at an earlier epoch by a certain cultural unity, had now become a frontier region, separating peoples and exercising a repelling action revealed in the making of the Anglo-Saxon States. Kingdoms, finding their limits here, partitioned the marshy wastes between them, and the barrier of the Fens became a permanent feature in the political geography of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy.

A Prehistoric Metropolis: the first Verulamium

Westward across the valley from St. Albans, the horizon is today fringed by a tract of secluded woodland. A part of this woodland has acquired the name of Prae Wood from a small medieval nunnery, dedicated to St. Mary de Pré, that once stood half-a-mile away beside the derelict Watling Street. The nunnery is now a patch of nettles in the meadows by the Ver, and the Street is a channel from which the metalling has been torn; but both are better known to the historian and the antiquary than are the banks and ditches which lie hidden beneath the summer-jungle of Prae Wood. For all that, these banks and ditches are relics of a city which was at one time no less than the metropolis of a considerable part of Britain. It is nearly nineteen centuries since they passed into oblivion, and there is something of ironical irrelevance in the words of a Georgian milestone which chance has set up in their midst: ‘I mile from Gorhambury, 20 miles from Hyde Park Corner The shade of Sir Thomas Browne might find a happy perch upon that milestone.About the year 30 B.c., king Tasciovanus, suzerain (it would seem) of a large region in central and eastern Britain, struck coins which bear upon them, in one form or another, the name of Verulamium and are, incidentally, amongst the first inscribed coins minted in these islands. His predecessor, Cassivelaunus, had been the elected leader of the British tribes against Julius Caesar in 54 B.c.; and it is unnecessary here to discuss again in detail the plausible identification of Verulamium with the unnamed stronghold of Cassivelaunus which Caesar's legions stormed in that year.