Quarrying of limestone and converting it to quicklime was a major industry around the Irish Sea coasts for many centuries, and it is an aspect of these islands’ industrial legacy that has received little attention. David Johnson has spent years researching it in the field and in archive centres and has been amazed by its scale and geographical extent. Up to the nineteenth century, quicklime was shipped from Gower and south Pembrokeshire across the Bristol Channel to Devon, and limestone wa...

Across much of the country buildings have been made of brick, rather than stone, from the Roman period onwards. High-status buildings of the Tudor and Stuart eras were often built of clay brick, but it was only in the nineteenth century that the use of brick in rapid industrial and urban development saw a massive increase in brick production. Mechanisation of the various processes, along with the development of new kiln technologies, enabled this increase in output. Age-old clamp kilns wer...

Limestone has been one of the most indispensable building materials in Britain since the Roman period, when it was widely used for mortar. It was in the medieval era that lime began to be used in farming, alongside marl, as a means of increasing the output of both arable crops and livestock. The impact of limestone extraction in the Yorkshire Dales, once one of the most productive quarrying areas in Britain, has been huge. The area has thrown up many innovative entrepreneurs, and limestone...

From Roman times, rocks have been worked for a wide range of purposes, initially as building stone. As time passed, more and more stone was needed for high-status buildings like castles, halls and monasteries, as well as for bridges, dry stone walls and road-building. The Yorkshire Pennines have a varied geology with many rock types that proved suitable for building and other uses, and the landscape is dotted with old quarry workings, large and small, some of which can be linked to the med...

The exploiting of stone in Cumbria dates back to the Neolithic period when volcanic rock from the high Lakeland fells was worked to make hand axes. In Roman times sandstone was extensively quarried for building Hadrian’s Wall and forts like Carlisle. The industry expanded in the Middle Ages as stone was needed for high-status buildings like castles, tower houses and monasteries as well as for bridges and, later on, for dry-stone walls and road building. Cumbria has a wide variety of rock t...

For centuries lime was an essential ingredient in many aspects of life and work - such as farming, building and manufacturing - and the kilns in which lime was produced were a familiar sight across the country, not just in areas where limestone naturally occurred. The importance given to the industry is illustrated by the number of painters, notably Turner and Girtin, who chose to paint lime kilns either as the main focus or as an incidental element, and by the number of literary figures w...

Cumbria is a very varied county with coastal plains, river valleys, the Pennine edge and the Lakeland fells. It has a strong sense of cohesion and common ground. Farming in the county has improved over the centuries, and yet this is a subject curiously under-discussed in the existing literature. In this book, Dr David Johnson uses documentary and contemporary sources to argue that there has been visible improvement in Cumbria's farming. Starting with a discussion of the region's geology, t...

Landskipping is a ravishing celebration of landscape, its iridescent beauty and its potential to comfort, awe and mesmerise. In spirit as Romantic as rational, Anna Pavord explores the different ways in which we have, throughout the ages, responded to the land. In the eighteenth century, artists first started to paint English scenery, and the Lakes, as well as Snowdon, began to attract a new kind of visitor, the landscape tourist. Early travel guides sought to capture the beauty a...

Though most of us will have enjoyed strolling through beautiful British woodlands, we might not be aware of the ancient – and often complex – origins of our surroundings.From medieval times, woodlands were carefully managed commodities with hotly contested resources: conflicting demands from landowners, the Crown, the peasantry and local and national wood-based industries have all left their marks on today's woodland.Ian D. Rotherham here explains the vario...

If you stop and look around you will see trees everywhere: not only in woods and plantations, in parks and gardens and in hedges but also along streets, beside motorways, on old colliery sites, around reservoirs, in the centre of villages and larger urban settlements and standing alone or in small groups in such diverse places as churchyards, in the middle of fields or on high moorlands.This authoritative and copiously illustrated book guides the reader to an understanding of the natural, ...

This pocket-sized guide to identifying and interpreting metal and ceramic marks has been improved with the addition of the most recent hallmarks, along with details of the new hallmarking system.Do you attend car boot sales or browse in antique shops in search of bargains? Have you ever wished you knew more about grandma’s silver spoon? Do you envy the experts’ ability to identify and date old hand-me-downs? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, Collins Gem Antique Marks ...

'An extraordinary history' - Peter Ackroyd, The Times'A lively account of (Bazalgette's) magnificent achievements. . . graphically illustrated' - Hermione Hobhouse'Halliday is good on sanitary engineering and even better on cloaca, crud and putrefaction . . . (he) writes with the relish of one who savours his subject and has deeply researched it. . . splendidly illustrated' - Ruth Rendell...