Amazing & Extraordinary Facts About Great Britain (2 page)

When I came to look into some corners of our heritage I could scarcely believe some of the things I learned. Was the Méthode Champenoise really invented by a Gloucestershire country doctor whose main interest was in making glass bottles strong enough to contain sparkling wine? And was the kilt really invented by an English Quaker for the convenience of his Scottish charcoal burners? And why did Oliver Williams, Lord Protector, call himself Oliver Cromwell? And was Winston Churchill, with all his other responsibilities in World War II, really concerned with Britain’s last witchcraft trial? And what was Adolf Hitler’s brother doing in the “mountain city” of Liverpool before World War I? And how did The Beatles help to frustrate the attempts of General Gaulle to stem the onward march of English as the world’s language? And where can you find a heroic firefighter buried close to Britain’s favourite Poet Laureate? And why was it once fatal to impersonate a Chelsea Pensioner? And did George Stephenson, designer of the most famous of all steam engines The Rocket, really foresee that one day railways would run on electricity?

For the answers to these questions, and many more, read on.

Stephen Halliday

U
ntil about 10,000 years ago Britain was joined to the continent of Europe via a land bridge, of which the most prominent relic is the Dogger Bank,
Dogge
being an old Dutch word for fishing boat. This lies under the North Sea between the east coast of England and the continent. Even now the water there is as little as 15 metres deep so when sea levels were 100 metres lower than at present Britain was not an island at all. In the previous 500 million years the land had been formed by violent geological activity. The mountains of the Lake District, for example, were formed by volcanic eruptions and its lake valleys were carved out by glaciers. As a result of all this activity and the fact that the land has alternately been submerged beneath seas and raised above them, the British Isles contains a greater diversity of geological phenomena than any region on earth of comparable size, with everything from volcanic rocks to marine deposits. The Lake District alone has three separate geological zones, made of completely different rocks, in less than 900 square miles. All we lack is really high mountains. Further north the Scottish landscape was altered in about 5,500 BC by a huge avalanche in Norway which precipitated a tsunami. This carried huge quantities of sand across the North Sea and deposited them at heights of up to twenty metres above sea level where they may still be found in an area extending from the Shetland Islands to the English border. And the process hasn’t finished. The British Isles are tilting south-east towards Europe at the rate of 12 inches per century. And many features of our nation and its climate remain extraordinary.

In the centuries before the Roman settlements in the 1st century AD, Britain was almost entirely covered by forests. This explains why the prehistoric trackways follow high ground above the forested areas. The best example of this is the Ridgeway which runs from Overton Hill, near Avebury Stone Circle in Wiltshire to Ivinghoe Beacon, the highest point in the Chilterns, north of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. Its 87 mile length includes Wayland’s Smithy, the White Horse of Uffington, and Segsbury Camp, all prehistoric in date but evidence that the trackway was well used by its mysterious travellers.

Southwest of the Ridgeway is the equally mysterious Stonehenge. Its origins are unknown though it was probably built in phases from 3,600 to 5,700 years ago using stones which came from as far as Pembrokeshire in Wales, 250 miles away. Early attempts to link Stonehenge with the Druids (of whom even less is known) have largely been abandoned. It has long been known that the stones are aligned with the midsummer sunrise and with the most southerly rising and northerly setting of the moon. More recent research has demonstrated more sophisticated alignments in accordance with the astronomical practices of ancient civilisations so it presumably served some kind of ritualistic function in connection with astronomy. In 2010 tests on a skeleton found at the site, dating from about 1550 BC, suggested that it was that of a teenager from the Mediterranean region wearing a fine necklace of amber beads. This has led to speculation that it was a place of pilgrimage visited by wealthy individuals who could afford to make the journey, possibly for purposes of healing. Stonehenge was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986.

T
he wettest place in Britain is Seathwaite, Cumbria, in the heart of Borrowdale in the Lake District. It receives about 140 inches of rain each year. The driest place is St Osyth, near Clacton in Essex, with about 20 inches a year. In some years it receives fewer than ten inches and is thus technically a desert.

The highest mountain in Great Britain is Ben Nevis, in Scotland, at 4,406 feet above sea level; in Wales it is Snowdon at 3,559 feet; in England Scafell Pike is the tallest at 3,162 feet.

The longest river in Britain is the Severn at 220 miles which rises in Wales but runs mostly through England. The longest river wholly in England is the Thames, at 215 miles. The longest river in Scotland is the Tay, at 120 miles; in Wales the river Towy is 64 miles long.

The lowest point in Great Britain is Holme Fen, south of Peterborough, 8 feet below sea level. No landscape point in Wales or Scotland is below sea level.

The windiest place in Britain is the summit of the Cairngorms in Scotland where, on 19 December 2008, a wind speed of 194 mph was recorded. This is too remote to be a suitable location for a wind farm but the world’s largest wind farm was opened off the coast of Kent in September 2010. The Thanet Wind Farm has 100 wind turbines over an area of 7 square miles in the Thames Estuary. It can generate 300 megawatts of electricity, fifty per cent more than any other wind farm, which is enough to power 240,000 homes.

G
iven the proximity of the Dogger land bridge to the east coast it is not surprising that the earliest evidence of human occupation of Great Britain has been found at Happisburgh, a hamlet on the north Norfolk coast. Flint tools dating from about 840,000 BC were found there in June 2010 following a similar find in Pakefield, Suffolk, five years earlier. The implements were probably made by pioneering nomads who crossed the bridge which linked Britain to the continent. They were not modern humans or even Neanderthals but a species known as
Homo antecessor
. The first Neanderthal remains, about 230,000 years old, were found at Pontnewydd in Wales in 1978. The first evidence of a modern human being, about 40,000 years old, was found in Kent’s Cavern, near Torquay in 1927. A more sinister discovery was made in the Cheddar cave system in 2010 when the bones of what appears to have been a family group were found, with two adults, two teenagers and a baby.

They appeared to date from about 12,000 BC and to have been expertly butchered, with knife marks on the bones suggesting they had been dismembered with a view to being eaten. So were our early ancestors cannibals? If so, were they driven to this by hunger, ritual or habit? The oldest domestic dwelling was found in August 2010, close to the east coast near Flixton, south of Scarborough. It dates from 8,500 BC, about the time that the land bridge between the east coast and the continent was inundated when the glaciers melted at the end of the last ice age. In the pages which follow we will examine some of the people and events which have influenced their descendants who still live in this extraordinary land.

T
he British mainland retains two features which remind us that it was originally three separate kingdoms. Offa’s Dyke was built by Offa, king of Mercia (reigned 757–96) to separate his kingdom from that of Powys, in Wales and it still marks the boundary between England and Wales for much of its 150-mile length. Wales, to which some of the Celtic population retreated during the Anglo-Saxon invasions from the 5th century onwards, retained its separate identity until its conquest by Edward I (reigned 1272–1307) who consolidated his conquest by building some of the world’s finest medieval castles at Conway, Caernarvon, Harlech and elsewhere. An even more remarkable feature of the landscape is Hadrian’s Wall, running from Wallsend near Newcastle to the Solway Firth north of Carlisle. Seventy-three miles long, it was built by the emperor Hadrian from 122 AD to mark the northern boundary of the Roman empire. It is the largest surviving Roman edifice in the world and at its western end it still roughly marks the boundary between England and Scotland. A path runs the length of the wall which, in 1987, was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.