IT A LANDSCAPE DETECTIVE’S TOOLKIT

Field guide

As spotter’s guides go, Mary-Ann’s Hidden

Histories is a compendium par excellence. And we’re not just saying that because she joined us for an enlightening jaunt in the Chilterns. Broad in scope and lavishly illustrated with photographs, diagrams and maps, it covers virtually everything of historic interest you can expect to see on walks in Britain: from barrows to barns, and walls to wayside crosses (£19.99, Frances Lincoln).

Maps

An Ordnance Survey Explorer map (1:25,000 scale) shows a potted history of the landscape you’re walking through: from battlefields and sites of antiquity to ancient and the abandoned arteries of the Industrial Revolution. On a smartphone app, it’s amazing what else you’ll notice just by toggling between mapping and aerial photography. For armchair detective work, there’s the National Library of Scotland’s maps website (maps.nls.uk). By comparing old largescale maps with modern aerial imagery (side by side or overlaid), you can see in incredible detail how fields, rivers, roads and settlements have changed over time. The LIDAR terrain scans at

archiuk.com are another fantastic resource.

Place-name dictionary

The geographic spread of Celtic, Latin, Old English and Norse place-names charts the history of Britain. Some can be matter-of-factly descriptive. Others can tell us what a place looked like or who its landholders were in the past. Over 17,000 from England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland are decoded in the toponymic tome A Dictionary of British

Place Names (£11.99, Oxford University Press). The University of Nottingham’s Key to

English Place-Names is an excellent free resource: kepn.nottingham.ac.uk. There are online glossaries for Welsh, Scots and Gaelic place-names as well.

Crowdsources

If prehistoric sites are your thing, take a look at the myriad member-generated entries on The Megalithic Portal (megalithic.co.uk). The incredible ARCHI (www.

archiuk.com) reveals the location of 200,000+ British archaeological sites and lets you search wonderful historic maps. The Geograph project (geograph.org.

uk), with photos for every square kilometre of Great Britain and Ireland’, is useful for sleuthing too.

Historic Environment Records

Every listed building, landmark and archaeological site near you will be catalogued in the public Historic

Environment Records for your area. The national online databases with interactive maps are easy to search. You might be surprised by what you find. ENGLAND: heritagegateway.org.uk

SCOTLAND: canmore.co.uk WALES: coflein.gov.uk and archwilio.org.uk

Ancient woodland inventories for England (see magic.defra.gov.uk), Scotland and Wales are also available online.