Yorkshire Philosophical Society

Event Information

Unfolding the Story. The landscape around Malham, North Yorkshire

Professor Terry O’Connor
Department of Archaeology, University of York

The landscape around Malham can properly be called iconic. Within a day’s walk, it presents so many of the features of the physical and human landscape of the Yorkshire Dales. Because of this, and often through the field centre at Tarn House, this landscape has been studied by geographers, historians, ecologists, archaeologists and more besides. But all too often, these disciplines have made their investigations separately, unpicking just one strand of the story. This talk aims to weave the strands back together, to show the interplay of physical geography, archaeology and natural history, and to ask how the Malham landscape came to be how it is today. The title is borrowed from Arthur Raistrick’s 1947 book Malham and Malham Moor. Raistrick was adept at unfolding a landscape, and his writings are an important foundation for subsequent research. However, techniques of investigation have moved on, and have produced sometimes unexpected evidence, answers to questions that in Raistrick’s day we would not even have thought to ask. And in asking how the Malham landscape came to be, we may also ask how it may be in the future, and what decisions we need to take now in order to add a constructive chapter to a long story.

Report
by Margaret Leonard
Professor O’Connell has excavated and surveyed at Malham over many years. An advocate of long, thoughtful country walks, he recommends not taking the scenery for granted, but trying instead to ‘dismantle’ it.
This is typical Karst landscape, formed by the action of water on soluble limestone, giving rise to caves, springs and exposed rock pavements. The Craven Fault, running east to west, is its most noticeable feature. Evidence of invertebrates and woodland floor plants tells us the area was once covered with forest, but in the last two millennia, man has been responsible for major changes. The landscape can be read as a palimpsest, with each generation overwriting the effect of its predecessors. The Romans cultivated many field systems, and the Saxons or Normans structured the landscape with terraces. Later, monasteries ran extensive sheep farms. Sheep, along with the introduction of rabbits, have prevented the regrowth of woodland. In recent years, tourism and outdoor activities are increasingly supporting the agricultural economy, and helping to restore many traditional buildings.

Sponsored by Royal Geographical Society & PLACE