Sunday Feature: Landscape Histories

Archaeologist Seren Griffiths uses a walk along a sandstone ridge in Northern Cheshire to explore the way a landscape can hold multiple histories, and in doing so make it easier to contemplate distant futures. Seren starts her journey in a quarry used variously by the Romans, Iron Age settlers and latterly the Victorians, making her way up to one of the string of hilltop forts that can be found along the escarpment, and then moves along to a Cold War listening station, and not far away, the Frodsham anti-aircraft operations room. And all the while the vista shows the canal work of the Industrial Revolution, the chemical plants of the 20th century and the wind turbines of the last decade. The ancient landscape hums with history and archaeology brings them into focus in the present. For Seren, and many before her, this is a magical, mysterious place which draws out timelines like a strand, with artefacts from the past projecting forwards, enduring into the present