Had a piece of really interesting follow up to my piece about landscapes as historical documents. James Winnett sent me an interesting reference.

Neal Ascherson writing in Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland, ‘Scottish earth is in most places … a skin over bone, and like any taut face it never loses a line once acquired.’

Another passage on the same page reads

Where the coal measures approached the surface , men opened mines and built mining villages. Where the sea was shallow and enclosed, people settle around salt pans … communities are improvisations in strait circumstances.

Neal Ascherson Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland (2002, p27)

Although Ascherson is making specific reference to the impact of Scotland’s, at times hostile, landscape I think that there is wider point to recognise. Human settlement historically happened close to important resources, making those resources easy to access and exploit. The exploitation of these resources left marks and scars on the landscape, but the places also left marks on the people as well.

I think that this is an interesting idea to engage with in the poetic film, the relationship between place and community. This is especially the case in Norfolk where the landscape was clearly managed and maintained.