Walking Through Historic England
Ruins Abound in the North England Countryside, Waiting to be Found
While the tourist often remains in the area of London, there is so much to be discovered by visiting the Northern border of England.
London is a fantastic city with historical signficance, and thousands of tourists visit it every year. However, about four hours North of London is "The North" of England, with rolling hills, open countryside and an abundance of historical and beautiful places to visit. The Lake District is one of those, where Bill Clinton proposed to Hillary Clinton, and writers such as Wordsworth took their inspiration. And even beyond The Lake District, there is so much more to see.
There are the ruins of a Roman bathhouse tucked away on a path that would be easy to pass by, except for the miniscule brown sign pointing the way to it. When you arrive, there is a sign post telling the reader what little is known about the site itself. It is half excavated, and lies in the shadow of an apartment building in Ribchester. Fifty feet away, just beyond a wire fence, there is a large pile of stones, which look suspiciously like those behind the sign, except these are covered with items long disused by the farmer who lives on that property. Surely, these can't be Roman stones, buried under an old umbrella, a rusty tractor and a broken trash bin?
It seems that many places like this exist throughout England. Along the A66 there are stone circles in a field, oddly placed, with tiny little doors on one side. Only later does it become clear: these are ancient stone huts, which used to have thatched type roofs and were used by people who peeled bark off of trees. Today, they stand alone in a field with no signs, no clue as to what they were.
There are, of course, large archeological sites in place as well. Cities like Chester, with its excavations on the Roman amphitheatre and surrounding walls, and the Jorvik Viking Center with its ancient remains and tour of the site being excavated are exciting and informational.
In a country with hundreds of miles of public foot paths that wind in and out of forests, across rivers, through meadows and across moors, there is so much more to see if you know to look.
Is there a large stone circle in the ground? Perhaps it was a hut. Is there a large stone standing all by itself, or maybe with a few small stones nearby? You may have stumbled across an ancient stone circle, of which there are well over a hundred. Or, perhaps, "just" another Roman fort, wall, ruin. Indeed, a walk through the Lake District in Cumbria, or from West to East along Hadrian's Wall (Built by Emperor Hadrian in the first century, AD) will allow the hiker a vast amount of abbeys, standing stones, and villages with histories that rival fiction. The town of Penrith, in Cumbria, for example, boasts a long history that begins with Mayburgh Henge from the Neolithic age and includes the Knights Templar at Acorn Bank in 1212 AD. In the nearby village of Temple Sowerby is one of the few remaining Maypoles, which it has had from the time of the Templars. Many of these villages have castles hidden away, still open to the public. So, get out! See history against the backdrop of one of the most beautiful and serene landscapes.
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