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Underlands: A Journey Through Britain's Lost Landscape
Not so very long ago, our roads, our buildings, our gravestones and our monuments were built from local rock, our cities were powered by coal from Welsh mines, and our lamps were lit with paraffin from Scottish shale. At the height of the empire, British stone travelled across the world; to India and China, Sri Lanka and Argentina, Singapore and South Africa. Across the British Isles were mines, quarries, slag heaps and brick pits, where the earth was dug up and made visible. Today we live among the remnants of these times - our older cities are built from Bath limestone, or Aberdeen granite - but for the most part our mines are gone, our buildings are no longer local, and the flow of stone now travels from east to west. Spurred on by the erasure of history and industry, Ted Nield journeys across this buried landscape, from the small Welsh village where his mining ancestors were born and are buried, to Swansea, Aberdeen, East Lothian, Surrey and Dorset. Delving into the history and geology of this forgotten Britain, and into his ancestors' connection with the rocks of Britain, Nield unearths the raw veins of coal, stone, oil, rock and clay that make up the country beneath our feet, illuminating the ties between earth and place, and what the loss of kinship between past and present means for Britain, and the rest of the world today.
- GenresGeologyNonfictionNature
288 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 9, 2015
A book that’s a mixture of memoir/personal history and geology might sound a strange combination. However it works really well and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
My own house is built of reclaimed stones from the 18th century barn and other farm buildings that used to stand on the site. I love these stones and often look at them, observing the marks made by unknown hands and implements decades ago. But of course the stones themselves have their own history, and I know they would have been quarried locally. This is no longer the case - the network of small quarries, pits and brickworks throughout the landscape is disappearing fast – cheaper and easier to transport materials in from other parts of England and beyond.
Nield’s stories are often very moving. He visits his grandfather's grave in South Wales and finds it has been 'dismantled' for Health and Safety reasons, and he finds it ‘inexcusable’ that the writing on the obelisk has been placed downwards facing the earth.
His comment is that the stone masons in the 1920's could never have envisaged a time when youths would swing from such memorials, and, even more, consider they should be compensated for any injuries that occurred from their actions!
This book didn’t make me look at rocks and stones in a different way, but it certainly taught me a lot about them! Neild writes eloquently and makes a potentially dry subject come alive. Recommended.
My own house is built of reclaimed stones from the 18th century barn and other farm buildings that used to stand on the site. I love these stones and often look at them, observing the marks made by unknown hands and implements decades ago. But of course the stones themselves have their own history, and I know they would have been quarried locally. This is no longer the case - the network of small quarries, pits and brickworks throughout the landscape is disappearing fast – cheaper and easier to transport materials in from other parts of England and beyond.
Nield’s stories are often very moving. He visits his grandfather's grave in South Wales and finds it has been 'dismantled' for Health and Safety reasons, and he finds it ‘inexcusable’ that the writing on the obelisk has been placed downwards facing the earth.
His comment is that the stone masons in the 1920's could never have envisaged a time when youths would swing from such memorials, and, even more, consider they should be compensated for any injuries that occurred from their actions!
This book didn’t make me look at rocks and stones in a different way, but it certainly taught me a lot about them! Neild writes eloquently and makes a potentially dry subject come alive. Recommended.
April 16, 2016
In the modern age everything is now shipped hither and thither across the world, we get coal from South America, stone from India and oil from anywhere who will sell it to us. But not so far back in time we found our natural materials very locally. Our fuel came from Wales or Yorkshire, the local homes were made from the stones found in the nearby fields and quarries and we didn’t know about the oil.
Nowadays our mines are gone, and there are few quarries left in operation, but the evidence of these acts are still visible. There are the magnificent buildings of London built from the finest Portland stone, the soft warm limestone of Bath and the cold grey granites of Aberdeen, but more than that, there are the scars left behind now. Gashes in the landscape from open cast quarries, heaps left from waste and slag, towns and villages that have only the echoes left from the mine.
And it is across these landscapes that Neild takes us, but more than that, he delves deep below the surface to reveal the minerals that make this country. It is a personal journey too, as he visits the tombs of his ancestors in Wales, and to Dorset to re visit the places he went on holiday as a child. Through these journeys he is reacquainting himself with the link between place and geology, something we have now lost in this modern world.
As Neild is a trained geologist it does make for an interesting book full of fascinating facts and detail. It is personal too, as he takes us back through his family of miners who physically worked the rocks he now understands intimately. The prose does suffer though from being a little textbook like though, probably because he’s an academic; other than that it is worth reading.
Nowadays our mines are gone, and there are few quarries left in operation, but the evidence of these acts are still visible. There are the magnificent buildings of London built from the finest Portland stone, the soft warm limestone of Bath and the cold grey granites of Aberdeen, but more than that, there are the scars left behind now. Gashes in the landscape from open cast quarries, heaps left from waste and slag, towns and villages that have only the echoes left from the mine.
And it is across these landscapes that Neild takes us, but more than that, he delves deep below the surface to reveal the minerals that make this country. It is a personal journey too, as he visits the tombs of his ancestors in Wales, and to Dorset to re visit the places he went on holiday as a child. Through these journeys he is reacquainting himself with the link between place and geology, something we have now lost in this modern world.
As Neild is a trained geologist it does make for an interesting book full of fascinating facts and detail. It is personal too, as he takes us back through his family of miners who physically worked the rocks he now understands intimately. The prose does suffer though from being a little textbook like though, probably because he’s an academic; other than that it is worth reading.
June 4, 2014
Underlands is a stunningly good book which combines beautiful writing with a passion for geology and the lost landscapes of Britain. Ted Nield can look at a piece of rock or an abandoned quarry and conjure up visions of millions of years of history; as he says, "making pictures of vanished worlds was always what I loved most." He also writes with both passion and compassion about his own life and the lives of his forebears. After reading this book, you will never see the landscape the same way again. It is worth reading, indeed, solely for the hilarious account of the truth behind the alleged fiasco of the "wrong" stone being used in the restoration of the British Museum, or on a more serious note for the insight he provides into the Aberfan disaster. But the family stories are best of all, and the touching account of the final days of Ted's own father moistens the eye. You do not need to be a geologist to enjoy Underlands, any more than you need to be a hiker to enjoy Wainwright's Walks, with which this book has much in common. Worth at least six stars.
June 25, 2019
I knew from the cover that I was going to enjoy this book, but I hadn't realised just how much. At one level, it's a lament for our lost extractive industries- the quarries and mines that once prospered in almost every area of Britain. However, this is combined with a witty and erudite look under the carpet with some interesting insights into geology, industry ...and ourselves.
But the aspect of Nield's writing that I enjoyed the most was a underlying thread of deeply personal, honest and sometimes hilarious family history that he weaves into the book. At times he goes off in a whirl of geological time travel sparked by some experience of his youth, as when we are told about the joined-up memories of his father, himself and his own son at Happy Valley in Llandudno, photographed on a rock in what I hadn't realised was an old stone quarry. The history of his village in South Wales and all the stories and geological insights that spin off these motifs are also included in the story and are all the richer for it.
And he's right. We don't quarry much stone anymore. Children in schools don't know where bricks and rock come from, because our raw materials are sourced from countries where the labour is cheap and working conditions dangerous. Where worker's rights are unknown. The stone is then loaded on a polluting container ship and brought thousands of miles to this country.
He also tells the story of Aberdeen's Rubislaw Quarry, at one time the deepest hole in Europe, the first sight of which, lurking behind some innocent suburban bungalows, he tells us "troubled my sleep for days". The story of the Aberfan disaster from the geological perspective is also a chilling revelation.
The book is an insightful message from the depths of geology under our feet...well worth a read.
But the aspect of Nield's writing that I enjoyed the most was a underlying thread of deeply personal, honest and sometimes hilarious family history that he weaves into the book. At times he goes off in a whirl of geological time travel sparked by some experience of his youth, as when we are told about the joined-up memories of his father, himself and his own son at Happy Valley in Llandudno, photographed on a rock in what I hadn't realised was an old stone quarry. The history of his village in South Wales and all the stories and geological insights that spin off these motifs are also included in the story and are all the richer for it.
And he's right. We don't quarry much stone anymore. Children in schools don't know where bricks and rock come from, because our raw materials are sourced from countries where the labour is cheap and working conditions dangerous. Where worker's rights are unknown. The stone is then loaded on a polluting container ship and brought thousands of miles to this country.
He also tells the story of Aberdeen's Rubislaw Quarry, at one time the deepest hole in Europe, the first sight of which, lurking behind some innocent suburban bungalows, he tells us "troubled my sleep for days". The story of the Aberfan disaster from the geological perspective is also a chilling revelation.
The book is an insightful message from the depths of geology under our feet...well worth a read.
June 15, 2021
A geologist muses on the hundreds of thousands of holes - clay pits, gravel pits, quarries and mines - that used to scatter the landscape providing local (often very local) building materials and resources.
He uses these holes to tell two stories. On a human scale, he tells us of the generations of his family that lived and worked on the South Wales coalfield. On a geological scale, he walks us through what science learnt from them and tells that their filling-in or amenitisation will hinder geological education.
Finally, he ponders what it means that we now find it more economical (because of low wages, poor safety standards and under-priced petroleum) to import these earth resources from Asia, and what impact that will have on our planet. He makes a telling parallel between the unthinking siting of spoil-tips above the village of Aberfan and our persistant burning of fossilised carbon despite the lessons of geological history about its perils.
He uses these holes to tell two stories. On a human scale, he tells us of the generations of his family that lived and worked on the South Wales coalfield. On a geological scale, he walks us through what science learnt from them and tells that their filling-in or amenitisation will hinder geological education.
Finally, he ponders what it means that we now find it more economical (because of low wages, poor safety standards and under-priced petroleum) to import these earth resources from Asia, and what impact that will have on our planet. He makes a telling parallel between the unthinking siting of spoil-tips above the village of Aberfan and our persistant burning of fossilised carbon despite the lessons of geological history about its perils.
June 2, 2023
And a half star. A great find in the library. Part geology, part history, part memoir.... part all sorts of things which coalesce into an emotional whole. The author spins off the change from sourcing building materials locally to today where it is crazy but transporting the materials around the world is cheaper despite the energy costs. But he spins into many strange corners, both in his family back several generations, touching mining communities and the Aberfan disaster which I remember so vividly when I was at primary school. Delighted to find out about puddingstone which I grew up with in Hertfordshire.....
April 20, 2020
A gentle autobiographical wander literally underpinned by geology
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews