Sunday Feature: Hilltop Histories

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Hilltop Histories

BBC Radio 3 - Sunday Feature, Hilltop Histories

Archaeologist Seren Griffiths tells the multiple stories of a Sandstone ridge in Cheshire.

Dr Seren Griffiths takes a short walk on a sandstone ridge in Cheshire to connect thousands of years of human history, from Iron Age hill fort to Cold War listening posts.

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 for us to contemplate distant futures.

The landscape in question is bordered on the north by the M56 motorway.  Commuters making their way into Manchester see it to their right for all of about a minute.  But up on the ridge you can see that it stretches south towards Whitchurch in Shropshire.  Seren starts her journey in a quarry used variously by the Romans, Iron Age settlers and latterly the Victorians.  She makes her way up to one of the string of hill top forts that can be found along the sandstone escarpment, and then moves along to an old 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 that bring its past 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.

Producer:  Tom Alban

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