A drive through England
Driving from my home on the coast of SE England to Liverpool in the NW I felt certain there is no landscape anywhere that is more collectively valued, more visited, ambled across and gazed upon, more cleverly worked, more exquisite to behold, more restful… than the countryside of England.
Just beyond my front door is a handsome church that was built in the 13th century - older than most of the buildings in Great Britain. It has been standing there, adding a little touch of nobility and grandeur to the landscape, for 800 years. If this church were in North America people would travel from all over to see it. And here it is just an anonymous country church, treasured by a few aging parishioners and one rather eccentric writer, and otherwise almost entirely unnoticed because it is just one of several hundred ancient parish churches in Kent.
Altogether there are twenty thousand ancient parish churches in Britain. There are more listed churches than there are petrol stations. Isn’t that an amazing fact? If you decided to visit one every day, it would take you 54 years to see them all.
Wherever you turn in the UK you are faced with marvelous and fascinating things – 19,000 listed ancient monuments, 600,000 archaeological sites, 100,000 miles of public footpaths, 250,000 miles of hedgerows, 73,000 war memorials, 6,500 noted bridges, 14 National Parks, more than a hundred Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, over 4,000 sites of Special Scientific Interest. You’ll brush up against some striking reminder of England’s long and productive past.
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