Almost any village in the more remote parts of northern England, viewed from its surrounding moors and mountainsides, appears less as a settlement imposed upon a landscape than as a landscape that has, in a particular spot, condensed into a settlement. These villages seem to grow out of their surroundings, much as a weathered outcrop of rock might break the surface of a fellside, emerging from the land rather than imposing themselves upon it. This visual continuity, characteristic of England’s rural north, is born of centuries of building in local materials, for local needs, by people who had no reason to imagine that stone, timber, slate and landscape were discrete categories at all, but rather the same native language spoken in different forms. Continue reading →