THE LANDSCAPE OF THE UNITED KINGDOM

Indah Setia Ningrum

English Literature Program, STBA Sebelas April Sumedang
E-mail: indahsn81@gmail.com

Abstract

This paper submitted to fulfill the final study of Survey of British History and Culture by
presenting the landscape of the United Kingdom from its brief history to the conditions of it. The
writer also conducted the short comparison between the landscape of the United Kingdom and
Indonesia, as the writer’s country, in order to know that the changes of the landscape are
different in every place because of the different factors affect it. By this paper, the writer
expected that learning landscape of a country could bring the advantages. The data of this paper
collected by library research. The result found in this paper showed that: (1) the landscape of the
UK formed for twelve thousand years from the ice age period till the present, it could change at
any time because of the factors affect it; (2) UK served variety of landscapes, such as uplands,
mountains, mountain, lowlands, rolling hills, valley, peninsula, beach, rivers, and lakes; and (3)
the landscapes of the UK and Indonesia had similar forms, but the differences were the factors
that affect them.

Keywords: UK, Britain, landscape.

Introduction

United Kingdom (UK), for short of The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northen
Ireland or sometimes called Britan, is a state located in Europe that holds four countries, includes
England, Scotland, Wales and Northen Ireland (Johnson, 2015; Ravenhill, W et al., 2020).
Sutuyo (2009) and Rachmawati (2016) stated that the mainland of the UK lied about 244.110
km2 and Indonesia which 1.906.240 km 2, it means that UK is smaller than Indonesia. UK located
between the latitude 49o N-59o N and longitude 2o E-8o W and, geographically, bordered by the
Atlantic Ocean in the North, English Channel in the South, North Sea in the East, and Atlantic
Ocean in the West (Barrow, 2014a).
The strategic location of the UK successfully served varieties of natural beauty which cannot
be separated from its landscape. The landscape of the UK makes it as the most beautiful place in
the world. Besides, it also characterizes the nation and influences various aspects.
A landscape is a unit of natural scenes or areas in the earth’s surface in geographycal’s part
(Kementerian Lingkungan Hidup dan Kehutanan, 2019). Natural Geographic (2020) also stated
that a landscape can be devided into two, there are natural and cultural landscape. Natural
landscape is variety of landforms which created by natural phenomenon, such as mountains,
hills, plains and plateaus. Cultural landscape is the landforms modified by human which showed
people characterictics, such as field of plants, buildings and sites.
Learning the landscape of a country is important because we can see more detail about a
place that we might visit, for example the United Kingdom. As the quote stated by Nicholas
Crane (2011) “To care about a place, you must know its story”, it means that people will really
love and understand the place when they know everything in it, includes the condition of its
landscape. Therefore, the writer choose this topic as a focus of this paper in expectation that it
could bring the advantages of learning landscape in a country. The writer also serves such
advantages, such as: to know the culture of the country, to know its condition more detail, to
facilitate the possibility of occuring disasters, and to preserve the environment as well.
Based on the explanation above, the purposes of this paper are to investigate the various
landscapes of the UK and how the lands formed, and also to conduct a short comparison between
UK and Indonesia in terms of the condition of both landscapes.
The data for this paper were gained by library research by collecting the sources of
information about the landscape of the UK and also the landscape of Indonesia.

Research and Discussion

A. The Brief History of UK’s Landscape

The landscape of the UK and the landscapes everywhere were not formed immediately,
but there are processes and factors affect it. The following presented about how the landscape
of the UK created before knowing more detail about the condition of it.
 Nicholas Crane in The Making of The British Landscape (2011) presented how the
British lands formed start from the ice age period till present. It said that twelve thousand
years ago, Britain was just an uninhabited glacial lands. The lands kept move to the east
towards Kamchatka and the south to the Table Mountain.
Around 9700 BC, glaciers were destroyed and rocks collapsed due to an extreme climate
that suddenly changed. The glaciers dissapeared and became muddy waste around 9500 BC.
The land itself changed into valleys, moraines and lakes, and the lowlands became wetlands.
The lands continued to conduct the reshuffle of tectonic plates.
The habitat of human and various mammals began to be recorded in 6200 BC which the
British lands became an island formed by a tsunami from Norway. However by 4000 BC
various disasters occured, such as seizures of the earth systen, extreme climate change, and
tsunami, which made the loss of records of human life, and again it became an uninhabited
land.
In 4050 BC, human’s life began to be recorded which emerged from urban culture. They
came by boats and brought livestocks. There also began the tradition of building burial on the
ground and the giant rectangular wooden houses.
Recorded in 2400 BC, there began human work where there found the stack of rocks near
the river bank. For hundreds years, human was working and building on the ground.
The first city in Britain, Cellera Atrebatum, built as the center of economy. Then, in 70
AD, there found the roman buldings for 240.000 people.
In the 16th century, the British population reached its top while London became the city
with the largest populations. There began the various works of human, such as embankments,
flowing rivers, and also installing wind pumps to dry up the post-glacial wetlands by making
them as a shipping path for the Industrial Revolution.
In 1852, the big cities around Britain began to connect. Then, in the 19th century the
population and industries grew faster which made London as the largest city in the world,
and its population doubled in 1900.
In 12.000 years the uninhabited wilderness, ice and tundra became the landscape of more
than 65 million people in the UK.
 From a brief description of the history of British land above can be stated that the major
factors affect the changes of landscape are nature (climate, disasters and geographycal
factors) and also human.

B. The United Kingdom's Landscapes

Most of all, the landscape of the UK dominated by mountains and lowlands. The
landscape varies over relatively short distances. The followings are described the condition
of UK’s landscape:
1. Upland
Upland is a plain that extended broad and situated in a high place, but lower than
mountains or mountain (Materi IPS, 2020). Usually, upland has an altitude of 300-600 m
above sea level. In the UK the uplands can be found in the following places:
 Scotland: The Northwest Highlands and the Southern Uplands;
 England: The Pennines, Lake District, Dartmoor, and Exmoor;
 Wales: Snowdonia and The Brecon Beacons;
 Northen Ireland: Eire Island.
2. Mountains
Mountains are the areas that dominate the landscape of the UK. Mountains are the group
of mountain, but it is lower than mountain (Materi IPS, 2020). The mountains of the UK
are not too impressive like the other mountains in Europe. This lanscape is mostly found
in Scotland and Wales. There are places with mountainous landscape in the UK:
 Scotland: Most areas of Scotland, especially in the Highland Boundary Fault and
Grampiana Mountains;
 Wales: The North and Midland of Wales, but the South is less mountainous;
 Northen Ireland: The Mourine Mountains and Antrim Mountains;
 England: The Pennines.
3. Mountain
Mountain is the highest landscape of the earth’s surface (Materi IPS, 2020). There are
several mountains in the UK, such as:
 England: Scafell Pike (978 m), it is the highest mountain in England;
  Scotland: Ben Nevis (1344 m), it is the highest mountain of the UK;
 Wales: Wales served many mountains. Its popular mountain is Snowdon (1085 m);
 Northen Ireland: Slieve Donard (852 m).
4. Lowlands
Lowland is usually used for settlements, agriculture and industry. The height of lowlands
is less than 200 m above sea level (Materi IPS, 2020). Mostly, the lowlands in the UK are
in the form of flat plains. It is a low land which stretches broad with a flat shape. Much of
the lands in England are flat, and it occupied more than half of the land of Britain so that
the UK is also dominated by the lowlands. The other flat plains can be found in Scotland,
especially in the Firth of Clyde and Firth of Forth.
5. Rolling hills
Rolling hills are the lowest area of hills with the up and down relief. The rolling hills are
in these places:
 Wales: Clwydian Range (Northeast Wales);
 Scotland: The Borders;
 Northen Ireland: The area of Mourine Mountains;
 England: Dartmoor.
6. Valley
Valley is a basin landscape and located between mountains (Fauzi, 2020). It can be found
in Wye Valley, Monmouthsire in Wales.
7. Peninsula
Peninsula is a land that protrudes into the sea (Materi IPS, 2020). It can be found in the
Southeast of England (Salisbury Plain) and Gower Peninsula in the South of Wales.
8. Beach
Beach is a land which borders directly with the sea, and usually it used as tourist
attraction (Materi IPS, 2020). Because the United Kingdom is an archipelago, all of the
country are contiguous with the sea. There are several beaches that became tourist
attraction, such as:
 England: Sandymouth Beach, Middleton Beach, Dawlish Beach, Harbour Beach,
Barmston Beach;
  Wales: Aberffraw Bay, Penbryn Beach, Colwyn Bay, Treco Bay, South Tenby
Beach;
 Scotland: Melvich Beach, Dalmoor Beach, Sandeel Bay, Luskentyre Beach, Angus
coast;
 Northen Ireland: Helens Bay, Catlerock Beach, Brown’s Bay, Rossglass Beach,
Cranfield Bay (UK Beach Guide, 2020).
9. Rivers
River is a flow water on the surface of the earth that usually comes from the top of
mountain. The flow flows from upstream to downstream (Kerja Usaha, 2019). Several
rivers in the UK are:
 England and Wales: Thames River (the major river that flows through Oxford-
London) and Severn River (the longest River in the UK with 354 km);
 England: Ure River, The Trent, Mersey river;
 Scotland: Don River, Spey River, Clyde River;
 Northen Ireland: Bann River (Barrow, 2013).
10. Lake
Lake is waters which surrounded by lands and has a large size with a basin shaped
(Fauzi, 2020). The lakes in the UK are:
 England: Lake District;
 Northen Ireland: Lough Neagh, the largest lake in the UK;
 Scotland: Loch Ness (lake with the largest volume in the UK), Loch Lomond, Lochan
na h-Achlaise, and Loch Shiel.

Generally, the landscapes of the UK and Indonesia have similar forms because
geographically they are the archipelagos. The lands are surrounded by the ocean so that they
have beaches stretched along the mainlands. All of the variety of landscapes mentioned
above are also in Indonesia.
Furthermore, there are differences among both landscapes. For example, most lakes in
Indonesia are formed due to the effects of volcanic eruptions and tectonic movements, like
Lake Toba, Lake Tondano, and The Lake of Kawah Gunung Kelud (Fatma, 2017; Ilham,
2014). Meanwhile, the lakes in the UK are formed by glacial processes, as mentioned earlier,
 where the extreme climate changes made the ice lands melt and formed lakes. Besides, in the
Indonesian cultural landscape there found paddy fields that stretched in the mainland, while
in the UK there are no paddy fields. That is because paddy is a typical Asian plant that did
not grow in British land. It showed that the landscapes can also show a culture. Indonesian
make rice a their main food, whereas British people grow wheat in the fields as a main food.
However, the landscapes of the UK and Indonesia have their own characterictics.
Although the area of United Kingdom is about one-third of Indonesia and its landscapes
are not too protuberant, it is so interesting because it served variety of landscapes in short
distances so that people can enjoy them all at once.

Conclusion

Based on the decription above, the writer conluded this paper into three points:
1. The UK’s landscapes were not formed directly but there were processes influenced by nature
and human. Twelve thousand years ago, the UK was an uninhabited ice lands. When the
climate suddenly changed into warm, the glaciers melted and formed the landforms. Besides,
natural disasters and tectonic plates movement also affected the shapes of the landscape.
After human began to come to British lands, they made various changes to the land.
2. The United Kingdom was small archipelago therefore the landscapes were served with the
not far distances. Most of the landscapes of the UK consisted of lowlands and mountains.
Lowlands are found mostly in England, and the mountains are more numerious in Scotland
and Wales. Besides, it also served variety of landforms, such as uplands, mountain, rolling
hills, valley, peninsula, beach, rivers, and lakes.
3. Indonesia also had variety of landforms like the UK’s. Also, they were the archipelagos so
that they had beaches which borders directly with the sea. The differences were the factors
affect them. Mostly, the landscapes of Indonesia were affected by tectonic and vulcanic
influences, while the UK’s were because of the glacial processes. Then, there found the
paddy fields as the cultural landscape of Indonesia, but there were not found in British lands.
 The writer also added that after learning the landscape in a country, readers can be able have
the better appreciates of differences cultural among people like the differences between the
cultural landscapes of Indonesia and the United Kingdom.

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