Using Historic Landscape Characterisation

Using Historic Landscape Characterisation
European Pathways to the Cultural Landscape
In Lancashire, the county HLC was the basis for the Historic Landscape of the Forest
of Bowland and the Lune Valley project. This was one of twelve projects that are
united in a common initiative called European Pathways to the Cultural Landscape,
which was funded by the EU Culture 2000 programme (Clark et al 2003). The
Bowland project was testing, refining and extending the HLC dataset by looking at the
historic development of the modern landscape in detail and adding data about
settlement patterns, boundary types, and resources. The project also aimed to raise
awareness and to engage with a cross section of the people who visit, live and work in
the area, in order to appreciate how the historic landscape is perceived and valued.
Carrying out a
perceptions
survey at
Beacon Fell
© Lancashire
County
Council
Learning
Use as a tool to raise questions,
establish research agendas and provide
wide-ranging data was seen from the
outset as a primary application of
Historic Landscape Characterisation
(HLC). This application is, however,
relatively under-developed owing to the
pressure of time on priorities such as
development control and advising agrienvironment
schemes. Nevertheless,
many local authorities have
experimented with HLC in this area, for
example comparing HLC with
information about archaeological
features from the Sites and Monuments
Record (SMR) and trying to establish
where patterns and correlations exist.
HLC is also proving to be a useful
method of identifying gaps in existing
knowledge of the historic landscape,
and is being used in the formulation of
Regional Research Frameworks (in the
North West, for example).
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