The Littleover Landscape, from Ice Age to Domesday

Personal Project – Writing a book, working title: The Littleover Landscape, from Ice Age to Domesday.

Aimed at the general reader, and covering a circular area around St Peter’s Church, Littleover. It’s meant to be the distance that could be walked there and back in a day from the Church: a 7.5 mile radius. With support from the Littleover Historical Society and the Derbyshire Archaeological Society, I’ve been supplied data from the Derbyshire Historic Environment Records (H.E.R.) team and the British Museum’s Portable Antiquities scheme (P.A.S.). I had intended the title to mean starting at the time when (I thought) the first people were at Creswell Crags, some 13,000 years ago. However, it turned out that the earliest artifacts found in the research area are between 500,000 and 300,000 years old!.

I’m grateful for the feedback I get from the society members when talking about my research – their perspective is invaluable (as is, of course, my wife’s). Whilst I’m the author, the book will be published by the society – as such any profits accrue to them. We’ve previously published another member’s book on this basis (Chris Dury’s Littleover War memorial booklet). I’m setting out the book with roughly an era per chapter, covering the following: Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Roman, Saxon, Viking, Norman. 

However, it’s not just the archaeological finds that feature, as I’m trying to answer the question – what would the landscape have looked like? When did the last ice age end and when did the landscape start to change from (most likely) tundra to grassland then to woodlands. Similarly, the earlier eras cover what effects did the various ice ages have on the landscape? How (or where) did the Trent and other rivers flow? I’m also mapping place name derivations: Littleover (lytelofer = Little Over or little slope or ridge in Old English); Mickelover(micelofer = Great Over or great slope or ridge) from Cameron’s Place names of Derbyshire, Part 2, p 484.

Researching and writing the book is proving slower than I’d expected: but then I’ve never done anything on this scale so I’m not that surprised. I’m still enjoying it.

Tony Brookes