In the middle decades of the twentieth century sections of Hadrian’s Wall and the surrounding landscape came under the legislative protection of the state. This talk will examine the debates over the quarrying industry near the villages of Haltwhistle and Greenhead in south-west Northumberland at this time. Situated near or on the line of the Wall, the quarries became the focus of passionate debates about landscape, employment, community, and the national interest between 1930 and 1960. Bringing together local, regional, and national archives, this talk deepens our understanding of the landscape’s transformation by examining the local voices in these debates, which have been overlooked by existing scholarship. It reveals that, from a local perspective, the preservation of the Wall was understood as a process of destructive change in the landscape. The transformation of the landscape brought together landowners, quarry managers, workers, and residents in a coalition that crossed class divisions. The quarrying debates exposed competing visions of rural England, Roman history, and the national interest, and the conflict responded to the changing circumstances of economic depression, war, and the decline of heavy industry.
Gareth Roddy is a Lecturer in Modern British and Irish History at Northumbria University. His research focuses on landscapes, borders, peripheries, heritage, travel writing and tourism. Gareth joined Northumbria University as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in 2020 after completing his PhD at the University of Sheffield in 2019. His current project examines the transformation of British landscapes in the 19th and 20th centuries, and his forthcoming book explores the cultural and political prominence of western landscapes in late-19th century Britain and Ireland.
