0:00:09 > 0:00:11SHEEP BLEAT
0:00:11 > 0:00:16I set out to understand some of the great landscapes of Britain,
0:00:16 > 0:00:22to piece together the history that shaped them. And this seems one of the most beguiling -
0:00:22 > 0:00:25the Yorkshire Dales.
0:00:25 > 0:00:32Its pastures, with their walls and stone villages, seem old and lush and suggest a history of prosperity.
0:00:32 > 0:00:36Yet these valleys are inaccessible and severe.
0:00:36 > 0:00:42The puzzle is how so rich a landscape could have been created here.
0:01:04 > 0:01:09There's a great swathe of uplands running down the west of Britain.
0:01:09 > 0:01:14But I've always been particularly intrigued by the Yorkshire Dales.
0:01:15 > 0:01:19There's a lovely chequerboard pattern -
0:01:19 > 0:01:25little fields crossed by stone walls that run up the sides of the hill,
0:01:25 > 0:01:30woodlands and villages scattered along the valley floor.
0:01:30 > 0:01:36I've come to try to understand what this landscape reveals
0:01:36 > 0:01:41about the way people have lived and worked here through the centuries
0:01:41 > 0:01:47and how their lives have come to shape this beautiful countryside that we have today.
0:01:48 > 0:01:53I was struck by the fine stone buildings standing in the fields -
0:01:53 > 0:01:59good enough to live in, but they're just used as sheds and storehouses.
0:01:59 > 0:02:02Are they remnants of lost farms?
0:02:02 > 0:02:09Or was there some reason to build in solid stone out in the fields like this?
0:02:09 > 0:02:14I'm going to start my search at Hazelbrow Farm here in Swaledale.
0:02:14 > 0:02:20It's been in the Calvert family for a century or more and they farm along pretty traditional lines.
0:02:20 > 0:02:26I'm going to ask Cath Calvert what these barns were built for traditionally.
0:02:29 > 0:02:36They've always been used for housing cattle. They'd be put into buces, or stalls, in the building.
0:02:36 > 0:02:41- Hay that was made in the summer would be stored up above.- I see.
0:02:41 > 0:02:46- So this is a cow house. Do we know how old they are?- We think, er,
0:02:46 > 0:02:52- 1750s to 1850s, somewhere in that region.- Yeah.
0:02:52 > 0:02:58It seems an unusual system - these little barns dotted around through the Dales.
0:02:58 > 0:03:05- Why did this system evolve like this?- This was hay that was made in the surrounding fields.
0:03:05 > 0:03:10So it wasn't far to bring in. Muck from the cows was kept in the midden
0:03:10 > 0:03:14and then spread onto the land in spring - organic fertiliser.
0:03:14 > 0:03:20- Yes, self-contained, really. - This barn would probably have gone with the cottages over here.
0:03:20 > 0:03:25They'd have been occupied by families whose menfolk worked in the mines.
0:03:25 > 0:03:32- So there was mining quite close to here?- Yes, particularly in this area.
0:03:32 > 0:03:38Every family would have a few fields. They'd keep a few cows, a pig and a few sheep.
0:03:38 > 0:03:45It was mostly women's work - children as well - to look after the stock, while the men were down the mines.
0:03:46 > 0:03:52Mines? I was beginning to realise there was a hidden system to this landscape.
0:03:52 > 0:03:56The method of farming, with sturdy, scattered cow houses,
0:03:56 > 0:04:02was suited to steep, cold slopes, where you couldn't move herds far.
0:04:02 > 0:04:07And it left many of the men to go mining. But where were there mines?
0:04:07 > 0:04:10There seemed nothing left of them now.
0:04:10 > 0:04:15Next day, I climbed into the hills above Arkengarthdale.
0:04:15 > 0:04:19OK, Aubrey, we'll just put your cap lamp on. Mine on as well.
0:04:19 > 0:04:24'I was meeting David Carlisle, an industrial historian.'
0:04:24 > 0:04:27Mind your step here. It's slippy.
0:04:27 > 0:04:34'He strapped me into caving gear and promised I was about to discover the hidden treasure of the Dales.'
0:04:34 > 0:04:36There you go. Watch your head.
0:04:36 > 0:04:39What are we looking at here?
0:04:39 > 0:04:42SPLASHING
0:04:42 > 0:04:47- You see the horse level travelling through here.- What's a horse level?
0:04:47 > 0:04:53It's a haulage way in which horses ran and drew waggons out of the mine.
0:04:55 > 0:05:00- And what was the purpose of the workings?- The purpose was lead ore.
0:05:00 > 0:05:05- So there's lead ore here? This is a lead mine?- Yes.
0:05:06 > 0:05:11- Give me that hand, OK?- I've so many clothes on, I can't bend my legs!
0:05:11 > 0:05:16- Yep, OK. Let's have a look up here. - What have we got here?
0:05:17 > 0:05:25- Good heavens!- Yes. This is the vein, the slot. As it's broken, it's been taken out of there.
0:05:25 > 0:05:32- By hand?- Dropped into the haulage, where it was picked up in the waggons and trammed out.- Is the ore soft?
0:05:32 > 0:05:39It is very soft, yes. It's actually not proved to be very rich here, so they haven't gone far up in the vein.
0:05:43 > 0:05:49This mine here probably... well, it does date from about 1800,
0:05:49 > 0:05:55and by the time they got to this place, they would be about 1840-1850.
0:05:57 > 0:06:04'This network of abandoned lead mines is vast - a whole 19th-century landscape,
0:06:04 > 0:06:10'hidden underground. Once you know about the mines, you notice them everywhere.
0:06:10 > 0:06:15'Not just underground and not just 19th century either.
0:06:19 > 0:06:24'David brought me out at a place called The Hungry Hushes.'
0:06:24 > 0:06:29This is an astonishing landscape. What are we looking at here, David?
0:06:29 > 0:06:37Well, these "hushes", as we call them, are probably 300, maybe more, years old.
0:06:37 > 0:06:44- At least, that's when they were started.- What exactly is a hush?- It's an opencast working on a lead vein.
0:06:44 > 0:06:52It's a process that used water to help those working in the gutter, as they called it, the hush gutter,
0:06:52 > 0:06:54to shift the debris to the bottom.
0:06:54 > 0:07:01So they started by picking away at the vein, and then they would direct water down...
0:07:01 > 0:07:06- To wash it out of the way, yes.- So the cleft gets deeper and deeper...
0:07:06 > 0:07:11As years go by, and so hushes like that have obviously taken many years.
0:07:11 > 0:07:18- You might take it as a natural feature, wouldn't you? - But, believe me, it isn't.
0:07:21 > 0:07:27Now I could see the bruises and scars on the slopes left by centuries of lead mining -
0:07:27 > 0:07:34evidence that the origins of this landscape lay in a partnership of farming and industry.
0:07:34 > 0:07:37But extracting ore is only half the story.
0:07:37 > 0:07:42You need to smelt it too, for which you must dig coal or grow timber.
0:07:42 > 0:07:46- Did they do that as well? - Feel the weight of that.
0:07:48 > 0:07:51- That's got a lot of lead in it.- Yes.
0:07:51 > 0:07:55It's a piece of improperly smelted ore.
0:07:55 > 0:08:00Why are they smelting lead up on this hillside? We're high up here.
0:08:00 > 0:08:07Because they needed the prevailing wind to get the temperature for the lead to smelt properly.
0:08:07 > 0:08:12- On top of the clay floor was some fairly stout logs.- Yeah.
0:08:12 > 0:08:16Covered over with old slag from the previous smelt.
0:08:16 > 0:08:23On that, they piled brushwood and layers of ore, more brushwood, more ore...lit it,
0:08:23 > 0:08:27good strong wind, good temperature, and away she went.
0:08:27 > 0:08:32The lead ran onto the clay floor into depressions to make little ingots.
0:08:32 > 0:08:41So lead miners even harnessed the bitter Dales winds to smelt lead. And it was timber that they used.
0:08:41 > 0:08:45Did it come, I wondered, from the valleys around?
0:08:45 > 0:08:49One more element in the intricate Dales landscape?
0:08:49 > 0:08:56Only pockets of woodland remain, but in Ivlet Wood, Tom Gledhill has hunted signs of their history.
0:08:56 > 0:09:01- As you can see, it's quite a nice platform.- Oh, yes.
0:09:01 > 0:09:05Have you found a number of these platforms and kilns in this wood?
0:09:05 > 0:09:12Yes, they spread right along the common. The wood must once have been very much bigger than this,
0:09:12 > 0:09:17because you have to make charcoal in the wood. As you can see,
0:09:17 > 0:09:23- there's quite a bit of charcoal dug up by rabbits.- Ah, rabbits as archeologists.- Yes.- Yeah.
0:09:23 > 0:09:30Charcoal wasn't used for the first smelting of the lead - it would have made it too hot
0:09:30 > 0:09:37- and the lead would have evaporated. - Right.- It was used for the second smelting of the lead slags,
0:09:37 > 0:09:41when they could extract a bit more lead from the slag.
0:09:41 > 0:09:48The indications are that this wood was being actively mined for fuel for the lead smelting
0:09:48 > 0:09:53- and the woods were more extensive then.- That's right, they were.
0:09:53 > 0:09:59- How can you get at the date of this? - Here, I found a piece of clay pipe.
0:09:59 > 0:10:04- The bowl of a pipe.- That's right. You see it's very small.- Tiny, yes.
0:10:04 > 0:10:11That's because tobacco was still quite expensive. This one's probably mid- to late-17th century.
0:10:11 > 0:10:17- So that gives you a date - you know it must be before that.- Yes.
0:10:17 > 0:10:22Tom's evidence matched what I found at the cow house and the mines -
0:10:22 > 0:10:26that this difficult terrain had been turned to profit
0:10:26 > 0:10:31by a system working all its elements together over the centuries.
0:10:31 > 0:10:36I'm beginning to get a picture of how this landscape worked -
0:10:36 > 0:10:43pastoral farming in the valley bottom, woodlands making charcoal, lead mining up on the hills.
0:10:43 > 0:10:49It takes us back at least to the 17th century, but how much further back does it go?
0:10:49 > 0:10:56There's one feature we haven't dealt with yet - these amazing walls. They're everywhere in the Dales.
0:10:56 > 0:11:03If we could date the walls, then maybe we could put a date on the landscape itself.
0:11:06 > 0:11:12I went to Lower Winskill Farm, where students from Craven College were repairing walls.
0:11:17 > 0:11:20We'll just put the fillings in there.
0:11:20 > 0:11:26- Slightly triangular.- Yes, that's the shape of a conventional wall.
0:11:26 > 0:11:31'But at different times, the walls were built in different ways -
0:11:31 > 0:11:35'some high, some narrow, some tapering.'
0:11:35 > 0:11:39- This looks a more massive structure. - Yes, it's very different.
0:11:39 > 0:11:44- My fingers just about reach the other side.- Yes, they don't project.
0:11:44 > 0:11:48On this side, we have these projecting topstones.
0:11:48 > 0:11:55'But can we date these wall-building fashions and use them to date the landscape?'
0:11:55 > 0:12:00- Those footings look good for a couple of hundred years.- Definitely.
0:12:01 > 0:12:05Lower Windsgill Farm is owned by Tom Lord.
0:12:05 > 0:12:09I persuaded him to look out his maps and deeds.
0:12:09 > 0:12:13They detail every field, right back to 1590.
0:12:13 > 0:12:18Could we find any clues here to help date his walls?
0:12:18 > 0:12:24If I read these out, Aubrey, can you find them on the map? It's 1841.
0:12:24 > 0:12:28- This is the farm we're on now. - That's Windsgill.
0:12:28 > 0:12:32We've got, "Two closes called Nether Ing and Over Ing."
0:12:32 > 0:12:37- They're there.- A couple of meadows. - Yes.- "Well-upholstered ground
0:12:37 > 0:12:42"behind or to the north of the barn. One close called Takeascar."
0:12:42 > 0:12:48- I think that has become, in 1841, Cow Scar.- There's a Cow Scar there.
0:12:49 > 0:12:54All these names have stayed the same for centuries - 350, 400 years.
0:12:54 > 0:12:59They've stayed almost identical between 1590 and 1841.
0:12:59 > 0:13:05'If Tom's fields haven't changed since 1590, there's a good chance his walls haven't either.'
0:13:07 > 0:13:13We might have found a way of dating the walls and, through them, the landscape too.
0:13:13 > 0:13:19I've come to show you this wall, which is between the Over Ing here,
0:13:19 > 0:13:25and this is the Nether Ing - two fields mentioned on the 1590 deed.
0:13:25 > 0:13:28This is the wall between them
0:13:28 > 0:13:33and we assume that this is the wall that has stood here since 1590.
0:13:33 > 0:13:39If you look down it, you can see how the top is fairly narrow in relation to the base.
0:13:39 > 0:13:46This is a narrow-top wall. To test for it, I put my elbow on the coping on this side,
0:13:46 > 0:13:51putting my arm across, and part of my hand sticks out on the other side.
0:13:51 > 0:13:59So this is a narrow-top wall. It's here, between the two fields mentioned in the 1590 deed,
0:13:59 > 0:14:03and so this spine of wall has been here since 1590.
0:14:05 > 0:14:09At last, I had a fix on the landscape.
0:14:09 > 0:14:16Because these narrow-top walls turn up all over Tom's farm and across the hills and valleys around,
0:14:16 > 0:14:23it's clear that most of this complex and beautiful Dales landscape stretches back to around 1600,
0:14:23 > 0:14:26when Elizabeth I was queen.
0:14:28 > 0:14:34For centuries, the hills were mined for lead and the slopes grown with timber for smelting.
0:14:34 > 0:14:39And in the valleys were cow houses and fields for grazing.
0:14:39 > 0:14:46It was this combination that for centuries won a good living from these unpromising valleys.
0:14:53 > 0:14:58I feel as if I've got the measure of this landscape - mines on the hills,
0:14:58 > 0:15:05hushes, woodlands, pasture, grazing land. But I don't think that can be the whole story.
0:15:05 > 0:15:11If you look over there, you can see vertical stripes running down some fields,
0:15:11 > 0:15:15horizontal terraces on others. Almost all the fields are marked.
0:15:15 > 0:15:22It looks like a landscape that was ploughed up - as if there was a landscape underneath the pasture,
0:15:22 > 0:15:27hidden beneath the landscape we've got today. Is that possible?
0:15:27 > 0:15:31Can you move the ranging rod? Fine.
0:15:32 > 0:15:37And just turn the reflector towards me.
0:15:38 > 0:15:42I asked archeologist Steven Moorehouse.
0:15:42 > 0:15:46He's been surveying the fields at Castle Bolton in Wensleydale.
0:15:46 > 0:15:51It's an estate that's been in the same family for 700 years.
0:15:51 > 0:15:58Its lands are crisscrossed with strange humps and bumps - signs of a landscape below the modern pastures.
0:15:58 > 0:16:03Here, too, are hillsides shaped into those long terraces.
0:16:03 > 0:16:06What, I asked, was all this for?
0:16:06 > 0:16:10- We're walking up onto these lynchets.- Lynchets?
0:16:10 > 0:16:14Lynchet is the term given to these terraces,
0:16:14 > 0:16:20which are man-made terraces on which ploughteams would plough the fields.
0:16:20 > 0:16:25They can either be strip lynchets, like these, or contour lynchets.
0:16:26 > 0:16:29So these fields HAD been ploughed.
0:16:29 > 0:16:36Beneath the 16th-century walls, built when modern markets made sheep and cattle more profitable,
0:16:36 > 0:16:43were platforms and terraces, dug to grow crops on the difficult slopes. We stood in what were cornfields.
0:16:43 > 0:16:51Steven's surveys had been turning up everything you needed for arable crop-growing farming -
0:16:51 > 0:16:56a maze of ditches and platforms and the footings of farm buildings.
0:16:56 > 0:17:01- The staggarth, we'll take readings on four corners.- What's a staggarth?
0:17:01 > 0:17:07Small areas for drying the sheaves from arable fields before taking them to the barns.
0:17:07 > 0:17:11- Right.- Arable field systems of the medieval period
0:17:11 > 0:17:16contain tens of thousands of structures across the Dales.
0:17:17 > 0:17:24Steven's charts reveal that, before 1500, isolated Dales farmers found ways to be almost self-sufficient -
0:17:24 > 0:17:31grazing the uplands but terracing and ploughing the lower slopes in different ways at different times,
0:17:31 > 0:17:34in order to plant arable crops.
0:17:34 > 0:17:41So it's basically a medieval landscape that we're looking at here, on the surface.
0:17:41 > 0:17:46Most of it is. There's a whole sequence of earlier landscapes.
0:17:46 > 0:17:51We don't get a single field system laid out and used for a long period.
0:17:51 > 0:17:56Many of these field systems go way back into the prehistoric period.
0:17:56 > 0:18:03- We need to look down through the layers. It's a landscape that's been changing all the time.- Yes.
0:18:03 > 0:18:10Steven's charts showed this self-sufficient way of life worked well for thousands of years,
0:18:10 > 0:18:13changing and refining all the time.
0:18:13 > 0:18:19The question was - how close to the roots of this robust, earlier Dales way of life could I get?
0:18:19 > 0:18:25Could I discover what this landscape was like back in prehistoric times?
0:18:25 > 0:18:30I took a break at Reeth in Swaledale and there I had an idea.
0:18:32 > 0:18:39Steven has years of fieldwork ahead of him before he can get a complete picture of this medieval landscape.
0:18:39 > 0:18:46But perhaps there are other ways we can come at it. I've been very struck by place names in Swaledale.
0:18:46 > 0:18:49Healaugh, Satron,
0:18:49 > 0:18:51Muker, Keld -
0:18:51 > 0:18:58unlike other names in England. Perhaps they can give us information on the origins of this landscape.
0:18:58 > 0:19:05Andrew Fleming has done much of the work on this. Perhaps he can give us some clues.
0:19:06 > 0:19:11Next day, I called Andrew Fleming. The names, he said, are Norse.
0:19:11 > 0:19:16They date from the Viking invasions of the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries.
0:19:16 > 0:19:21He suggested we meet at one of them - Gunnerside.
0:19:21 > 0:19:29Its real name, its old name, is Gunnerset, which means "the pasture of Gunnar" - a good old Norse name.
0:19:29 > 0:19:33- Are there other Norse place names around here?- Quite a few.
0:19:33 > 0:19:38Beyond Gunnerside, there's Satron, which means "at the pastures" really.
0:19:38 > 0:19:43Then Angram, further up the dale, which means the same thing.
0:19:43 > 0:19:49We get the sense that Norse settlers were very interested in pastures.
0:19:49 > 0:19:56They were living just above the valley bottom, it looks. Were they doing any arable?
0:19:56 > 0:20:03Um, not very much, I think. I mean, the name Muker means "narrow, cultivated acre".
0:20:03 > 0:20:08So there may have been some arable there, but probably not very much.
0:20:08 > 0:20:14So it's a mystery - the pattern of settlement - but the names pin down Norse people here in Swaledale.
0:20:14 > 0:20:21Yes, you can see the way that the places are persistently on the edge of the rivers,
0:20:21 > 0:20:28on the edge of the river terrace here, and how the names constantly refer to meadowland and pastureland.
0:20:28 > 0:20:30It's clear what interested the Norse,
0:20:30 > 0:20:37though we can't reconstruct details of the settlement from visible traces.
0:20:37 > 0:20:41If almost every trace of Viking farming had vanished,
0:20:41 > 0:20:47the names they left in the valleys suggest a landscape of animal pastures.
0:20:47 > 0:20:54So had they not yet established the self-sufficient farming of mixed grazing and crop growing I'd found?
0:20:54 > 0:20:57There was just one wonderful clue.
0:20:57 > 0:21:00Archeologist Alan King has found
0:21:00 > 0:21:06what he thinks is a ninth-century Norse farmstead on top of Ribblehead.
0:21:06 > 0:21:10It was my only chance to reconstruct a corner of their landscape.
0:21:10 > 0:21:15Wonderful, huge, long sweep of a building here.
0:21:15 > 0:21:20The house is 66 foot long - unless you've been metricated lately -
0:21:20 > 0:21:25and almost a unique structure as far as the north of England is concerned.
0:21:25 > 0:21:32- They'd been keeping sheep and cattle?- The amazing thing is there were jaws upon jaws of animal teeth.
0:21:32 > 0:21:35We had horse, cow,
0:21:35 > 0:21:38sheep, hare,
0:21:38 > 0:21:44boar or pig, fox, partridge, domestic fowl...
0:21:44 > 0:21:49- So both domestic AND wild animals. - Yes, they were doing some hunting
0:21:49 > 0:21:56and were bringing in animals from outside their farm, as it were, to help out the meat.
0:21:56 > 0:22:01- But you've got clear evidence that they were herding animals.- Yes.
0:22:01 > 0:22:08Against the west wall there, along the edge of the wall, we found some lamb chops.
0:22:08 > 0:22:15And it looks as though, behind the ninth-century equivalent of the sofa,
0:22:15 > 0:22:20someone was being piggy and stuffed them at the back of the cushions.
0:22:21 > 0:22:28But was there evidence that Norse farmers were growing crops up here? Alan took me through to the kitchen.
0:22:28 > 0:22:34- I'm sure this chunk of bedrock held the quern at one time.- A quern is...
0:22:34 > 0:22:39- They ground one stone on the other to grind corn.- Yes.
0:22:39 > 0:22:43It's a huge thing, 22 inches across, with a hopper
0:22:43 > 0:22:48and a handle hole in the top into which you fed your cereals.
0:22:48 > 0:22:54Corn came out around the edge and was collected off a piece of board.
0:22:54 > 0:23:01So there was a full-scale farming economy here. A big settlement, lots of activity, agricultural animals.
0:23:01 > 0:23:05Yes, this was a permanent settlement for generations
0:23:05 > 0:23:13and they cultivated the fields over there. They had garden plots, a workshop, a kitchen.
0:23:13 > 0:23:16They were working iron, lead, zinc.
0:23:16 > 0:23:23This is a major feature on the landscape at this high-water mark of settlement in the Dales.
0:23:25 > 0:23:28It was a tantalising glimpse
0:23:28 > 0:23:35of a ninth-century Viking hilltop landscape of ranching, hunting, crop growing and metal working.
0:23:35 > 0:23:42Using every trick in the book to create that self-sufficient way of life I'd found in each generation.
0:23:42 > 0:23:46But I still hadn't reached back to prehistoric times.
0:23:46 > 0:23:48Was it possible?
0:23:48 > 0:23:54I've noticed in Swaledale a lot of these dents on the hillside.
0:23:54 > 0:23:59They're quite dramatic, because there's a bank that comes down here,
0:23:59 > 0:24:06then there's a very flat area - a platform - that drops steeply away into the valley.
0:24:06 > 0:24:11I thought they might be to do with the medieval farming landscape,
0:24:11 > 0:24:17but Tim Laurie, who's investigated these for many summers, thinks they're much older.
0:24:22 > 0:24:26Next morning, Tim took me up the other side of the dale,
0:24:26 > 0:24:33where I could see the pattern of platforms as they spread along through the fields.
0:24:37 > 0:24:44- I can now make out some of those features.- Yes, they're very prominent in the winter sunshine.
0:24:44 > 0:24:51At intervals of perhaps 300-400 yards, across the pastures,
0:24:51 > 0:24:56- are settlements which now show as platforms.- Is that what we see there?
0:24:56 > 0:25:04- That strange mark that looks like a slit eye with two thick eyelids? - Yes, it looks like an eyebrow.
0:25:04 > 0:25:09The buildings have disappeared, but the platform survives.
0:25:09 > 0:25:11Have you been digging on it?
0:25:11 > 0:25:17We have. On that platform, we found the remains of three buildings.
0:25:17 > 0:25:22The two later buildings were stone founded, with stone-flagged floors -
0:25:22 > 0:25:24they were of the Roman period.
0:25:24 > 0:25:31The first house may have been constructed 200 years before the Romans arrived.
0:25:31 > 0:25:38But the earlier settlement opposite was at least 500 years before the Roman period, before they arrived.
0:25:38 > 0:25:43Most people admire the pattern of modern dry-stone walls.
0:25:43 > 0:25:47- Wonderful walls, yes. - They are, in Swaledale.
0:25:47 > 0:25:53But not many people realise that beneath and below the present-day walls
0:25:53 > 0:25:56is a much older system of fields -
0:25:56 > 0:25:59an Iron-Age landscape, in fact.
0:26:02 > 0:26:07And the settlements are spaced at intervals of approximately 400 yards.
0:26:08 > 0:26:15The density of settlements indicate that the population was not very different from that of today.
0:26:16 > 0:26:18It's an astonishing thought -
0:26:18 > 0:26:24Swaledale 3,000 years ago and the same population as today.
0:26:24 > 0:26:29Near the platforms where the houses were built,
0:26:29 > 0:26:35Tim has found traces of their fields running in straight lines right up onto the moor.
0:26:35 > 0:26:38The rich Dales landscape we have now
0:26:38 > 0:26:43is the product of skilful management stretching over millennia.
0:26:45 > 0:26:52Before leaving the Dales, I returned to the cottages I'd seen from the cow house back at Hazelbrow Farm.
0:26:52 > 0:26:57I knew they fitted into a succession of extraordinary landscapes,
0:26:57 > 0:27:02as each generation had discovered its own way to work these valleys.
0:27:05 > 0:27:10The Yorkshire Dales are a place full of great surprises.
0:27:10 > 0:27:15These cottages are used for sheep now, but they were miners' cottages.
0:27:15 > 0:27:22On the moors, this was an industrial landscape, the lead mining going back to the time of Elizabeth I.
0:27:22 > 0:27:29Then, in the valley - which is pasture now - beneath that, there's a secret medieval farming landscape.
0:27:29 > 0:27:33Indeed, on the tops of the hills, 3,000 years ago,
0:27:33 > 0:27:38there were as many people living here as there are now, farming away.
0:27:38 > 0:27:46So the Yorkshire Dales, apart from being a place of great beauty, is also a place of wonderful secrets.
0:28:09 > 0:28:14Subtitles by Roger Young BBC Scotland - 2000
0:28:14 > 0:28:18E-mail us at subtitling@bbc.co.uk