The countryside today is the result of successive generations of farmers working and shaping their land during the last six thousand years. The traces of their fields, tracks, homes and burial places are inextricably interwoven with what we can see in the landscape today. Many of these historic features are still visible as traditional buildings, ruins, ancient monuments, historic field boundaries and veteran trees: many more survive as buried archaeological remains that can no longer be seen by the casual observer. Because of this, the landscape is our most precious historic document. It contains the only evidence we have for most of our human history, and it provides an unparalleled insight into people's ways of life and beliefs through time. Its intricate mosaic of village, farm, common, parkland and woodland reflects the long and complex story of our ancestors, a story in which every farmstead and estate in England has played its part.

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