Slowing the Narrative of Landscape and History
When we join Elaine on one of her wonderful tours, we travel the country hunting down houses, churches, and museums to find the Arts and Crafts in all its forms. We travel to great cities and quiet rural parishes, to places where we can delight in the workmanship, the style, and freshness of one of our great artistic and cultural achievements. But the England we travel through is rarely on our minds. We are in anticipation of our next visit; our next cultural treat; our next lunch.
The English Journeys podcast sets out to redress that balance a little, celebrating the pleasures of transition as well as those of arrival. We slow the narrative, creating a deliberate contrast to more hectic aspects of our popular culture. English Journeys offers a gentle wander through some of the lesser-known parts of the country, delighting in the particularity of places and the evidence of lives and cultures, past and present.
A vibrant carpet of bluebells blanketing a wooded hillside in late spring, capturing the slow-paced beauty of the English countryside.
The Star, a picturesque canal-side pub, perfectly mirroring itself in the still water of the canal lock.
The Layers of Landscape and Identity
The landscapes we pass through are in many ways the essence of the place. England is a dense little country: geographically, geologically, and socially varied. Its identity is built up of this variety, and of layers of history, myth, and the business of its inhabitants over countless generations. It has been lived in, farmed, fished, walked over, and fought over for thousands of years, and you don’t have to scratch the surface too deeply to uncover evidence of the people who have shaped the landscape here since ancient times.
It was when, as a young curator in the 1980s, I was involved in the Attingham Summer School that I began truly to be aware of the historical narratives embedded in our environment. We English scholars were given the role of hosts, acting as guides and supporters to our fellow (mainly American) participants. And so I chatted to my neighbours on the bus about where we were and what we could see as we trundled through Sussex, Bedfordshire, and Derbyshire. The fact that we were travelling on a Roman road or past Bronze Age burials and medieval field systems inspired interest, even astonishment, in my companions. It surprised me, too, how easy it had been for me to take this exceptional country for granted.
Once I started to look, the variety and idiosyncrasy of the place seemed so apparent. Indeed, the building materials of the cottages, barns, houses, workshops, and factories we passed reflected their local geology. Who would, by choice, build their houses out of irregular lumps of flint, bedded into thick chalky mortar, or of oak beams, thin laths, and a heady mix of dung and mud? But the flint of Sussex, the half-timbering and warm red bricks of the East Midlands, and the dark, hard gritstones of the High Peak reinforce their sense of place and identity. All this was, I felt, something to explore further: our inhabiting and exploitation of the landscape and the narratives that could be drawn out of it. But it was a long time before I did anything about it.
Remarkable 14th-century timber-framed houses in Weobley, exhibiting the classic half-timbering of the region.
Developing the Vision: From CD to Podcast
In the early 2000s, I began to develop the idea of creating self-directed journeys which could work at the level of driving or cycling. The journey would emphasise the cultural history of the landscape travelled through, and you could take as long as you wished, depending on the time available, from a one-day drive to a week-long meander. I recorded the routes, assuming they could be downloaded from the web, transferred to CD, or even listened to live, linked to GPS. But nothing came of it. I was too busy with my curatorial life. I kept the material, though, tucked away on the computer. It seemed too good an idea to throw it away completely.
My recordings were found just last year by my son, Michael, who was, fortuitously, studying for a Master’s degree in Podcasting. It is a rare treat when one’s children actually find one’s past work of interest. But he did, and we decided to develop it together, extending the idea of a simple itinerary into a real journey which sought to reveal the richness of our history and the embedded life and lives of a slice of the country more thoroughly and more entertainingly than I had previously thought possible.
Entering the Borderland: Herefordshire and the Welsh Marches
We decided to base our first series – Borderland – in the county of Herefordshire, in the western reaches of England, a region known as the Welsh Marches, in constant tension between Wales and England. It is a still-rural county of villages and small towns with a cultural identity which reaches far back into the past. It is something of a truism that the more you look, the more you find, but true nonetheless.
From absorption in maps and histories, and travelling the landscape itself with Pevsner and the Ordnance Survey as constant companions, I found an endless treasure-house of ideas and images: fat, green meadows, shaggy hop-fields and orchards, little rivers tumbling down from the Black Mountains, and great prehistoric hill forts—evoking the ancient, hobnailed tramp of Roman legions marching their way west to slaughter the Ordovices. On the journey, there are stories of Saxon betrayal, of centenarian Morris dancers performing for King James I, of the eradication of a great palace (dismantled, each stone numbered, packed, and shipped to Arizona), a musical litany formed by the names of cider apples, and the constant battle between local Clevermen and the myriad witches who plagued the dark lanes and farms with bad luck, sickness, and cursed harvests.
British Camp, a magnificent prehistoric hill fort terraced into the Malvern Hills, marking the starting point of the journey.
An ancient pear tree in full spring blossom, representing Herefordshire’s rich heritage of cider apples and perry pears.
The Pursuit of Authenticity
Under Michael’s tutelage, I rewrote and re-recorded, and then rewrote and re-recorded again, until my rather monotone, stodgy, and academic first attempts were transformed into something he recognised as more energised and engaging. But authenticity was always at the forefront of our minds. The journeys we were introducing and the stories we were telling were true, accurate, and serious, as well as light-hearted and (I hope) amusing.
I’m not writing advertising or tourism copy. I want to bring a level of curatorial authority, but to make it engaging, light, and—in a true sense—popular. So I talk about genuine archaeological debate, about poetry, about the liturgical underpinning of decoration in a medieval church, about the technical difficulties of producing a stained-glass window, and of the 600-year growth of a great oak tree. Because, essentially, when you begin to understand why something looks or behaves the way it does, it begins to have meaning. And that applies as much to our landscape and history as it does to anything else.
A peaceful medieval tomb effigy resting under the warm light of a historic stained-glass window.
The Journey Begins: Series 1 and 2
Comprising six episodes, the first part of the English Journeys podcast, titled Borderland, appeared in early spring 2026. Each episode follows a journey from place to place, forming one part of a great circular tour through the county, luxuriating in the landscapes, history, and stories which we meet on our way. Part 1 takes us via town, village, and ancient enclosure from Malvern in the south-western corner of Worcestershire, beloved of Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, to the tiny hamlet of Brinsop, beloved of the Wordsworths, and the location (we all believe it!) of St George’s victory over the foul dragon.
Part 2, another six episodes, launching in the autumn, will continue our journey down the Golden Valley and the wild Welsh border back to the safety of the orchards and water meadows of the eastern edge.
How to Listen
If you’d like to listen, you can find the English Journeys Podcast on Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube, or find it on your usual podcast provider. We hope you enjoy it.
About Martin Ellis
After completing an MA degree in medieval literature, Martin worked as a field archaeologist before taking up the roles of Keeper of Art at Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery and Curator of Applied Art at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, later becoming Principal Curator of Collections Research and Development. He has worked with the BBC as a writer and presenter, and as a lecturer for the Art Society. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths.