Early Human History
The valley has evidence of habitation going back to roughly 4000 BC, when the valley and surrounding hillsides were almost entirely covered with forest. A major archaeological research project conducted in the valley by a local archaeology group between 1983 and 1999 surveyed and recorded hundreds of archaeological features, as well as excavating two sites - a (radiocarbon dated) pre-Viking and Viking period upland settlement at Bryant's Gill, south of Rainsborrow Crag (on private land, not publicly accessible), and part of a medieval platform site and farmstead near Kentmere Hall The results of this survey and excavation project are to be made publicly available via a new Lake District and Cumbrian archaeology website in 2012.
The valley's rich archaeological heritage also includes the remains of at least five large prehistoric compound or curvilinear sites incorporating the remains of round houses, stockyards and more. One of these sites is on a public footpath at Tongue House in the northern part of the valley.
Read more about this topic: Kentmere
Famous quotes containing the words early, human and/or history:
“To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candour never waited to be asked for its opinion.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“I have been too long acquainted with human nature to have great regard for human testimony; and a very great degree of probability, supported by various concurrent circumstances, conspiring in one point, will have much greater weight with me, than human testimony upon oath, or even upon honour; both of which I have frequently seen considerably warped by private views.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when corruption has just begun to set in. The serpent has shown his scaly head in the undergrowth. The apple gleams on the tree. The old drama of the Fall is ready to start all over again.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)