Rediscovering Britain

Abstract

It is curious that, without exception, the numerous people who have written about the history of archaeology in Britain should all have ignored the influence of the railways, not only on the growth of a general interest in the past, but on such matters as attendance at meetings and on the organisation and location of excavations. It cannot be an accident that there should have been such a remarkable flowering of local archaeological societies, and of agricultural societies, at the very time when the railway network of Britain had been substantially completed, by the 1860s. For the first time, people could move about the country sufficiently comfortably, cheaply and quickly to make travelling something of a pleasure. It is obvious, and frequently emphasised, that the railways opened up Britain industrially and commercially; what is much less realised, apparently, is the extent to which they had a similar effect on the intellectual life of the nation.