Land, sea and sky
The Footpath Capital
Every council in England and Wales by miles of public footpath per square mile: Rossendale tops it at 7.7, and the South Pennine mill towns fill the top ten.
Land and seaDrowned and Rising−30 mand Britain becomes an island
LandscapeThe Footpath Capital of Britain7.7miles of path per square mile in Rossendale
Names on the mapDale, Down, Fell and BeckBeckin the north. Brook in the south, burn in the Borders
RomansHow Roman Is Your Road?5.0%of Britain's A-roads still follow a Roman lineEvery study
Land, sea and sky
Drowned and Rising
A bathtub model of every sea level from the Ice Age to an ice-free world: Britain becomes an island at −30 m, and at +70 m a third of the UK is under water.
Land, sea and sky
How Many Months Are Pleasantly Warm?
Months with afternoon highs of 18 to 27 °C: the average city dweller gets 3.6 a year now and 2.9 by 2041 to 2060. Pick your own band.
Land, sea and sky
Sun and Rain: the World
The world's sunshine against its rainfall: only 3% of land is both sunny and wet, and 84% is sunnier than anywhere in the UK.
Land, sea and sky
Sun and Rain: the UK
Every square kilometre of the UK by sunshine and rainfall at once. Since 1961 to 1990 the country has become 5.6% sunnier and 7.2% wetter.
Land, sea and sky
When Did Your Town Last See a Total Eclipse?
Every path of totality across Britain and Ireland from AD 1000 to 2200, tested for 17,103 places: for most towns the last was in 1715 or 1724.
Romans to Tudors
Governing on the Move
King John and Edward I mapped night by night: John moved on 42% of the days we can follow him, Edward on 23%.
Early modern and modern
The Turnpike Towns
England's 1,245 turnpike trusts and 10,927 surviving milestones and toll houses: did the towns on the turnpikes grow faster? Not that the data show.
Early modern and modern
What’s the King on Your Postbox?
The royal cypher on 61,435 UK post boxes: 3,614 still carry Victoria's VR and 143 Edward VIII's.
Land, sea and sky
Britain’s Earthquakes Since 1382
All 7,032 quakes in the BGS catalogues: a magnitude 4 about every 3 years, and the busiest modern zones were coalfields.
Early modern and modern
The Lido Boom and Bust
An open register of 73 British lidos: 33 of 49 dated openings came in the 1930s, and 14 closed pools have reopened.
Early modern and modern
Did the Pits Closing Still Show?
167 of 196 deep mines closed between 1984 and 1994. Forty years on, pit towns have 2.0 points more adults long-term sick than similar towns.
Early modern and modern
Bombs on Britain
All 61,542 civilians on the CWGC's Second World War roll for the UK, town by town: 51% died outside London.
Land, sea and sky
Where Are Britain’s Oldest Trees?
1,626 notable trees on OpenStreetMap: oaks dominate, yews hug the old churches, and giants stand in the royal forests.
Early modern and modern
Ring the Changes
All 7,262 rings of change-ringing bells in Dove's Guide, mapped: jubilees, world wars and seven centuries of bell founding.
Early modern and modern
How Many Names on Your War Memorial?
First World War names on 14,119 community memorials: 18.3 for every 1,000 people living there today, and only 36 small places record no dead.
Early modern and modern
Did the Railway Invent the Seaside?
Britain's resorts were already growing 1.6% a year before the railway came. The line brought a burst in its first decade.
Early modern and modern
Captain Swing
3,117 Swing riot incidents of 1830: parishes with a threshing machine were twice as likely to riot, but 90% of riotous parishes had none.
Romans to Tudors
Market Towns That Failed
All 2,173 medieval market places in England and Wales, followed to today: 665 are towns, 1,168 villages, and a few are fields or sea.
Early modern and modern
Britain’s Last Line of Defence
14,690 pillboxes and defences of 1940: the planned German landing beaches had 2.3 times the average density.
Early modern and modern
Did Beeching Kill Your Town?
3,331 stations closed from 1955 to 1975, and 643 towns lost every one. They are a little poorer and more car-bound today, but did not fall off a cliff.
Romans to Tudors
From Domesday Mills to Modern Mills
6,172 mills in Domesday Book: places that had one are 3.9 times as likely to have a watermill nearby today, but not a windmill.
Prehistory and monuments
Ley Lines, Tested
50,822 churches, barrows, stones, hillforts and wells against random points: crowding, not planning, explains the leys.
Names on the map
Barm, Bap, Cob or Roll?
20,038 dialect survey answers mapped into Britain's bread roll lines, checked against the high street.
Names on the map
Where the Devil Lives
107 Devil place names in Britain: 31% lie within 1 km of a prehistoric monument, against 19% of comparable places.
Prehistory and monuments
Did Fairy Belief Protect Ireland’s Ringforts?
31,431 ringforts set against barrows, enclosures and moated sites: the fairies left few fingerprints.
Names on the map
Haunted, or Just Old?
260 reportedly haunted places against 40,409 top listed buildings: castles and inns are 9 times as common among them, churches almost vanish.
Names on the map
Giants in the Landscape
331 giant places in Britain and Ireland: giants own graves, not mountains.
Early modern and modern
Great Fires
102 great town fires, 63% of them in the 1600s and 1700s: did the towns that burned rebuild bigger? Not clearly.
Early modern and modern
Who Gets a Blue Plaque?
6,476 plaques across the UK and all 1,037 English Heritage plaques in London: 16% honour women, but 54% of those since 2020.
Early modern and modern
Rotten Boroughs: Where Are They Now?
The 56 boroughs the 1832 Reform Act abolished, followed to today: 25 are villages, a hamlet or an empty hill.
Early modern and modern
Canal Mania
Did England's canal towns boom, and do they still lead? Bigger today, not richer.
Names on the map
Here Be Dragons
Britain's dragon legends and place names: they cling to the parish church, not the barrow or the river.
Early modern and modern
Cholera 1849
Farr's elevation law, Snow's pump and whether London's worst-hit districts are still the poorest.
Romans to Tudors
The Roman Commuter Belt?
617 Roman villas against today's household income: a premium that is almost all geography.
Romans to Tudors
Laid Waste: the Harrying of the North
Where Domesday's 'waste' fell after 1069 to 1070, and how faint its scar is today.
Early modern and modern
Fire on the Hills
Could the Armada beacons carry the news? 193 beacon hills and the lines of sight between them.
Names on the map
Ford or Bridge?
Every ford and bridge place name in Britain against the census and income: Oxford waded, Cambridge built.
Names on the map
Gallows Hill
Where Britain put its gallows: 340 names measured for height, roads, towns and boundaries.
Romans to Tudors
The Conquest in Castles
How fast Norman castles spread across Britain after Hastings, decade by decade.
Names on the map
From Saint to Wish
3,440 holy and wishing wells in Britain and Ireland: their saints, languages, cures and offerings.
Prehistory and monuments
Still Standing
6,837 buildings from before AD 1100 on one map, and what kept them standing.
Early modern and modern
There and Back Again
43 great journeys from 600 BC to 1947, mapped and graded by the evidence that they happened.
Prehistory and monuments
Same Shape, Different Millennia
Every stone circle in Europe's open data, sorted into traditions and dated.
Prehistory and monuments
Is the Barrow a European Thing?
99,049 burial mounds from Ireland to the steppe, with radiocarbon dates.
Prehistory and monuments
The Megalith Highway
13,280 megalithic monuments: did the idea of the great stone tomb travel by sea?
Romans to Tudors
What Became of the Abbeys?
808 houses Henry VIII closed, traced to what stands on their sites today.
Names on the map
Whose Church Is It?
279,212 churches in twelve Western European countries, sorted by patron saint.
Romans to Tudors
Where Was the Battle?
88 proposed sites for 18 lost battles of early Britain, scored against the texts.
Names on the map
Silver and Names
Viking hoards against Norse place names: they mostly agree, except in Lincolnshire.
Early modern and modern
Cold Years, Witch Years?
Scotland's 3,840 accused witches: did the panics follow cold years? They did not.
Romans to Tudors
The Villages That Vanished
England's 2,222 deserted medieval villages against Domesday Book.
Names on the map
Bloody Place Names
756 grim names on the OS map against 507 battles: only the Battles mark battlefields.
Early modern and modern
Whose Ships Sank Where?
106,550 shipwrecks in Europe's seas, 1744 to 1945, by the flag they sailed under.
Early modern and modern
Far From Home
Where each Victoria Cross was won, where its recipient was born, and the distance between.
Names on the map
What Pub Names Remember
Every named pub in Britain, grouped and mapped: Red Lions, Royal Oaks and the names that give a county away.
Names on the map
The Geography of Saints
17,116 church dedications mapped: Andrew in Scotland, David in Wales, and 98 saints found only in Cornwall.
Names on the map
Is There a Barrow in Barrow?
Do places named from Old English beorg sit by burial mounds? 129 names against 6,100 scheduled barrows.
Early modern and modern
Thankful Villages: Luck or Size?
The parishes where every man came home from the First World War. Small helps, but chance predicts hundreds more.
Prehistory and monuments
Within Sight
Could Britain and Ireland's 4,147 hillforts see each other? A line-of-sight network across two islands.
Early modern and modern
Did Lighthouses Work?
Shipwrecks before and after the lights were lit on the British and Irish coast, 1700 to 1945.
Names on the map
Dale, Down, Fell and Beck
Walk north and the water changes its name. The words Britain uses for hills, valleys and streams, mapped.
Romans to Tudors
Is Domesday Destiny?
Does a place's size in 1086 still predict its size today? 13,000 Domesday places on one map.
Prehistory and monuments
The Famous Few
4,147 hillforts, ten years of Wikipedia reading. Eleven sites take half of it, mostly for their castles.
Romans to Tudors
How Roman Is Your Road?
How much of each county's A-road network still follows a Roman line, with a lidar layer.
Names on the map
The High Ones
The Brigantes, Brigantium and the Celtic word for high, traced across Europe.
Prehistory and monuments
Rings in the Rock
Cup-and-ring carvings on Europe's Atlantic edge: where they are, when, and what they might mean.
Prehistory and monuments
The Triskell Boom
How an ancient triple spiral became a modern Celtic badge, 3500 BC to today.
Prehistory and monuments
Did Detectorists Start a Boom?
UK searches and Portable Antiquities Scheme finds, 2004 to 2026: did a sitcom send people out with metal detectors?
No studies match that search.