Landscape Mysteries - Season 1

Undertaking the first of eight quests across the British Isles, Professor Aubrey Manning seeks clues to uncover a lost Irish Eldorado. Spectacular hoards of gold objects show Bronze Age people in Ireland had access to large amounts of the precious metal. But where did these preshistoric metalworkers find it? Could dramatic changes in the landscape over time provide the key to the success of these ancient prospectors?

Professor Aubrey Manning travels to the Chalk Hills of England to unravel the origins of the enigmatic chalk figures such as the Long Man of Wilmington and the Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset. The age of these chalk figures has never been fully established and Aubrey, alongside a team of archaeologists from Reading University, come up with a remarkable new discovery.

Professor Manning travels to the Gower Peninsula in south Wales, where, in 1823, the skeleton of a young man who had died 29,000 years ago was found. Professor Manning tries to unravel the mystery of the lost world in which this man lived.

Professor Aubrey Manning collects evidence of a flooded landscape beneath the Solent and of raised rock arches in Scotland, cut by coastal erosion, but now high above the sea.

The explanation is the land movements that have occurred since the melting of the huge layers of ice that were centred on Scotland more than 8,000 years ago. As the weight of ice over Scotland was reduced, the land rose. The UK effectively tilted and southern Britain sank slowly into the sea.

The effect is still going on and Antony Long from the Environment Research Centre is one of those involved in vital work to gauge the advancing sea levels and decide on the best response. As the sea encroaches over low lying areas of southern Britain, the main question is whether to build ever bigger barriers or simply to allow the advance to progress naturally, with the accompanying salt marsh forming its own barrier.

Professor Aubrey Manning seeks to solve some of the enduring mysteries of the British landscape through clues in geology, archaeology and natural history.

On the remote Shetland Isles, a series of monumental towers, or Brochs, once dominated the landscape. Aubrey sets off to discover what sort of community built the Brochs towers and for what purpose.

The latest clues are coming from a major archaeological site at Scatness in the southern mainland of Shetland. Here the remains of a Broch settlement are helping to build a picture of the life of these ancient Iron Age people. New studies of the foundations of the Broch suggest a much earlier date for the structure than previously thought. It means the Brochs were built centuries before the Romans advanced up the British coast. Their function seems to have been as a home for the elite of the society.

Professor Aubrey Manning traces the history of Romney Marsh in Kent, reclaimed from the sea in the 12th Century and now a landscape of abandoned buildings and tales of towns lost at sea. What happened to its communities and why is it so deserted?

Professor Aubrey Manning seeks to solve some of the enduring mysteries of the British landscape through clues in geology, archaeology and natural history.

Strange parallel tracks in the rocks on the North Yorkshire coast are the starting point for an investigation which tells a forgotten story from the past. Manning discovers that at the beginning of the 17th century, long before the industrial revolution, the now deserted coastline south of Whitby was dominated by Britain first chemical industry. It produced alum, the vital ingredient which allowed textiles to be permanently dyed.

Prof Manning traces the development of the industry and on the beach at Ravenscar he meets John Buglass, who has placed together a picture of the whole operation. Packhorses brought the barrels of alum down to the beach, carts running in the specially cut rutways then carried the load out to boats that were beached on the rocks.

Manning imagines what this deserted coastline might have looked like two hundred years ago -teeming with ships, horse-drawn carts and thousands of workers servicing an industry which has now completely disappeared.

One of the mysteries surrounding Glastonbury has been the origin of a series of stepped terraces on the Tor. They may have been part of a Neolithic maze, or possibly fortifications built by King Arthur on his Isle of Avalon.

Professor Aubrey Manning explores whether there is a connection between the terraces and the myths and legends which permeate this area. A new geophysical survey of the Tor helps Aubrey assess the evidence as he looks for clues in the history of the surrounding countryside. But it is the once-prosperous abbey at the base of the Tor which points Aubrey towards a link he hadn't suspected between the terraces and the Glastonbury myths.