Contrary Scunthorpe –the Industrial Garden Town

Alison Deegan Scunthorpe is a town in north Lincolnshire, a predominantly rural area of England. The town lies just to the south of the Humber Estuary and east of the River Trent. In the early 19th century Scunthorpe was a small farming settlement; by the end of the century it was a significant centre for steel production. The discovery of local iron ores prompted this metamorphosis, and these ores were mined in great swathes that cut across what had been sandy heath and fields. Since the late 18th century landowners in the neighbouring Trent Valley had been making their own mark on the landscape. Deliberate and controlled alluviation, a process known as warping, gradually raised the ground level by many metres to improve drainage and fertility. This process required the construction of enormous earthwork ditches and banks, and then, when the process was complete, their destruction. Historical and recent air photos and lidar imagery reveals much about these two contrasting processes: they can show where tangible remains are likely to survive, and their impact on the survival and visibility of earlier landscapes. This paper will draw on the results of the Scunthorpe Air Photo and LiDAR Mapping Project, which is funded by Historic England.