Wales is the largest of the peninsulas on the western side of Britain. It consists of a complex of worn down mountain ranges, representing high plateaux. They are called the Cambrian Mountains. The highest and most glaciated area occurs in the north, especially around Snowdon (1,085 m), and often the mountains approach close to the […]

Scotland may be divided into three major physical regions: the Highlands, the Southern Uplands and the Central Lowlands. The Scottish Highlands lie west of a line from Aberdeen to the mouth of the Clyde. They form the most extensive and the most sparsely populated of the three regions. The mountains are separated into two parts […]

Ireland is predominantly a rural island, with a generally low density of population and indeed few large towns other than those situated on the coast. The regional geography of the island is simpler than that of Great Britain, and especially than the regional geography of England. The Central Plain of Ireland stretches west-east across the […]

Lowland Britain offers a striking contrast in many ways. Though so much less rugged, there are few parts where level land is uninterrupted by hills. One of the most extensive plains in the British Isles is in the English Midlands, consisting of river valleys and plains interspersed with scattered hills. It is the Midland Plain, […]

There is a wide network of rivers in the British Isles, though generally short in length and navigable but in their lower reaches, especially during high tides. Mild maritime climate keeps them free of ice throughout the winter months. In the Middle Ages, river transport played a major role in the British internal transport system, […]

Weather is not the same as climate. The weather at a place is the state of the atmosphere there at a given time or over a short period. The weather of the British Isles is notoriously variable. The climate of a place or region, on the other hand, represents the average weather conditions through the […]

The present vegetation of Great Britain owes much of its character to the influence of man. Only in the more remote parts of Ireland and the Scottish Highlands do remnants of the natural vegetation still exist. The ‘natural vegetation’ in the true sense of the term has practically disappeared from Britain, and most of the […]

The rise of Britain as an industrial nation in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was partly due to the presence of considerable mineral resources, which provided raw materials as well as sources of power. She possessed abundant supplies of coal and an adequacy of iron ore — the two chief minerals on which […]

The highly compressed remains of swamp forests, which at various times covered large areas of Britain, exist today as seams of coal. Coalfields are generally situated on the edges of the upland masses of the north and west. Coal was first obtained on a commercial scale as far back as the thirteenth century, notably in […]

As the importance of coal has declined, oil has become of increasing significance. Crude oil can be refined to produce a wide variety of products including petrol and diesel oils for motor vehicles, aviation spirit, domestic heating oils, and even feedstuffs for animals. Up to the early 1960s, over 99 per cent of Britain’s petroleum […]