CHAPTER FIFTEEN 



THE BRECKLAND 

 By R. R. Clarke, J. Macdonald, and A. S. Watt 



(A) HISTORICAL AND ECONOMIC BACKGROUND 



By R. R. Clarke, b.a. 



BRECKLAND IS A NATURAL REGION UNIQUE IN BRITAIN BUT 

 paralleled in Western Europe by the heaths of Denmark, Holland, 

 north-west Germany, and the Rhine Valley.^ Rouglily speaking, it 

 covers some 400 square miles in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, while 

 its south-western extremity impinges on the eastern boundary of Cambridge- 

 shire.^ The precise limits of the region are not easy to defme, for, save on 

 the south-west where it marches abruptly with the peat and clay of the 

 Fens, the Breck district shades imperceptibly into the regions of gravel and 

 chalk that elsewhere surround it. The borders of Breckland therefore 

 present mixed physical characters with many outliers (Fig. 57), but Fig. 56 

 will serve to indicate the location of the main area. 



This main area is mostly a low plateau rising between 100 and 200 ft. 

 above sea level. It owes its geographical personality to a remarkable paU 

 of sand that covers its complex sub-soil of chalk, gravel, sand, loam and 

 chalky boulder clay out of which the lime has been dissolved by rainwater. 

 The Breck soil is, with a few insignificant exceptions, arid and highly 

 permeable. Combined with a relatively dry climate,^ these characteristics 

 have produced its peculiar vegetation and fauna, and have controlled 

 human activity in the district. But for human agency, Breckland would 

 be, under present climatic conditions, largely a treeless steppe, and any 

 woodland that might flourish would be open in character and free from 

 scrub. Besides its characteristic vegetation, and insects,"* the Breckland 

 heaths are important ornithologically,5 and form one of the chief strong- 

 holds of the stone curlew and the ringed plover, while other rare birds nest 

 by its heathland pools and meres. 



In this arid region, human settlement is very dependent upon water 



' Full bibliographies of recent work on the district are contained in: (i) W. G. 

 Clarke, In Breckland Wilds, second revised edition by R. R. Clarke (1937); (2) H. 

 Schober, Das Breckland: eine Charakterlandschaft Ost-Englands (Breslau, 1937). 



* Naturally, any boundary-Hne must be arbitrary. Country with some "breck" 

 characteristics can be found outside the Breckland proper. 



^ See p. 43 above. '' See p. 70 above. 5 See p. 62 above. 



