Dormant Legacy of Fire in the British Landscape
The landscape of the British Isles once bore the imprint of fire, a force so central to the environment that it even shaped the names of towns like Brentwood and Burnham. Over a thousand years ago, fire was a natural and essential part of the landscape for land management, clearing vegetation, and promoting ecological regeneration. These towns bear names that trace back to when the fire was an active and joint force in the environment. British rain has kept the flames dormant and they became increasingly rare due to the rise of industrialization and urbanization.
Plume and Kestral, Wennington, 2022 © Alan McFetridge
The rarity of events like the Wennington wildfire of 2022 is both striking and unsettling. According to historian Stephen J. Pyne, fire has been absent from much of the UK’s natural cycles, particularly in the North, where controlled landscape burning was once widespread. While places like Brentwood and Burnham reflect a past where fire played a critical role in shaping the landscape, today’s landscape fire incidents have become rare, and when they occur, they are often perceived as a disruption. Fire, however, was also a central force in the Industrial Revolution, fueling the growth of cities, factories, and transportation networks, thus driving the UK’s transformation into a global industrial power. The burning of coal and the widespread use of fire in industrial processes left their lasting mark on the landscape, but the role of fire in nature was diminished as a result.
Fire, however, has not been absent from the cultural and artistic history of the UK. In fact, landscape fire has been used metaphorically in British art and literature for centuries, often reflecting themes of destruction, renewal, and the sublime. The fires of the Industrial Revolution, for example, were immortalized in the paintings of J.M.W. Turner, whose depictions of London’s burning chimneys and industrial landscapes captured both the power and devastation of fire. Meanwhile, poets such as William Blake, with his vivid depictions of fiery visions in works like The Tyger, and later, more modern poets, have used fire to symbolise transformation and social upheaval. Yet, the landscape fires of nature, which once played a vital role in shaping the land, rarely appear in these works. This absence is part of a larger cultural shift in which fire became more associated with the destructive forces of industrialisation rather than its regenerative potential in the wild.
While a relatively small event compared to global wildfires, the Wennington fire reawakens this dormant legacy of fire in the British landscape. It serves as a reminder that fire’s ecological role has been largely forgotten in the UK, yet it is a force we must reckon with once again as climate change accelerates the risk of more frequent and severe wildfires. The return of fire to the landscape is not just an environmental challenge but also a cultural one as we reconsider our historical relationship with fire in both nature and art.
I visited Wennington shortly after the fire, between July 22 and July 25 to explore the aftermath. Unlike my other fire studies, which involved travelling thousands of miles to remote locations, this one felt disarmingly close to home. A short 20-minute train journey from my East London studio brought me to the edge of London and Essex, where the land had been freshly transformed by fire. Like most fire aftermaths, the area was cordoned off by emergency services, leaving me to work along its edges, observing from a distance. I used my sense of smell to guide me down a lane near the village. There was no smoke, only the stillness of a land in shock.
As I set up my tripod-mounted camera, working out a composition of a burn fence line to represent a boundary crossing, I looked up—and a plume of smoke suddenly appeared, rising gently into the sky. At that exact moment, a kestrel appeared, flying directly in front of the camera. Birds of prey are known to circle fires, looking for fleeing animals, and this kestrel seemed to embody that instinct. The photograph accompanying this piece invites viewers to reflect on our relationship with fire: once a partner in shaping the land, now a force that will once again become a common element of the British landscape. - A.M.
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