DORMANT LEGACY OF FIRE IN THE BRITISH LANDSCAPE

Wennington, Essex, 2022

The landscape of the British Isles once bore the constant 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, used for land management, clearing vegetation, and promoting ecological regeneration. These towns bear names that trace back to a time when fire was an active and joint force in the environment—long before it became rare due to the rise of industrialization and urbanization.As fire has been suppressed mainly across the UK for centuries, 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 as a symbol of 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 industrialization, rather than its regenerative potential in the wild.

The Wennington fire, while a relatively small event compared to global wildfires, 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. - A.M.

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All images © Alan McFetridge