The soCial C onTeXTs of Wildlife, C.1650–1750^61Urban conditions also favoured particular kinds of plant. Few species
could find a foothold in the dirt of unpaved streets, on rubbish tips, and on
disturbed ground generally: ‘fast-moving, hardy, opportunistic plants’.^8 To
succeed in urban conditions they needed to grow rapidly and to spread and
survive either by having deep or extensive root systems, or by producing large
numbers of seeds which could travel long distances, transported on the wind
or by some other vector. An ability to lie dormant in the soil for months or
years was also useful. The streets and towns of early-modern England thus
probably featured concentrations of plants like groundsel (Senechio vulgaris),
which can germinate, grow to maturity and set seed within six weeks; fat hen;
knotgrass; fumitory; and enchanters nightshade.^9 If left undisturbed for long
enough – in the more inaccessible and marginal areas of the early-modern
town – these would soon be overwhelmed by perennial plants, thistles, nettles,
and docks, and coarse grasses, from which some domestic livestock might
derive sustenance, but succession was usually prevented by further disturbance.
Once again, however, it is important to emphasize both the limited extent
of urban areas and the way in which many towns, like Norwich, featured
numerous grazed paddocks and orchards containing the kinds of plants and
invertebrates commonly found in the surrounding fields.
Industry too had as yet made relatively little impact on the environment.
Only in the north east of England, and in parts of the west Midlands, were
extensive and continuous coalfields already a significant feature. There were
water mills for grinding corn in many villages, and water also powered
iron smelting hammers and a variety of textile machinery, but their small
ponds were essentially isolated additions to an existing type of habitat,
rather than something new. Extractive industries – clay, sand and gravel
pits, stone quarries and the like – similarly formed relatively isolated and
discontinuous incidents in the countryside, although in many ways more
novel ones. Some quarries resembled upland rock habitats, with vertical cliff
faces and steep slopes analogous to scree, habitats rare in most of lowland
England. Others produced waste which soon developed as hummocky
grassland with distinctive plant communities. The soils which formed
gradually over piles of quarry debris usually remained thin, and boasted
chemical and physical characteristics different from those of the surrounding
landscape, which had developed over longer periods of time, and often in
overlying superficial deposits.^10 Barnack ‘Hills and Holes’ in the old county
of Northamptonshire, now a National Nature Reserve, is an extensive area
of limestone quarrying which was abandoned in the sixteenth century, and
neither cultivated nor, in all probability, very intensively grazed thereafter. It
boasts a rich calcareous grassland flora featuring pasque flower (Pulsatilla
vulgaris), violets (Viola sp.), cowslip (Primula elatior), a range of orchids and
such lime-loving plants as rockrose (Helianthemum chamaecistus), and ox-
eye daisy (Chrysanthemum leucanthemum). More significant, but scattered
and limited in area, were the calaminarian grasslands which developed in
various parts of northern and western England on waste where lead, silver,