Category: Data stories
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Is there a barrow in Barrow?
Old English beorg meant a mound or a hill, and gives us the word barrow. I tested 129 English places named from it against 6,100 protected burial mounds. Mostly, it meant hill.
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Did Detectorists start a boom?
A gentle BBC comedy is often credited with getting Britain out detecting. Twenty-two years of UK searches and Portable Antiquities Scheme finds say it made a splash, not a wave.
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How Roman is your road?
Nearly two thousand years on, 5% of Britain’s A-road network still runs on a Roman line. Which county is most Roman, which road wins, and where you can still see the old road in the ground.
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Did lighthouses work?
Between 1760 and 1900 the coasts of Britain and Ireland were ringed with new lights. I counted the wrecks recorded at each spot before and after its light was lit. The wrecks came first.
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Within Sight: could Britain’s hillforts see each other?
I traced 169,271 lines of sight between Britain and Ireland’s 4,147 hillforts. Most can see another, and they see each other more than nearby hills do, but good views, not signalling, explain almost all of it.
