The indispensable key to English history is the Jurassic divide

For Hawes, the indispensable key to English history is the Jurassic divide - a boundary line running north-north-east from the Exe estuary to the mouth of the Humber. On one side are the relatively young sedimentary rocks of lowland England, on the other the old rocks of the West Country moors, Wales and the Marches, the Pennines and Scotland. Hawes contends that this physical divide underlies virtually every other divide in English history - social, economic, political or cultural. 

J. Law. 'as old as the hills', SF 84 (2024), 37