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“Arden pastures is a landscape of poor soils and small hedged fields…on the southern edge of the Birmingham plateau. Much of this area remained as wood pasture and waste until relatively recent times. This is reflected in the many place names ending in ‘Heath’ or ‘Common’. …Balsall Common, for example, takes its name from a large area of former heathland which extended from Berkswell to Shrewley. Today this area is characterised by long straight roads and small geometric fields.

“[A] pattern of late enclosure followed by the development of new settlements has been repeated throughout Arden pastures [followed by] much modern infill development. This has resulted in a landscape often pervaded by suburban influences. These pockets of ‘suburbia’ in the countryside are superimposed on an older dispersed pattern of farmsteads and wayside cottages.”

Since that was written the farmed landscape has less permanent pasture, more arable, more big sheds and numerous barn conversions. It remains true that “the general impression is of a strongly unified landscape where to a large extent the impact of new settlement is visually contained by tree cover.”

Extracts from ‘Warwickshire Landscape Guidelines: Arden’, Warwickshire County Council, 1993.