The summit of Titterstone Clee at a height of 533m AOD is not the highest point falling 7m below the neighbouring summit of Brown Clee to the north. However Titterstone Clee because of its very distinctive shape is far more recognisable, making it a significant landscape feature prominent over a radius of perhaps some 70 miles.

Such landscape features have held deep significance for millennia. The depiction of the hill as the only named hill in the representation of England on the 14th century Mappa Mundi demonstrates that the hill was an important landmark in the medieval period. It seems however probable that earlier communities also regarded the hill as important within their world perspective.

Even today with our homocentric perception of landscape in which humans dominate, we still have a deep and spiritual regard for landscape. It is likely that this is something that we share with our more distant ancestors. In other cultures, such as that of the indigenous people of Australia, such regard is embedded within a belief system. The prominent hill of Ayers rock is one such example. It is important for people to relate to the landscape in which they exist at both a practical and spiritual level.

In modern western culture our perspective is to view the world from above, in the form of maps, satellite, images or aerial photography. In the more distant past humans saw the world very differently, as any other pedestrian animal, from eye level. Landmarks were essential for moving through a wilder world and information was past on from generation to generation orally by stories, myths and beliefs. Again perhaps aboriginal culture allows us a glimpse of how this may have been in their concept of Songlines, a belief system which intertwines physical and spiritual landscape.

One common factor that we have with our distant ancestors is the landscape through which we both move and the visibility of elements within it. TCHT is launching a research project which will explore this element in relation to Titterstone Clee and is asking for participation in this research.