The modern landscape within which we live and that has developed since the 16th century is often assumed to be familiar and explicable within our own cultural references. Unlike the prehistoric landscape, which remains at a considerable cultural distance and from which material remains are fragmentary in the extreme, the modern landscape can be read, understood and reconstructed from material remains and documents without recourse to abstract theorisation. New approaches to the landscape that have sought to articulate cognitive geographies of the past through the relationships between people, monuments, settlements and land use, drawing on anthropological interpretations of the complex relationships between the environment and inhabitation, have tended therefore to be adopted more readily by those studying prehistoric landscapes. Such approaches have failed to make a significant impact upon the interpretation and understanding of the more immediate historic landscape. The tradition of empiricism within historical landscape studies continues to rely on ‘reading the landscape'. As a result the landscape is rarely imbued with an active role in social processes, and is seen instead as a reflective medium. This has in turn perpetuated the belief that an economic rationale was the determining agent of change. This paper seeks to explore alternative narratives within the historic landscape that can combine understanding how people experienced landscapes differently in the past and how those experiences drew in other very different landscapes as well as the key themes within the modern world, such as global trade, slavery, alongside developing concepts of aesthetics. These diverse themes can be shown to intersect and inform each other through people and their experience of landscape. It also demonstrates the potential of integrating different types of historical documentation, including memoirs, diaries and letters, alongside visual culture and the materiality of landscape itself.