THIS WEEK I was at Stamford Bridge with the Today programme, as part of its series on the landmarks that have shaped British history. By Stamford Bridge I mean the battlefield outside York, rather than the Chelsea football ground, rich though that has been in contests of a different kind.

It was where King Harold inflicted his devastating surprise attack on Harold Hardrada, the giant of a Norseman who had sided with William the Conqueror, along with Harold’s brother Tostig. The Viking force was annihilated. King Harold showed great qualities as a general. It is an essential element in 1066. Unfortunately part of the battlefield is now under a housing estate.

As I toured 500 historical sites for my book Landmarks of Britain, I couldn’t help reflecting on the way we treat our past. Battlefields, in particular, have fared badly. In 1982, I visited Naseby, not only the decisive battle of the Civil War but one of the most vivid in terms of the contrast of its leading players. A bypass, part of the A14, was built on land over which Prince Rupert charged. But recent archaeology is forcing military historians to reconsider some aspects of their interpretation. Part of the archaeological record has now been forever lost under four lanes of tarmac.

Later, by coincidence, I kept a horse at Naseby, and part of my weekend routine would take me past a monument put up by a local family in 1823. It was not even located on the battlefield itself, but the orotund inscription, pointing a moral for both monarch and subjects, showed that this place still really meant something in the early 19th century. Could the same be said in the early 21st century? The meagre interpretation board put up by the local authority hardly suggests so.

Yet places matter. The Today programme’s series culminates in an outside broadcast from Torrington (another Civil War battlefield) on Bank Holiday Monday. The theme will be history, and in particular how it is taught in schools. From my experience of speaking at dozens of different events around the country, I know that it is a matter of concern to many parents.

They feel that children zoom in on isolated events, without being given the ability to relate them to the general historical sweep. They leap from the Tudors to Stalin, with nothing in between. Young children, from the best of motives, are given texts to compare. They are introduced to the idea that a mill owner saw the Industrial Revolution in a different light from a factory worker or a doctor. But they grow up without stories. The child who has no hero or heroine from the history of this country is impoverished.

My bank holiday will be spent not at Torrington but at Waterloo. We went there with our children — aged 11, 9 and 5 — last year; one day, however, was not enough for them. They have been insisting that we return. I admit that one reason that the battlefield has such resonance for them is because of a computer game called Waterloo. As a result, they know the names of every officer, as well as every sandpit and sunken road, on the field. But it is also because visiting places fires young imaginations. With three boys, we inevitably have a predilection for battles. But the eldest found Milton’s Cottage at Chalfont St Giles, where the poet finished Paradise Lost, almost equally compelling.

Battles, however appealing to young boys, seemed rather less important in the late 20th century than they did to the jingoistic Victorians. Even today, when our armed forces have rarely been so stretched, they do not represent an aspect of our history with which everyone can be comfortable. They are almost as divisive to historians as they were to the original protagonists. Don’t even mention the East India Company.

In the effort to remake a new and fashionably “inclusive” national identity, we need to promote other themes. Every schoolchild in the country should visit Edward Jenner’s home, The Chantry, in the village of Berkeley, Gloucestershire. You only have to read Bleak House to realise what a scourge the deadly or disfiguring disease of smallpox was to humanity before the advent of vaccination. As a result of Jenner’s work in the 1790s, it has now been eliminated from the surface of the planet, according to the World Health Organisation.

Alexander Fleming’s laboratory at St Mary’s, Padddington ought to inspire some of those children who are no longer studying science subjects. It is little changed since he discovered “mould juice” — later to be known as penicillin.

Of course there are issues of interpretation. A Tory might favour landscape parks; HMS Victory; the oak tree — or its successor — where Charles II hid after the Battle of Worcester; Hardwick Hall, where the philosopher Thomas Hobbes lived in the household of the Earl of Devonshire until his death aged 91; and 1-3 North Parade, Grantham (Margaret Thatcher’s birthplace).

Socialists would be attracted by a different range of icons, associated with revolution, dissent, social reform and welfare: Newport in Gwent (scene of the worst of the Chartist riots); Tolpuddle in Dorset (home to the Martyrs); Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh (where the National Covenant was signed); and Epsom race course, where Emily Davison martyred herself beneath the hooves of Edward VII’s horse Anmer.

My own preference would be for things that are specifically and uniquely British. By this I do not just mean red telephone boxes and Worcestershire sauce, but the change ringing of church bells (the bells in Christchurch Minster date from the reign of Edward III), church brasses, choir schools, the collections of great country houses and ancient trees. We have more church brasses, ancient trees and furnished country houses that our European neighbours because we have not been successfully invaded by marauding armies, who tended to destroy such things, since 1066.

Clive Aslet is Editor at Large of Country Life. His book Landmarks of Britain is published by Hodder & Stoughton.

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