Seek out the sounds of nature, like our early modern forebears

Constant noise is causing a health crisis today but our world used to be much quieter. Leading historians talk to Dr David Musgrove about how the past can help us find peace in our hectic lives

A surreal cartoon by illustrator Kate Hazell. The image depicts a peaceful, smiling figure in the middle of a pond, listening to the sounds of nature around them: a squealing pig, a honking goose, a buzzing bee and a thunderstorm.

Published: July 21, 2025 at 4:13 PM

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“One is never out of the sound of music.” That was one of the five main characteristics of a futuristic pleasure zone, as imagined by the English writer George Orwell in his 1946 essay, Pleasure Spots.

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He continued, “The music – and if possible it should be the same music for everybody – is the most important ingredient. Its function is to prevent thought and conversation, and to shut out any natural sound, such as the song of birds or the whistling of the wind, that might otherwise intrude.”

As with many things, Orwell was on the money. Today, we are never out of the sound of music: we can have songs of any stripe or strain, as well as a zillion different podcasts and radio shows, piped directly into our ears. And if you travel on public transport, you’ll know that is exactly what pretty much everyone is doing, shutting out all sound – not just natural – with their headphones.

A quieter past

For Professor Mark Stoyle, an expert in early modern history, that’s something worth reflecting on, when we compare the experience of our forebears: “Certainly for large numbers of early modern people, their world was just much quieter. I’m not going to suggest that it was silent because obviously it was full of noise, but the noises were different, many of them were more natural, I think, than the noises that we are used to now. In some ways noise was less incessant and intrusive, certainly for people living in the countryside than it is today.”

The distinction between natural and artificial sound feels important. I’m lucky enough to have a garden, and the other day, I was sitting in it, enjoying a cup of coffee and chatting to a friend of mine. She observed that it was a particularly noisy place, what with all the birds singing away. We then spent a few minutes, fruitlessly and horribly ignorantly, trying to identify the avians in question from their twittering. This is an embarrassing example of my own disconnection from the natural world, something that would not have been in the case in early modern Britain, according to Stoyle.

Early modern people were much more tuned in to the sounds of the weather and the environment around them than we are

“There would have been noise. Obviously there were all the natural sounds,” he explains. “Early modern people were much more tuned in to the sounds of the weather and the environment around them than we are: the wind, the rain, obviously the thunder, the lightning, those things would have been more notable to them than they are to us because we spend so much more of our time cocooned inside.

“Then there’s the sounds of the natural environment. So there were a lot more birds about than there are today. There were probably more animals. They would have been surrounded by those noises more than most of us are today. And of course there would also have been more people in the countryside. If you go through the British countryside today, it can often seem quite empty. There’s perhaps loads of empty fields, just one person in a tractor driving about. In the past those fields would have been full of people. They had quite a different soundscape to us in many ways.”

A 19th-century illustration of two woodpeckers perched on a branch, one above the other. There is green text at the top of the image that reads 'Formosa Spotted Woodpecker'; at the bottom is the Latin name 'Picus Insularis'.

Birds such as this woodpecker, illustrated by the 19th-century English naturalist John Gould, were heard far more often in the past than today (Image by Getty)

Pigs in the city

But even in the urban environment, the auditory background would have been full of the sounds of the natural world. In the towns and cities, there would have been horses, pigs, sheep, geese, chickens, dogs and cats aplenty. Urban pigs would have been a regular sight in British cities right up until the 19th century (in fact, according to the medieval historian Professor Dolly Jørgensen, they were quite a menace on the streets of towns and cities in the Middle Ages). You don’t find that many animals in urban spaces these days, though interestingly there is a project underway (Citizenzoo) to rewild Britain’s cities, including a bold idea to bring beavers to London.

Given the number of urban animals in early modern settings, we can assume that they must have made a fair old racket. There is one fascinating pamphlet, for example, from 1561 by William Baldwin, called Beware the Cat. Sometimes cited as the first English novel, it talks about how the terrible cacophony of feline wailing kept the narrator up all night.

A simple black and white depiction of a scrawny-looking cat on all fours. It is facing towards the left of the frame.

Howling cats were part of the urban soundscape in 16th-century England, and in 1561 William Baldwin even published a pamphlet called Beware the Cat (Image by Getty)

On top of the animal howling, there would have been traffic noise, from carts, carriages and coaches, and of course, a lot of human commotion. Maybe the biggest difference to modern ears, though, would have been the ever-present sound of bells. According to the urban historian Professor David Garrioch, the sound of human conversation would have carried much further across the city in the absence of other forms of sonic interference, while the bells were regularly tolling to impart important news to those urban humans. Despite those noisy sources, the natural world was not excluded from the urban environment in the same way it is today.

“Some sounds are intrinsically soothing, comforting and quite good for us, whereas others don’t do us any good”

“The modern city can be invigorating, but it can be stressful as well. And I think the constant intrusive noise of traffic, other people’s music and other people’s conversations on the phone, can be very draining at times,” says Stoyle. “So it’s just a reminder to us all that when we can, we should seek those moments to get away from those more intrusive sources of noise, to try to live in the moment a bit more, to appreciate the sounds of nature, the sounds of the weather, the sounds of the many animals and birds with which we still share our environment. Some sounds are intrinsically soothing, comforting and quite good for us, whereas others – someone drilling a road or constant noise of heavy traffic – actually get us down, and in the end, don’t do us any good.”

WATCH | Professor Mark Stoyle on the value of a quiet life

The dangers of noise

This sort of cacophony is provably not good for us. In a recent BBC World Service programme called LOUD, the BBC health correspondent James Gallagher was told by noise researcher Professor Charlotte Clark that it’s a public health crisis. Apparently it causes heart attacks, type 2 diabetes, and perhaps even dementia.

Indeed, according to a 2023 study by the UK Health Security Agency, noise really is a problem. The team found that in 2018, around 100,000 DALYs – Disability Adjusted Life Years: one DALY represents the loss of one year of good health – were lost in England due to road traffic noise. “A further 13,000 were lost from railway noise and 17,000 from aircraft noise,” found the study. “Most of these losses were due to chronic annoyance and sleep disturbance, followed by stroke, ischemic heart disease and diabetes.”

A Swiss Airbus A340-313 in mid-flight, photographed from below. The sky behind the aircraft is a deep blue colour.

According to a 2023 survey by the UK Health Security Agency, around 17,000 years of good health were lost in England due to aircraft noise (Image by Getty)

Today’s traffic noise is what would most jar the ears of an early modern listener. According to Garrioch’s fascinating article Sounds of the City: The Soundscape of Early Modern European Towns, “For a 16th-century Londoner transported to an early 19th-century city, the most striking difference in the soundscape would probably have been the traffic noise. The paving of streets made hoof-beats and wheels resonate more loudly, while the growth in the numbers of wheeled vehicles was astronomical. According to one author, in 1550 there were only three carriages in Paris, and most nobles mounted horses or mules. By the mid-18th century – perhaps even earlier – there were some 20,000 carriages in the city, and after 1750 increasing numbers of cheaper vehicles that were available to larger numbers of people.”

An 18th-century painting depicting two horse-drawn carriages in the middle of Paris. They are surrounded by crowds of people and market stalls.

By the mid-18th century, Paris was packed with carriages, as portrayed here on the Pont Neuf by painter Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner (Image by Getty)

Silent and not-so silent nights

But a crucial difference in the vehicular sonic assault is that today, particularly in urban environments, it doesn’t stop at night, whereas in the early modern period, there was much more of a respite after dark. Even when we’re sleeping, we’re still listening and if the nocturnal noise is incessant, that’s bad for our health. It’s interesting to note that Garrioch, in his article, highlights how the auditory “difference between night and day, in particular, was far more marked than in modern cities”. Curfew and calm descended on early modern cities and made them empty and silent at night.

There has, of course, been a period of curfew and calm for everyone in recent memory. I’m sure you all recall that moment in the Covid lockdown when the planes weren’t flying, the lorries weren’t on the roads, and the trains were stuck in the stations. The sudden quietness was at once unsettling and relaxing, as we all struggled to get our heads round a radically different world. March to May 2020 was, according to an article in the MIT Technology Review, the longest period of quiet in recorded human history.

Commentators at the time pondered over whether the quietness would continue after lockdown, once we’d all had a chance to revel in the quiet noise. But that hasn’t proved the case. The sonic battery of 21st-century life has resumed with vengeance. For some its return was even more pronounced after the brief interlude of pandemic peacefulness.

But we’ve had a taste of it, and the science suggests we should embrace it. Maybe now we should all make a more concerted effort to seek out a little more peace and quiet. Maybe we need to remove ourselves from the sound of music, and the sound of traffic, and let the sound of birdsong infiltrate our ears a little more.

“Although there are all these advantages of urban living today, it is great to be able to get out of that,” says Stoyle, “to savour the sounds of the countryside and just remember that we share this world with all of these other creatures and birds and that we need to look out for their environment as well as for ours.”

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Authors

Dr David Musgrove, FSAContent director

David Musgrove is the content director at HistoryExtra

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