Civilisations Stories: 12 amazing treasures on your doorstep

Julia Margaret Cameron carved a reputation as one of Britain's pioneering photographers in the late 19th Century.

She took the new technology around photography and made it into an art form. Her photographs have an intimate, otherworldly feel, characterised by her use of soft focus and light experiments. Cameron's portrait of Annie called 'My First Success' was arguably the first close-up, portrait photograph, using unconventional techniques.

The Regina stone is one of the finest tombstones from the Roman Empire but it also tells the story of multi-cultural life in the small northern town of South Shields.

It shows a woman knitting with her domestic products laid out around her. But the inscription on the tomb tells a different story - that of an ex-slave married to a man called Barates who hailed from from Palmyra in Syria. This locally carved sandstone monument illustrates the diversity of life on the northern frontiers of the Roman Empire.

The Bronze Age was a period of evolving civilisation, art and technology resulting in many great treasures.

One of Britain's greatest archaeological discoveries from this period is the Rudham Dirk which dates back to around 1500 BC. It is only one of only six surviving ceremonial dirks in Europe. Although its design looks like a weapon, it is thought to have been a symbolic artefact with either a religious or ceremonial purpose.

The arrival of the Huguenots in London is one of the most important migration stories in British history.

It began with persecution and a perilous journey from France in the 17th Century but ended with the Huguenots creating great works of art and design.

The Bible symbolises the importance of faith to these 'first refugees'. Presenter Angela Butchart discovers how one Protestant family hid their Bible in a loaf of bread to avoid persecution in their new country.

The Silkstead Head is a portrait in bronze of a young girl and dates from around 200 AD. It was found in a sand pit in the village of Otterbourne in Hampshire.

She was probably a Celtic Briton but her portrait has a very Roman look with a classical face. The way she is portrayed is a fusion of Celtic and Roman styles which speaks volumes about the integration of these two communities.

This wicker helmet was designed to protect injured miners during the height of the copper mining industry in Cornwall.

Beautifully crafted in wicker and leather, it had a practical function to enable rescuers to move an injured miner to safety without sustaining further head injuries.

John Baskerville developed the revolutionary Baskerville typeface in Birmingham in the mid 18th Century during a period of great scientific and technological innovation.

Baskerville was a designer, craftsman, thinker and businessman. His innovations were a marriage of art and technology which were characterised by his detailed attention to printing, inks, paper and printing. The typeface is still used and loved today.

William Morris's Red House at Bexleyheath is one of the defining monuments of the British Arts and Crafts Movement. Morris and his circle of artistic collaborators including Edward Burne-Jones and Frank Brangwyn helped to design this classic Arts and Crafts home.

The design was a reaction to what Morris saw as the ugliness and injustice of booming industrialisation in Victorian England. Instead, they took their inspiration from the Kent countryside, local vernacular buildings and traditional crafts.

The coast of north Yorkshire and Humberside was renowned for its whaling industry in the 19th Century. It was common for whalers to create personal gifts for their loved ones back at home whilst they were away on whaling trips. These decorative pieces were called 'scrimshaw'.

This 'rough and ready' art was created by working people. Most scrimshaw art is anonymous, lacking authorship, a date or specific location. They were often beautifully crafted pieces, featuring illustrations and messages to loved ones.

There is a rich tradition of art in mining communities. Coal mining wasn't just a job, it was a way of life. On canvas, miners found a way of sharing the danger, despair and camaraderie they experienced beneath the ground.

The so-called Northumberland Pitmen Painters in the 1930s became famous but less well known is the story of George William Bissill. He's sometimes described as Derbyshire’s forgotten ‘Pitman Painter’.

Bissell reflected life in a working class mining community with a lack of sentiment and directness. In the 1930s, the art world praised the "raw emotion of his touchingly fresh talent" and "his inner consciousness of what is truly real".

Josiah Wedgwood was a strong supporter of the abolition of slavery movement. He helped to publicise its cause by making ceramic pieces to draw attention to the issues surrounding the slave trade.

This medallion or slavery plaque dates from the 1787 with a logo designed to win support for the anti-slavery medallion. It is made from Jasperware, Wedgwood's version of Chinese porcelain.

Blackpool Tower's iconic architecture has a rich history. This pleasure palace contains many hidden treasures which reveal strong traces of the British Empire style.

The Tower's interior is characterised by exotic designs and decoration which are showcased to great dramatic effect in its spectacular ballroom and public reception areas. The original pleasure complex also included an aviary and zoo with exotic animals.