I don’t think I’ve ever seen any other country that takes so much care over historical sites than Britain. If they’re putting in a new rail system, building, or subway, and they either know ahead of time, or come upon ruins, graves, etc., they stop all construction, and bring in archaeologists to conduct detailed digs, and in the case of burials, consistently dig up each body, move it to a special building for further study, and methodically clear the site so construction can begin again. And if they find ruins on a building site, they will work to get the builders to incorporate as much of the original ruin as they can within the new building, ie., basement construction redesigned so the ruins are visible under clear platforms/walkways, etc. It’s amazing how fastidious, and thorough they are about these things.
True, and it's become more of a thing due to the buildout, people leaving the cities. The Victorians built affordable but modest housing to handle a population boom, but weren't nearly as careful. They tended to build within or on the margins of existing cities, luckily.
Here and there in the old Time Team episodes they'd find that buried services had cut right through some foundation or other buried remains, and the installers must have noticed the stones and whatnot, but, oh well. Much better job is getting done today.
I'm glad they do that, as the living gotta live, but I'm not an advocate of the old Greek anecdote, happy are they who have no history.
A prog rock band of the early 1970s, Public Foot the Roman, took its name from a worn sign near one of their residences, which had read, "Public Footpath to the Roman Fort". Wish we had a Roman fort around here, alas, nothin'. If we did, it would be hard to explain. :^)
Most US households before WWII didn't have autos, in the 1950s basically all did, and the Interstate Hwy Act supported and juiced growth in suburban living. In Britain the cummuter rail system was more wideranging because pop distribution was different than here, and there's an obvious difference in size.