Yes, and a lot of it was based on ideals of beauty. Everyone, it seems, likes the idea of being tall and blond and blue-eyed. Nobody wants to be short and dark, and even if one is short and dark, he wants to think his ancestors were better looking than he is.
In my own family there are tall, blond, blue-eyed folks, short, dark-haired, brown-eyed folks, and folks whose appearance is one or other combination or variation of those features. There are even a number of redheads.
I've seen plenty of short, stocky blonds in my time, as well as many tall people with dark hair and dark eyes.
The whole blue eye long heads vs black haired brown eyed round heads thing never worked for the isles anyway. I understand heads are usually Dolic or Meso in general in the isles.
The overwhelmingly predominant adult (most young children are lighter haired) hair colour in the isles is Brown, frequently a mid brown that is half way between and black and hard to categorise as light or dark as it is so intermediate. From Med. eyes it is probably considered light but probably looks dark if you are Swedish! I think Beddoe included a lot of the light to mid Brown brunettes as 'light' and the darker brown ones are 'dark' and this gives a bit of a false impression of a dichotomy on his nigresense maps. I understand from later more reliable stats that the real east-west difference is really that the west has a little more dark brown haired people while the east has more mid brown. That is the real difference and true blond or Med. type black hair is very much a small minority everywhere in the isles. Even though true black hair is highest in western Ireland, Cornwall, Wales and western Scotland I believe Hooton showed it is only a few %. The Beddoe's maps give the impression that the contrast is between some sort of uber-blondes in the east vs a very dark west. The main difference is a modest change in shade of brown. I wouldnt be surprised if light brown to dark brown hair shades accounted for 70% of the isles adults. I think an awful lot of the writers on the subject were using preconceptions and their imaginations displaying humanities blindness to similarity and 20-20 vision for differences between peoples and a propensity for exaggerating them.
The isles have a lot of fair skinned people and this seems to peak among the Irish and Scots rather than the English. Its often a kind of fair skin that either reddens, freckles etc in the sun and only a minority really can tan (spray tans are common among women in the last decade or so though). Scandinavians and Germans, Poles etc are considered to be different from the isles people in the way many of them can take a golden tan even when they are blond, blue eyed etc. Isles folk are notorious for terrible sun burn when on holiday abroad in Spain etc.
Eyes are mostly blue, green or hazel. I understand that Irish, Scots and north-east English are the lightest eyed and the Welsh the darkest eyed. I have read that in old head measuring type books and it does seem to be true. Very dark eyes are much rarer in the isles than in many parts of the continent in my experience.
n general the English and Celtic fringe people have fairly similar colourings, nothing like the grossly exaggerated impression of difference you get in these old books. The Celtic fringe does have more dark brown hair but it also has more red hair and the Irish and Scots seem to have more light eyes and ultra-fair skin on average than the English.
As for height I would say the isles are middling - not as tall as the tallest nations like the Dutch and Danes but taller than most other west Europeans. My impression is that height differences within the isles are micro-regional rather than national although there is a 19th century stereotype of tall Scots, small Welsh and an inconsistent mixture of both stereotypes for the Irish. I personally think height difference in the isles are more class based.
Its hard to generalise on features. Again I believe there is a strong element of class and ease of life in dictating features. People today do not look anything like the 19th/early 20th century photographs of rugged poor county folk you get in Beddoe etc. Probably the easier life.
The isles never did fit into the simple Nordic/Alpine/Med system so all sort of names like Celtic-Nordic, Atlantic-Med, Brunn etc were invented. Personally I think phenotypes are a continuoum and categorisation is pointless and I also think phenotype constantly changing due to lifestyle, wealth and climate. The head shape changed considerably in Britain in the Medieval period without any major changes. It seems that the same populations move from long to round headed in a cycle that is not fully understood. I wouldnt be surprised if colouring is different too from prehistory given that many genes like blue eyes, red/fair hair etc are not dominant and almost certainly have been greatly reduced in quantity.
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