Champion

The Making and Unmaking of the English Midland Landscape

Inbunden, Engelska, 2013

Av Tom Williamson, Robert Liddiard, Tracey Partida

2 479 kr

Tillfälligt slut

Champion: The pattern of nucleated settlements and extensive open fields most commonly found within the landscape of the Midlands.This book presents a radical reinterpretation of the origins of villages and open fields, and their development in the late medieval and post-medieval periods, in the Midland, ‘champion’ areas of England. Most landscape historians believe that villages were created in the middle or later Saxon periods through the ‘nucleation’ of a formerly dispersed pattern of settlement, that many villages were initially laid out as planned, regular settlements and that open fields probably came into existence at the same time. Re-examination and mapping of the data suggests ‘nucleation’ is a myth, ‘village planning’ an illusion and open fields were created, at least in their classic, ‘regular’ forms, only in the eleventh or twelfth centuries.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2013-04-19
Mått177 x 248 x undefined mm
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor252
FörlagLiverpool University Press
ISBN9780859898683

Tillhör följande kategorier

Tom Williamson is Professor in Landscape History at UEA and published 'The Transformation of Rural England: Farming and the Landscape 1700-1870' with UEP in 2002. Robert Liddiard completed a PhD at UEA in 2000 and has published on high-status landscapes in the Middle Ages. Tracey Partida is a consultant specializing in geographical information systems (GIS) and her PhD is in progress at University of Huddersfield.

Chapter 1: IntroductionWhy Northamptonshire? • Debating the Medieval Landscape • The Post-Medieval Landscape • MethodologyChapter 2: Structures of LandscapeGeology and Topography • Climate and Soils • Territory and Topography • Late Prehistoric and RomanSettlement • Early and Middle Saxon Settlement • Territorial Organisation • Demographic and AgriculturalExpansion • ConclusionChapter 3: Medieval SettlementIntroduction • Dispersion and Nucleation • Villages: Geology, ‘Cores’ and Expansion • Village Plans: Patterns ofEarlier Land Use • Geology, Land Use and Plan Form • Regular Tofts and ‘Planning’ • Dispersed Settlements •ConclusionChapter 4: Medieval Land Use: Field and ForestIntroduction • Arable • Pasture • Meadow • Woodland and Forest • Heaths • The Antiquity of the Open Fields• ConclusionChapter 5: The Post-Medieval LandscapeIntroduction • Tenure and Ownership • Enclosure • Modifying the Open Fields • The Chronology ofNorthamptonshire Enclosure • Enclosing the Forests • Enclosure and Land Use Change • The Impact ofEnclosure • The Development of Rural Settlement • ConclusionChapter 6: Northamptonshire in ContextWoodland and Champion • The Characteristics of ‘Woodland’ Landscapes • Variations in the MedievalLandscapes of the Midlands • Variations in Post-Medieval Landscape and Agriculture • Woodland andPasture • The Origins of Regional Variation • Explaining Regional Variation • The Implications of Post-MedievalDevelopmentsChapter 7: Landscape: Time, Agency and CharacterHistoric Landscape Character • Northamptonshire Field Patterns • Landscape and Agency

A masterpiece of scholarship…using the best documented part of the ‘champion landscapes’ of the English Midlands, the authors have tackled what is arguably the most contentious topic in landscape history, the origins and development of villages and fields. The subject has been studied by historians, archaeologists and geographers for well over a century. Yet, despite the huge amount of work on it, especially over the last 20 years or so, no consensus has been reached on almost any aspect. This book is a truly great piece of work that would considerably advance the history of villages and fields.Christopher Tayler