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The ‘Scole-Dickleburgh field system’ examined: D. A. Hinton In some areas of eastern England, ‘semi-regular grid systems’ of field boundaries have been claimed as Roman or earlier. This paper examines in detail an example in south Norfolk, and questions the hypothesis that the Venta to Londinium Roman road is an intrusion into a co-axial pattern of fields and lanes. It is suggested instead that the earliest routes followed the local topography, and that they and other features such as the edges of greens and commons were only in occasional and coincidental conformity with the postulated early Roman or pre-Roman grid system, nor are non-conforming road-lines clearly explicable as diversions around subsequent medieval settlements. Parish boundaries do not relate consistently to any single dominant landscape pattern. Encroachments on the commons show late creation of several new field boundaries, with many others resulting from enclosure of medieval open fields. Consequently it is suggested that most of the field shapes shown on early nineteenth-century maps were post-medieval, not relics of a pre-medieval farmscape.
The evolution of territoriality and societal transitions: D. Harvey This paper seeks to explore how territorial structures address the continuing requirements and needs of the controlling elements of a society and how they mirror evolving principles of administration, taxation and exploitation. Early territories in Cornwall reflected relatively simple social structures of economic resource exploitation and personal spheres of power, very much based around kinship patterns. As transitions in society produced a more sophisticated hierarchical network of control and income generation through dues and tax, so the territorial strategy grew more complex. This resulted in the development of a territorialised state structure. Phenomena were now seen in relation to territorial units rather than in relation to social groups, and each portion of land was delineated and locked into a territorial hierarchy controlled from above. Investigation is undertaken through analysis of early ecclesiastical and judicial organisation in west Cornwall, and the vestiges of very early forms of landscape arrangement are explored. The mechanisms of control and exploitation, developed before the Norman conquest, gave territorial expression to previous socially recognised institutions and it is within the context of these developments that later territories should be understood.
Continuity and fission in the Anglo-Saxon landscape: the origins of the Rodings (Essex): S. Bassett The eight ecclesiastical parishes in west Essex known as the Rodings contained sixteen separate manors and other, minor holdings in 1086. They had been formed by the piecemeal fission of a single land-unit, arguably one which was the settlement area of an early Anglo-Saxon community whose name they all perpetuated — *Hrođingas, ‘people of *Hrođa’. Very few other similarly early territories can be reliably identified, either (as in this case) from the survival of a name in -ingas which still refers to the entire area for which it was coined or through the use of other evidence. Therefore, it is important to discover, as far as we can, the socio-economic processes responsible for the fission of this early territory and its eventual replacement by the fragmented manorial landscape recorded in Domesday Book, and also to trace the parallel evolution of both its ecclesiastical and its administrative geography up to and, where necessary, after 1086. The paper accordingly follows three main lines of enquiry about the Rodings area, investigating how its late eleventh century landscape of manors, parishes and hundreds had come into being. This includes, among other things, a study of the origins of the substantial land-holdings there of the reformed minster churches at Barking and Ely. The information gained from these enquiries is placed in its broader historical context, and comparison is made with similar developments in other parts of England. Finally, the paper assesses the extent of the study's contribution to the current debate about the validity of the ‘minster hypothesis’ as an explanation of the measures which the Anglo-Saxon church took in the seventh and early eighth centuries in order to encourage the systematic provision of pastoral care.
Medieval settlement relocation in west Cambridgeshire: three case studies: S. Oosthuizen Planned nucleated settlement (often hand in hand with the creation of open fields) and subsequent settlement shift is a recognised common component in the complex development of the medieval landscape in much of central and southern England. This paper takes three examples of settlement over earlier arable in west Cambridgeshire. In each case examination has suggested that sites, initially supposed to have represented the initial late Saxon nucleation, should be reinterpreted as relocations to new sites overlying open field furlongs, often soon after the Conquest. In each case, too, the evidence demonstrates a complex process in which the regularity of an underlying field system has been overlain by the additional regularity of a relocated planned settlement from a previous settlement, evidence for the site of which is yet to be discovered. The sites discussed here suggest that in Cambridgeshire some settlement re-planning seems to have followed from the reorganisation of land — particularly sokeman land — into new Norman manors, hand in hand with the re-ordering of the social hierarchy. Until we know more about the predecessors of these secondary villages, we cannot say whether settlements in these parishes remained dispersed or were nucleated at the time that this open field landscape was laid out. Further, apparently primary nucleated settlements in open field areas need careful examination to distinguish them from settlements where villages appear to have moved or been moved onto open field land — in different periods and for a wide variety of reasons — from earlier dispersed and/or nucleated sites.
Towards a history of wood pasture in Swaledale (North Yorkshire) : A. Fleming Several documentary references which imply the existence of medieval and later wood pasture in Upper Swaledale (North Yorkshire, UK) are complemented by various categories of evidence which make it possible to identify zones where wood pastures survived longest, on a township-by-township basis. This evidence includes one or two existing wood pastures on daleside common ‘cow pastures’; toponyms, including those linking woods with their townships; field boundary patterns; routes linking hamlets with their wood pastures; the locations and distribution patterns of old pollards (mostly elm, with a few alder). It is also suggested that Swaledale’s deer-parks were created from former wood pastures, and there is evidence for the management of hollies for winter fodder. An average growth rate of c.˝ inch (13 mm) girth per annum would imply that most of the elm pollards of central Swaledale date from the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; it is argued that many of these pollards represent the survival and continuation of a pollarding tradition within late medieval wood pasture. Comments are made on the wider implications of these findings for our understanding of the woodland history of the Pennines, and an attempt is made to sketch the trajectory of decline of wood pastures from the late middle ages to the fragmentary but recognisable patterns of recent centuries.
Landscape of medieval reclamation: Walland Marsh, Kent: J. Eddison and G.A. Draper Walland Marsh, Kent, is the south-western half of the large coastal lowland known generally as Romney Marsh, in the south-eastern corner of England. Reclamation, which involved building embankments to enclose large blocks of land and organising the land drainage there, had begun by mid-twelfth century and was complete by 1500. This provided a landscape of walls and a variety of ditch patterns. The sequence of reclamation is reconstructed on the basis of these landscape features, supported by evidence of the soils, parish boundaries and historic documents including surveys, rentals, and farmers’ and demesne accounts. Three areas, including both tenant and demesne land belonging to Christ Church, Canterbury, were studied and mapped as detailed examples. Because of the complex interaction of environmental, demographic and economic factors the progress of reclamation was by no means continuous or uninterrupted. Nor did the chronology coincide with general expectations of advance and contraction based on other areas. It is concluded that expansion was halted in the mid-thirteenth century, earlier than expected, by sea floods. However, reclamation to provide additional pasture began again c.1400, surprisingly soon after the Black Death: this may have been related to the cloth industry in the nearby Weald.
Review section |
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Landscape History
Volume 19 (1997) |
