The after-life of barrows: prehistoric monuments in the Norfolk landscape: Nicola WhyteThis paper considers the function and meaning of Bronze Age burial mounds in the later medieval and post-medieval periods. Far from being the redundant relics of a distant past, it is argued that these monuments were integral to the organisation and interpretation of the physical environment. The perceived antiquity and permanence of barrows ensured their recurrent use as boundary markers, and as places of meeting and execution, and new monuments created for these purposes often mimicked them in appearance. It is argued that the present distribution of barrows may reflect something more than original location, modified by subsequent land-use patterns: because these monuments continued to have a use in later centuries they were often retained and preserved in places where they might otherwise have been swept away.
Charters, landscapes and hides on the Isle of Wight: John Margham This paper presents some of the results of the author’s continuing research into the landscape history of the Isle of Wight in the early medieval period. The reconstruction of Anglo-Saxon charter bounds forms the basis of the present study. The landscape regions of the Isle of Wight are defined using a variety of sources and are mapped. The reconstruction of these landscapes in the tenth century is discussed using data inferred from charter boundary clauses with mapped examples of charter bounds impinging upon various landscape regions. The areas of estates delineated in charters are presented as acreages and related to the hidage of each estate and a correlation is found between the acreage per hide of each estate and the nature of the landscape within the estate’s bounds. These findings are related to observations made about the nature of the hide from other areas of England and to Domesday data from the Isle of Wight. It is argued that arable resources were a crucial factor in determining estates’ hidages.
Domesday settlement in Suffolk: Mary Hesse In their Atlas of Rural Settlement in England, Roberts and Wrathmell have used nineteenth-century sources to map the distributions of nucleated and dispersed settlement across England. They argue that the resulting patterns reflect in general terms many earlier types of distribution, for example Roman villas, pagan burials, pre-Norman place-names, and Domesday woodland.. In this article I consider whether relevant data can be derived from Suffolk Domesday Book about the distribution of dispersed settlement in the county in 1066, starting with the hypothesis that the exceptionally high proportion of freemen in the Suffolk population in 1066 may be correlated with the contemporary density of dispersed settlement. Calculations show that the numbers of freemen’s ploughs per carucate, as reported in Domesday, are also exceptionally high, as would be expected if freemen were associated with small dispersed farmsteads and a consequent inefficient use of ploughs. The freemen distribution was calculated for each hundred, and compared with that of the Atlas dispersion map. The two distributions agree in the clayland centre of the county, but differ strikingly in some of the peripheral hundreds. It does not appear that these differences can be wholly explained in terms of the natural environment, and evidence is examined about pre-Conquest lordship and the occurrence of large estates. This factor helps to explain some of the discrepancies between the freemen distribution and the nineteenth-century dispersion patterns.
‘Take it with a pinch of Salt’: Mary C. Higham This paper examines the meaning of the Latin term saltatorium and shows that it referred to a deer-leap on the margins of a medieval park and had nothing to do with salt-working. Examples are drawn from Lancashire.
Woodland continuity and change: ancient woodland in eastern Hertfordshire: L. W. Wright Woodland is a distinctive and widespread feature of the landscape of eastern Hertfordshire. Some woods are little more than a few trees and much scrub that are recolonising waste ground, some are monocultures of conifers, some are old and often neglected coppice, with or with standards, some comprise well-grown but species-poor trees and some are complex, species-rich woodlands. Woodlands have been grubbed and planted over the centuries. Once, the landscape of eastern Hertfordshire was dominated by forest. As humans advanced into and settled the area clearance began. In places this has produced dramatic and lasting change. In other areas the process was slower and at times reversed. The fragmented woodland cover today reflects the underlying natural conditions of climate and soil, and the social and economic history of the area.
Continuing the debate on ferruginously-cemented gravel churches: John F. Potter Professor David Hinton’s observations concerning ferruginously-cemented sand and gravel building material in churches (Hinton 2002, pp. 121-2) are most welcome. His comments regarding the occurrence of this material, as has been described in two recent papers (Potter 2001; Pearson & Potter 2002), permit the present author to elaborate on a few of the very many churches which he has examined in the south of England.
REVIEW SECTION: Review article: Recent research on Scottish landscape history: Ian Whyte Reviews |
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Landscape History
Volume 25 (2003) |
