Leonard Cantor - The English Medieval Landscape

Routledge Revivals

First published in 1982, The English Medieval Landscape was written to recreate and analyse the development of the major elements of the medieval landscape.

Illustrated with maps and photographs, the book explores the nature of the English landscape between 1066 and 1485, from farms and chases to castles, monastic settlements, villages, roads, and more.

The English Medieval Landscape will appeal to those with an interest in medieval history and British social history.

Edited by Leonard Cantor

First published in 1982
by Croom Helm Ltd.

This edition first published in 2021 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

1982 L. M. Cantor

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Publishers Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes correspondence from those they have been unable to contact.

A Library of Congress record exists under LCCN: 82128514

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-74826-5 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-003-15938-4 (ebk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-367-74754-1 (pbk)

Book DOI: 10.4324/9781003159384

EDITED BY LEONARD CANTOR

1982 L. M. Cantor
Croom Helm Ltd, 2-10 St Johns Road, London SW11

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

The English medieval landscape. - (Croom Helm
historical geography series)
1. England - Rural conditions - History
2. England - Medieval period, 1066-1485
I. Cantor, Leonard
942.009734 DA667
ISBN 0-7099-0707-9

Typeset by Leaper & Gard Ltd, Bristol
Printed and bound in Great Britain
by Billing and Sons Limited
Guildford, London, Oxford, Worcester

DOI: 10.4324/9781003159384

1. Leonard Cantor
2. Trevor Rowley
3. Leonard Cantor
4. Michael Williams
5. Leonard Cantor
6. Peter Bigmore
7. Brian Paul Hindle
8. Leonard Cantor

Figures

Tables

This book is an attempt by a group of historical geographers to recreate and to analyse the development of the major elements in the English landscape during the Middle Ages, a period of over four hundred years from 1066 to 1485. There are, of course, already in existence a number of authoritative books which deal, wholly or in part, with the historical geography of medieval England. Amongst those which have appeared in the past decade are H.C. Darby, A New Historical Geography of England Before 1600 (Cambridge, 1976); R.A. Dodgshon and R.A. Butlin, An Historical Geography of England and Wales (Academic Press, 1978); E. Miller and J. Hatcher, Medieval EnglandRural Society and Economic Change, 1086-1348 (Longman, 1978); and M.M. Postan, The Medieval Economy and Society: An Economic History of Britain in the Middle Ages (Wiedenfeld and Nicolson, 1972). As the titles of these books imply, they are primarily concerned with giving a synoptic view of the geography or economic history of the country, usually by reference to specific chronological dates or periods such as Domesday England, the Early Middle Ages and the Later Middle Ages. However, this book adopts a different approach: it is our belief that an equally valid and valuable way of analysing the development of the English landscape over the long period of the Middle Ages is by identifying and describing in detail the major elements which constituted it. Fortunately, in recent years much detailed research has been undertaken by historical geographers and others, producing a great deal of information and evidence that now make it a practical proposition to draw up a reasonably accurate, if partial, picture of the development of the English landscape during the medieval period.

The authors attempt both to give a synoptic view of the country as a whole and also to describe in detail specific examples and case studies of the various elements, to illustrate the general theme and to identify regional variations. They also describe the wide range of techniques now available to students, whether professional or amateur, wishing to recreate elements of past landscapes. It was intended to include a chapter on the medieval industrial landscape; unfortunately, however, circumstances beyond the editors control and considerations of length made this impossible.

Finally, when making reference to English counties, we have taken as their boundaries those which existed before the changes in April 1974; these changes were largely the product of administrative convenience with little regard for history, and the vast majority of documentary and other material upon which we have drawn refers to the traditional county boundaries.

I wish to thank Professor Robin Butlin, Department of Geography, Loughborough University, for his help in bringing this book to fruition. I am also grateful to F.A. Aberg of the Moated Sites Research Group for generously supplying information and the map on moated homesteads, and especially to Janice Oselton for the enormous amount of typing and retyping that was necessary before the typescript achieved its final form. We are grateful also to Mrs Anne Tarver, cartographer in the Loughborough University Department of Geography, for drawing the maps that illustrate .

Acknowledgement is given to Aerofilms for ; and to Joe Tarrant for Plates 3a and b. Above all I am grateful to my wife for so tolerantly and encouragingly enduring the protracted labours associated with the writing of this book.

L.M. Cantor

Loughborough

DOI: 10.4324/9781003159384-1

Leonard Cantor

By the time the Normans arrived in England in 1066, the major characteristics of the English landscape had already been determined by their Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian predecessors. The settlement pattern of towns and villages, the clearing of the woodlands, and the development of agriculture had assumed a pattern which the Normans were to modify but not substantially alter. In Darbys words, the Norman Conquest was the transposition of an aristocracy and not a folk movement of new settlers on the land. Areas with relatively little cultivated land included the Weald, the New Forest, the Dorset and Surrey heathland, the Fenlands and the Breckland of East Anglia, together with the northern counties which had been deliberately devastated by the Conqueror.

Rackham