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The Medieval English Landscape, 1000-1540
Author(s): Graeme J. White (Author)
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
- Publication Date: November 8, 2012
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 208 pages
- ISBN-10: 1441135251
- ISBN-13: 9781441135254
Book Description
The landscape of medieval England was the product of a multitude of hands. While the power to shape the landscape inevitably lay with the Crown, the nobility and the religious houses, this study also highlights the contribution of the peasantry in the layout of rural settlements and ridge-and-furrow field works, and the funding of parish churches by ordinary townsfolk. The importance of population trends is emphasised as a major factor in shaping the medieval landscape: the rising curve of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries imposing growing pressures on resources, and the devastating impact of the Black Death leading to radical decline in the fourteenth century. Opening with a broad-ranging analysis of political and economic trends in medieval England, the book progresses thematically to assess the impact of farming, rural settlement, towns, the Church, and fortification using many original case studies. The concluding chapter charts the end of the medieval landscape with the dissolution of the monasteries, the replacement of castles by country houses, the ongoing enclosure of fields, and the growth of towns.
Editorial Reviews
Review
The Local Historian
Discussion of fieldscapes, cultivation strips, open fields and other arrangements quickly opens up what for this reader is the lasting impression from the book overall, that is the great diversity of arrangements and practice across the country. Such is the wealth of detailed place-based and thematic studies now available and which the author brings into play (the twenty-three-page bibliography is a fine reference for anyone wishing to follow up some case studies), that broad generalising models of previous eras of scholarship are well superseded and the significance of immediate and local circumstances well recognised.
Landscape History
This book is a clearly written and highly accessible survey of the English medieval landscape which covers a range of topics including farming practices, settlement patterns, the development of towns and the role of religion … Throughout the book economic history is a useful reference point, and this is a factor in the use of the landscape and a measure of the success of farming and other activities. This book is accessibly and engagingly written, thoroughly referenced with an extensive bibliography, and forms an excellent gateway into the subject.
Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire Vol. 163
