Shaping Medieval Landscapes

The English landscape of today owes much to changes and transformations that took place in the medieval period, i.e. before the large-scale planned enclosures from the 1700s onwards. What went before was a much more open system of fields with regional variations in the configuration of settlement, fields, hedgerows, roads and paths. Throughout this book Tom Williamson discusses the dichotomy between 'planned' and 'ancient', 'woodland' and 'champion' landscapes; between areas where nucleated villages were separated by regular open fields, as opposed to isolated farms and small hamlets with fields enclosed by hedges and larger amounts of woodland. Collating a great deal of information from an area extending from the Thames to the Wash, Williamson reveals fresh insights into the complex social, economic and demographic pressures that led to regional variation in landscape types.