Table Of ContentRegion and Place
A study of English rural settlement
To our wives
Jan Roberts and Sue Wrathmell
Region and Place
A study of English rural settlement
Brian K Roberts and Stuart Wrathmell
a
ENGLISH HERITAGE
2002
Contents
Figures Vl
Tables Vll
Acknowledgements V Ill
Authors' preface Vlll
1 Rural settlement in space and time 1
2 Land and people 33
3 Farming systems and landscape characteristics 59
4 The characteristics of place: cases and studies 83
5 The Central Province: a reappraisal 119
6 Landscapes of old enclosure: the outer provinces 147
7 A synoptic view 173
Bibliography 193
Index 199
V
Figures
Fig 1.1 Nucleated settlements in England in the Fig 3.1 Farming regions of England, 1500-1640 60
mid-nineteenth century 5
Fig 3.2 The enclosure of common townfields
Fig 1.2 Dispersed settlement scores in England by Act of Parliament in eighteenth and
in the mid-nineteenth century 7 nineteenth-century England 61
Fig 1.3 The density of dispersed settlement in Fig 3.3 Summary landscape types in England 64
England in the mid-nineteenth century 9
Fig 3.4 A model of the relationship between
Fig 1.4 Mid-nineteenth-century provinces, sub- nucleation, dispersion and field systems 66
provinces and local regions in England 10
Fig 3.5 The presences of plough teams in
Fig 1.5 Deserted medieval villages in England England in 1086 69
as recorded in 1968 11
Fig 3.6 The presences of woodland as recorded
Fig 1.6 The evolution of settlement patterns: in Domesday Book, 1 086, and royal
a general model 13 forest, 1327- 36 71
Fig 1.7 The multiple estate model 15 Fig 3.7 Imported Early Anglo-Saxon grave
Fig 1.8 The Yorkshire manors of the Honour goods: amber beads . 73
of Mowbray c 1170 17 Fig 3.8 Burials in England interpreted as Early
Fig 1. 9 The presences of woodland as recorded Anglo-Saxon. 74
in Domesday Book, 1086 19 Fig 3.9 Fifth-century Anglo-Saxon burials and
Fig 1.10 English place-names indicative of place-names in -ingas 76
woodland in the pre-Conquest period 22 Fig 3.10 Substantial Romanised buildings in
Fig 1.11 Cruck buildings in England and Wales 25 England, mapped over the evidence
for early woodland 78
Fig 1.12 Timber-framed buildings in England 26
Fig 3.11 Roman villas in England (pre-1969 data),
Fig 1.13 Presences ofwoodland in pre-Conquest
mapped over the evidence for early
England 28
woodland 79
Fig 1.14 Rural settlement in England in the
Fig 3.12 The interpretation of English settlement
mid-nineteenth century. 29
provinces 81
Fig 2.1 The terrain characteristics of England 32
Fig 4.1 The location of studies integrated into
Fig 2.2 The drainage network and watersheds Chapter 4 84
of England 34
Fig 4.2 East Haddon, Northamptonshire 85
Fig 2.3 Aspects of climate and vegetation in
Fig 4.3 Halton Shields, Northumberland 87
England 38
Fig 4.4 Thurleigh, Bedfordshire 88
Fig 2.4 General population trends in England
between prehistory and the present 41 Fig 4.5 Mirfield and Hartshead, Yorkshire 90
Fig 2.5 The top (fourth) quartile of the Fig 4.6 Haworth, Yorkshire 92
population in England in 1851 45
Fig 4.7 Butterwick, Yorkshire 94
Fig 2.6 The third quartile of the population
Fig 4.8 Longton, Lancashire 95
in England in 1851 46
Fig 4.9 Tunley, Lancashire 96
Fig 2.7 The second quartile of the population
Fig 4.10 Halewood, Lancashire 97
in England in 1851 47
Fig 2.8 The first quartile of the population Fig 4.11 Hunsterson, Cheshire 98
in England in 1851 48 Fig 4.12 Roystone Grange, Derbyshire 100
Fig 2.9 Deserted villages and parishes mapped over Fig 4.13 \X'heathill, Shropshire 101
the lowest quartile of population in 1851 50
Fig4.14 Rashleigh, Devon 102
Fig 2.10 A record of dispersion in mid-nineteenth-
Fig 4.15 Hinton Hall, Suffolk 104
century England 53
Fig4.16 Linstead Parva, Suffolk 105
Fig 2.11 Place-names with the element 'Green'
in England 55 Fig 4.17 Scale-Dickleburgh, Norfolk 106
Fig 2.12 .Moated sites in England and Wales 57 Fig4.18 \X'hittlesford, Cambridgeshire 110
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Fig 4.19 Stanfield, Norfolk 111 Fig 6.1 A diagrammatic summary of enclosed
landscapes in England 148
Fig 4.20 Marton, Yorkshire 113
Fig 6.2 A classification of enclosed landscapes 151
Fig 4.21 Puxton, Somerset 1 15
Fig 6.3 A model of landscapes of enclosure in
Fig 5.1 The enclosure history of the Central
Province of England 118 the South-eastern and ~orthern and
Western Provinces 153
Fig 5.2 The sub-provinces and outliers of
the Central Province of England 120 Fig 6.4 A model of the development of some
enclosure forms 154
Fig 5.3 The sequences of enclosure in north-east
England between 1550 and 1850 122 Fig 6.5a Landscapes of enclosure in England .. 158
Fig 5.4 Aspects of field systems in England 124 Fig 6.5b Key to Fig 6.5a 159
Fig 5.5 Fiscal tenements in England: Fig 6.6 Cleared land and woodland in the
a summary map .. 125 Welsh border counties . . 167
Fig 5.6 Aspects of Scandinavian settlement Fig 6.7 The parish of Tanw orth,
in England 126 Warwickshire 168
Fig 5.7 Types of manor in England. 127 Fig 7.1 Provisional map of inheritance customs
in England 178
Fig 5.8 Areas of devastation in England
between 902 and 1156 140 Fig 7.2 The distribution of place-names in
Fig 5.9 The distribution of royal demesne -worth set over the distribution of early
in England 1066--86 142 woodland 181
Fig 5.10 The putative extent of open (town) Fig 7.3 A model of the distribution of assessed
field lands in England 144 and non-assessed land in England 184
Fig 5.11 A model summarising the development Fig 7.4 A model of the development of settlement
of townfields within the Central Province in England between Roman times and
of England 145 the nineteenth century 191
Tables
Table 2.1 Accumulated recorded tenancies 1086-1300/1350 52
Table 5.1 Nettleton parish, Lincolnshire 137
Table 5.2 Saleby parish, Lincolnshire 137
Table 6.1 Enclosure: a subjective temporal classification 149
Table 6.2 Demesne stock in 1086 171
Table 7.1 Land area, Domesday plought eams and proportion tilled in 1086 in six sample counties
(area in thousands of acres) 187
Table 7.2 Land area and late enclosed waste in six sample counties
(all in thousands of acres) 188
Table 7.3 A summary of land use in six sample counties
(all in thousands of acres) 188
Table 7.4 Estimate of amount of land enclosed piecemeal
(all in thousands of acres) 189
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Acknowledgements
Without the support of English Heritage this project, inevitably be present. Here we will mention only those
which grew from our work on An Atlas of Rural \vho played an active part in the preparation of this
Settlement in England, could not have been sustained. work. Most of the maps are the responsibility of one of
Special thanks are due to David Stocker and Graham us (BKR), but the cartographic team in Durham,
Fairclough for their continuing encouragement. We are Arthur Corner and his successor David Hume, Chris
in considerable debt to Karen Dorn of English Orton and Steven Allan made vital contributions,
Heritage's publications department for her editorial especially in solving computing problems. Chris also
skills and tact when dealing with our efforts and to drew the maps for Chapter 4. Preparation of the case
Christopher Taylor for penetrating comments on the studies in Chapter 4 owed much to the work and
original text. From our employers, the West Yorkshire advice of a number of people, especially Paul Everson,
Archaeology Service, part of West Yorkshire Joint Stephen Rippon, Keith Stephenson, Christopher
Services, and the Geography Department of Durham Taylor and Penny Ward. Chris Philo read the whole
University, we have drawn both material and text and suggested a number of improvements to
intellectual support. accuracy and consistency.
We have quarried the work of other researchers Finally, we acknowledge the forbearance and
without shame, and without them this volume could assistance of Jan Roberts and Sue Wrathmell who,
not have been brought to completion. Our most through no fault of their own, have had to live with our
sincere thanks are due to all of them, scholars past and running debate on rural settlement for almost a
present. We are, of course, responsible for the misuse, decade. Our only excuse is that we, too, have been the
misinterpretation and misquotations that must victims of our ideas.
Authors' preface
This book is the result of research that began in the provides few answers to those problems that have
early 1990s, research that originally had a rather limited exercised rural settlement scholars and agricultural
and specific purpose. The initial objective, encouraged historians over the past fifty years. Indeed, vie have to
and funded by English Heritage, was to provide maps of admit that it makes little attempt to do so. The reason
England's dispersed and nucleated settlement patterns, is simple and personal. The process of creating the
to enable those patterns to inform the identification and maps that appeared in the Atlas, and the many new
selection of nationally important medieval settlement ones that illustrate this publication, fundamentally
remains in the course of the Monuments Protection changed our way of looking at rural settlement and
Programme. In some senses the final product of that agrarian structures, both spatially and chronologically.
work was An Atlas of Rural Settlement in England The distribution maps have driven our evolving
(Ro berts and Wrathmell 2000a). It is a publication concepts. Thanks to the opportunities now available
which attempts not only to provide contexts and through computer mapping, we have been able to
frameworks for regional and local settlement studies; it compare widely differing datasets with one another,
also offers a series of models which illustrate our and have explored the meaning of their correlations,
perception of the diversity of 'agrarian structures' in the negative as well as positive. This is in contrast to many
regions we have defined. By 'agrarian structures' we of the national distribution maps supplied by
mean not only the way in which habitation sites are archaeologists and historians; maps that frequently
distributed across the landscape, but also the way in comprise little more than dots against a coastal outline,
which these sites interlock with - indeed, ret1ect - the perhaps with a few major rivers, or at most with a relief
decisions made by their occupants with regard to the map as background. Such 'backgrounds' are not
exploitation of available agricultural resources: arable neutral statements. They set intellectual parameters for
land, meadow, pasture, woodland and so on. Agrarian those who read the maps; they structure the data. And
structures are the physical expression of those decisions. if coastline and rivers do nothing more than enable the
The Atlas provided only limited opportunities to reader to locate, very roughly, a distribution in relation
explore and elaborate such themes: hence this book. It to the overall shape of England, then each symbol will
V Ill
