Champion The Making and Unmaking of the English Midland Landscape

Focusing on Northampton, Championoffers a radical reinterpretation of the origins of villages and open fields, and their development in the late medieval and post-medieval periods in the Midlands. Instead of the commonly accepted belief that villages and open fields were created in the middle or later Saxon period through a process of "nucleation," or village planning, the authors of this volume suggest that these settlements only emerged in their classic, regular forms in the eleventh or twelfth centuries. Their findings are based on an innovative use of digital mapping and geographical information systems, and they cast new light on the agricultural practices in the post-medieval period.

Tom Williamson is Professor in Landscape History at UEA and published 'The Transformation of Rural England: Farming and the Landscape 1700-1870' (University of Exeter Press, 2002). Robert Liddiard completed a PhD at UEA in 2000 and has published on high-status landscapes in the Middle Ages. Tracey Partida is a consultant specializing in geographical information systems (GIS) and her PhD is in progress at University of Huddersfield.

Chapter 1: Introduction
Why Northamptonshire?

· Debating the Medieval Landscape

· The Post-Medieval Landscape

· Methodology
Chapter 2: Structures of Landscape
Geology and Topography

· Climate and Soils

· Territory and Topography

· Late Prehistoric and Roman
Settlement

· Early and Middle Saxon Settlement

· Territorial Organisation

· Demographic and Agricultural
Expansion

· Conclusion
Chapter 3: Medieval Settlement
Introduction

· Dispersion and Nucleation

· Villages: Geology, 'Cores' and Expansion

· Village Plans: Patterns of
Earlier Land Use

· Geology, Land Use and Plan Form

· Regular Tofts and 'Planning'

· Dispersed Settlements

·
Conclusion
Chapter 4: Medieval Land Use: Field and Forest
Introduction

· Arable

· Pasture

· Meadow

· Woodland and Forest

· Heaths

· The Antiquity of the Open Fields


· Conclusion
Chapter 5: The Post-Medieval Landscape
Introduction

· Tenure and Ownership

· Enclosure

· Modifying the Open Fields

· The Chronology of
Northamptonshire Enclosure

· Enclosing the Forests

· Enclosure and Land Use Change

· The Impact of
Enclosure

· The Development of Rural Settlement

· Conclusion
Chapter 6: Northamptonshire in Context
Woodland and Champion

· The Characteristics of 'Woodland' Landscapes

· Variations in the Medieval
Landscapes of the Midlands

· Variations in Post-Medieval Landscape and Agriculture

· Woodland and
Pasture

· The Origins of Regional Variation

· Explaining Regional Variation

· The Implications of Post-Medieval
Developments
Chapter 7: Landscape: Time, Agency and Character
Historic Landscape Character

· Northamptonshire Field Patterns

· Landscape and Agency