Agricultural History Review, Volume 57 Part 1 (2009), p. 130

Available from Phil McMichael, Essex County Council Archaeology Section, Fairfield Court, Fairfield Road, Braintree, cm7 3yq.

This book emanates from the project, funded by English Heritage, to characterize fields according to the Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC) developed by Roberts and Wrathmell. It does so by offering detailed reconstructions of the historic layout of fields in twelve selected parishes distributed around five eastern counties. Evidence gleaned from a variety of sources – mainly early maps, surveys, field walking and archaeological finds – is used to create ‘an interpretation of the climax medieval land types’ for each of the twelve case studies, which is then superimposed upon the first edition of Ordnance Survey map (1889–91): so, for example, the map produced for Frenze (Norfolk) reveals the location and extent of block demesne (occupying 16 per cent of the parish area), tenement blocks (4 per cent), common fields (57 per cent), demesne meadow (14 per cent) and so on, in a clear manner. The case studies are then used to draw wider conclusions.

Martin and Satchell, both archaeologists, thus extend our knowledge about the variety of fields that existed within pre-industrial East Anglia, all of which were very different to the classic Midland system. In particular, they provide a wealth of information about the complex ways in which fields were laid out – such as the compact nature of many landholdings, and the intermingling of closes with subdivided fields – and their evidence for, and discussion of, block demesnes is important. They also provide very good and accessible summaries of field terminology, of ploughing methods, and of hedgerow formation and management. Consequently they create a good academic foundation for recommending a number of future conservation initiatives that would ‘secure the survival of an essential part of the historic landscape of East Anglia’ (p.234). It therefore looks helpfully forward.

Although the reconstructions of the layout of fields are imaginative and innovative, they are more speculative than the authors admit. Extant sources simply do not permit a definitive reconstruction of the form and function of irregular field systems in their ‘climax medieval’ formation, and so the confident presentations of the exact location and proportion of each category of land type in each parish, summarized in a series of maps, tables and pie charts, actually conceal numerous assumptions about, and extrapolations from, (sometimes much) later documents. Nor is it clear when the medieval ‘climax’ was reached, nor what it actually means, and the facile use of this term underplays the capacity of irregular fields to change their form and function, even within the medieval period. The evolution of fields receives little direct attention and, on occasions, is ignored: the detailed case study of Walsham-le-Willows (Suffolk) does not mention the compelling and important evidence for the piecemeal enclosure of its open fields during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, documented separately by Dymond, and by West and McLaughlin.

Those with a close interest in how fields functioned will be disappointed. Martin and Satchell recognize that communal regulations over East Anglian fields were less formal than in the Midland system, but make little attempt to reconstruct them systematically in their case studies or, by extension, to draw contrasts between them. Hardly any use has been made of the documents which provide exactly this sort of information, namely manorial court and account rolls. Of the 114 sets of documents consulted by the authors in seven county record offices, only five are accounts or court rolls and the overwhelming majority are maps, surveys and terriers.

Hence this is really a reconstruction of the historic layout of some East Anglian fields, rather than of field systems, which is consistent with an attempt to characterise them according to the aims of the HLC project. Martin and Satchell do not question the various assumptions underpinning the wider project, nor do they engage with the increasingly sceptical academic literature in this regard, yet their work provides evidence of some of the difficulties of subjecting complex irregular field systems to relatively simple characterization. Their own system of categorization does not engage with Bruce Campbell’s important work on this subject. In addition, some of their claims are insufficiently documented, as when they argue for the presence of a highly distinctive and significant category of field system in south Suffolk, without the support of a detailed case study or any other compelling evidence: moreover, the case study of Walsham overlooks both an important medieval survey and some of the detailed evidence in court rolls for the operation of its medieval fields. The book is informative, provocative and stimulating, but it must be handled with care.