Agricultural History Review, Volume 61 Part 1 (2013), p. 170

Landscape is proving to be a particularly popular topic for academic research, and as such this new book by Graeme White joins a crowded field. Its structure is traditional – with chapters on farming and hunting, rural settlement, towns and trade, religion, and fortifications – and although some use is made of archaeological evidence, the book is written from an essentially historical perspective (the author is Emeritus Professor of Local History at the University of Chester). We are told, for example, that ‘The approach taken here is to emphasize the surviving landscape as an historical source wherever possible’, yet there is little real discussion of the concept of the ‘historic landscape’ or the sources and methods of historic landscape analysis which are now used so widely within both academic research and heritage management. There is not a single extract from an early Ordnance Survey map to show the reader what a remarkable record of the medieval landscape these are, and, while standing buildings are discussed, field- and place-names receive little attention. This is essentially a textbook – there are no new hypotheses to further our understanding of the past – which in itself is not a bad thing: there are numerous detailed, academic studies that have explored different aspects of the medieval landscape of England in recent years, and this more general overview will be a valuable guide for students and the general reader alike.

As a textbook, however, and in particular as a textbook on landscape, the quality and quantity of its illustrations is poor: some of the photographs are so dark that they are unintelligible, and there is not a single map or plan. The chapters on ‘The landscape of farming and hunting’ and ‘The landscape of rural settlement’ will be the main focus of the Review’s readership, and they provide good overviews of some recent scholarly debates with regard to the origins and early development of villages and open fields, although the late medieval period is not discussed as fully as it should be (not least because this period was so crucial in forming the landscape of today): ‘enclosure by agreement’, for example, is briefly considered but the Black Death is only referred to three times in the entire book. It is refreshing to see brief discussions of topics such as industrial settlements and peasant houses, although, in a book with a stated aim of emphasizing ‘the surviving landscape as an historical source wherever possible’, it is curious that there is a not a single plan to show what any of these looked like. Overall, this is a useful textbook but which has not given enough thought to the needs of its likely readership in terms of comprehensive coverage or supporting illustrations.