Parks were prominent and, in fact, controversial features of the medieval countryside, but they have been unevenly studied and remain only partly understood. This book provides a full-length study of the subject, setting parks across England throughout the middle ages in their full social, economic, jurisdictional, and landscape context. The first half of the book investigates the purpose of these royal and aristocratic reserves, which have been variously claimed as hunting grounds, economic assets, landscape settings for residences, and status symbols. An emphasis on the aristocratic passion for the chase as the key motivation for park-making provides an important challenge to more recent views and allows for a deeper appreciation of the connection between park-making and the expression of power and lordship. The second part of the book examines the impact of park creation on wider society, from the king and aristocracy to peasants and townsmen. Instead of the traditional emphasis on the importance of royal regulation, greater attention is paid to the effects of lordly park-making on other members of the landed elite and ordinary people. These widespread enclosures interfered with customary uses of woodland and waste, hunting practices, roads and farming; not surprisingly, they could become a focus for aristocratic feud, popular protest and furtive resistance. By combining historical, archaeological, and landscape evidence this study provides insight into contemporary values and how they helped to shape the medieval landscape.

This is the first book about peasant perceptions of landscape. It marks a step-change in the discipline of landscape history, as well as making a major contribution to the history of everyday life. Until now, there has been no sustained analysis of how ordinary medieval and early modern people experienced and perceived their material environment and constructed their identities in relation to the places where they lived. This book provides exactly such an analysis by examining peasant perceptions in one geographical area over the long period from AD 500 to 1650. It takes as its focus Ewelme hundred, a well-documented and archaeologically rich area of lowland vale and hilly Chiltern wood-pasture comprising fourteen ancient parishes. The analysis draws on a range of sources including legal depositions and thousands of field-names and bynames preserved in largely unpublished deeds and manorial documents. Archaeology makes a major contribution, particularly for understanding the period before 900, but more generally in reconstructing the fabric of villages and the framework for inhabitants’ spatial practices and experiences. In its focus on the way inhabitants interacted with the landscape in which they worked, prayed, and socialized, the book supplies a new history of the lives and attitudes of the bulk of the rural population who so seldom make their mark in traditional landscape analysis or documentary history.

Historians and archaeologists are increasingly interested in moving beyond landscape reconstruction and economics to investigate how past inhabitants perceived their environment. This reflects the subject's intrinsic interest and an awareness of the importance of decisions made by ordinary people in shaping the development of the countryside. However, the evidence available makes it difficult to uncover mentalities and attitudes. To date, most attention has been paid to particular features which seem to say most about self-perception and beliefs, but the greatest advances will arguably be made by studying the landscape as a whole. This article explains the approach to popular perceptions being adopted by 'The South Oxfordshire Project', an interdisciplinary analysis of fourteen parishes encompassing lowland clay vales and Chilterns wood-pasture from the early Middle Ages to the mid seventeenth century.

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This article explores the role and significance of sound in medieval social relations. In the Middle Ages as in other periods sound was a vital medium through which people experienced their environment and a vehicle for the expression of meaning and assertion of power. It is argued that archaeologists are well placed to make a major contribution to the study of sound in medieval Britain, both through qualitative analysis of ‘soundscapes’ and through more quantitative fieldwork research on ‘soundmarks’. Special attention is paid to the use and significance of church bells in rural settlements, and findings are presented from experimental fieldwork conducted in Ewelme hundred in south Oxfordshire.