Champion: The Making and Unmaking of the English Midland Landscape - Hardcover

Williamson, Tom; Liddiard, Robert; Partida, Tracey

9780859898683: Champion: The Making and Unmaking of the English Midland Landscape

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0859898687 ISBN 13: 9780859898683

Publisher: Liverpool University Press, 2013

Champion: The pattern of nucleated settlements and extensive open fields most commonly found within the landscape of the Midlands. This book presents a radical reinterpretation of the origins of villages and open fields, and their development in the late medieval and post-medieval periods, in the Midland, 'champion' areas of England. Most landscape historians believe that villages were created in the middle or later Saxon periods through the 'nucleation' of a formerly dispersed pattern of settlement, that many villages were initially laid out as planned, regular settlements and that open fields probably came into existence at the same time. Re-examination and mapping of the data suggests 'nucleation' is a myth, 'village planning' an illusion and open fields were created, at least in their classic, 'regular' forms, only in the eleventh or twelfth centuries.

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About the Author:

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.

Review:

"... the review quote to use is 'A substantial contribution to the literature ... Few studying the subject will be able to ignore such a book.'--Landscape History

"Clearly written and beautifully illustrated, Champion presents a strong central argument and a raft of stimulating secondary ideas. ... This book enriches our understanding of landscape ..."--Medieval Settlement Research Group

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