The Medieval Park

New Perspectives

Edited by Robert Liddiard

This table gives the books price, published date, ISBN reference and other details
Price:	£25.00
Published:	20 September 2007
ISBN:	978-1-905119-16-5
Details:	69 illus, 35 in colour

Synopsis

The park - a feature of the landscape we always associate with the hunting of deer - played an important role in the psyche of Britain’s medieval aristocracy. Parks remaining today often support high levels of biodiversity, and are of considerable conservation significance. This book offers a comprehensive reappraisal of the park using a diversity of landscape-based approaches, which assess its medieval economy, social role and historical ecology.

The contributors to this book challenge many of our preconceptions about the ‘deer park’. Parks did not always follow a standardized design; as the case studies presented here from Yorkshire, Hertfordshire, Suffolk and Cumbria demonstrate, they varied considerably across England. Parks were more than simply pleasurable backdrops to noble residences, and had many functions other than deer management and hunting. They had an important role in the wider rural economy, as places for grazing, timber production, arable farming and industry. They also had a social function, for they demonstrated and enforced seigneurial control of the landscape; imparkment often required the extinction of existing rights over considerable areas of countryside. Parks - like wood pasture and wooded commons - are part of a suite of landscape types that mix trees and grazing or browsing mammals; the book explains why this is important in terms of ecology and conservation.

Contributors: Robert Liddiard, S. A. Mileson, Amanda Richardson, Naomi Sykes, Aleksander Pluskowski, Ian D. Rotherham, Stephen Moorhouse, Anne Rowe, Rosemary Hoppitt, Angus J. L. Winchester.