Farmers, Landlords and Landscapes

Rural Britain, 1720 to 1870

Susanna Wade Martins

This table gives the books price, published date, ISBN reference and other details
Price:	£19.00
Published:	May 2004
ISBN:	0-9538630-9-3
Details:	PB, 180 pp, illus: 58 b/w

Synopsis

This book tells the human and environmental story of 'the Age of Improvement' - the period between 1720 and 1870 when the British countryside, bound by a great net of new Parliamentary enclosures, was made to serve the cause of the nation's industrial expansion. Much of the countryside we are familiar with today can be dated to this time. The book integrates the period's social and landscape history.

From Caithness to East Anglia, the author draws on the rich details of farmers' own accounts, to show how new farming landscapes with the result of new, capitalist relationships between landlords and farmers. She argues that planned landscapes were not always uniform and dull. In some areas they actually contributed to regional distinctiveness and diversity.

Landscape history often seems devoid of a human story. In contrast, in this book we meet the people who transformed the Georgian and Victorian countryside and analyse their achievement.

Reviews

'For all those with an interest in the British countryside this book can be unreservedly recommended; for those involved in rural conservation its careful reading should be compulsory.' British Archaeology. 'an inimitable blend of history from the documents and the archaeology of the surviving buildings on the ground.' Current Archaeology