This thesis investigates peasant society during the transition from the medieval to the modern period, through a detailed study of a south Midlands village, Great Horwood in north Buckinghamshire, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (with…
This thesis assesses the impact of a Cistercian monastery on the landscape and how, in its turn, the landscape influenced the monastery. It also tests some of the traditional early ideals of the Cistercians such as their attitude to colonisation,…
Much of the East Anglian landscape can still be regarded by the historical geographer as an unknown palimpsest. Its medieval field pattern, for example, still awaits adequate explanation and the whole fascinating development of the roads and tracks…
The agricultural history of the well-documented manor of Rimpton in south-east Somerset provides an opportunity for a detailed reconstruction of one medieval demesne farm and for testing generalized models of economic development in one specific…
The subject of this thesis is the gentry of Essex during the years 1381-1450, with particular reference to their lifestyle.;The thesis may be divided into seven sections. The first puts the gentry into context; it discusses the history, geology,…
From c1035, when Worlingworth was given to the Abbey of St. Edmund, the documentary evidence is both abundant and varied in nature. A map of 1605-6 makes possible, inter alia, a reconstruction of the village plan c1355 or earlier. The court-rolls…
Small-scale traffic in land was endemic in peasant society and is reflected in the earliest surviving court rolls of the thirteenth century. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a fall in the manorial population and the leasing of demesne…
Research for this thesis draws on evidence from manorial surveys of 1189, 1239, 1260, 1317 and 1325 and all extant court and account (compotus) rolls pertaining to the manors of Shapwick with Moorlinch, Ashcott, Walton, Street and Greinton in the…
There is scope for clarifying characteristics that distinguish small towns in the Middle Ages both from larger and lesser settlements and from each other. This will involve investigating their economy, their role in their area and their social…
The aim of this thesis is to examine the origins and function of medieval Rothley, Leicestershire, its manorial holdings, its soke and its parish. Later maps and both later and earlier written sources were examined to elucidate these elements and …