Interpreting the Landscape

Landscape Archaeology and Local History

Michael Aston

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134746309
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: Social Sciences

Most places in Britain have had a local history written about them. Up until this century these histories have addressed more parochial issues, such as the life of the manor, rather than explaining the features and changes in the landscape in a factual manner. Much of what is visible today in Britain's landscape is the result of a chain of social and natural processes, and can be interpreted through fieldwork as well as from old maps and documents. Michael Aston uses a wide range of source material to study the complex and dynamic history of the countryside, illustrating his points with aerial photographs, maps, plans and charts. He shows how to understand the surviving remains as well as offering his own explanations for how our landscape has evolved.

1

How do we know what we know?

The fact that there is likely to be an earlier local history of any particular parish has already been mentioned and will certainly be useful. What other sources are there for the history of the landscape? Where should we go to consult them or find out more, and what can we expect to learn from them? There are really five main categories of information – archaeology, aerial photography, maps, local history and related studies – and in this chapter we shall look at each of these and see what they can tell us.

ARCHAEOLOGY

A certain amount may be known about the archaeology of the area to be examined, and much else can be learnt from other sources discussed below. Most people do not realise that for most of the country no detailed archaeological fieldwork has ever been carried out and that there has usually been little, if any, recent excavation on any of the known archaeological sites in any area. The present lack of resources and the few archaeologists mean that this situation is not likely to alter in the near future and therefore a very real contribution can be made by the local fieldworker carrying out a parish survey or piece of landscape history research.

The Archaeology Division of the Ordnance Survey (which is now part of the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England)) has, over the years, compiled a monumental record of most of the known sites and finds in the country. If such archaeological features as hillforts, barrows, castle mounds or monastic sites exist in an area, these will be recorded on the OS Archaeology Division Record cards. The central repository is in Southampton, but there is another complete set in London (National Monuments Record) and there is usually a county set in the County Museum, Record Office, Local History Library, or with the County Archaeologist. The OS records, however, do not record extensive areas of earthworks or early landscape features associated with the post-Roman period, and they are not concerned with the myriad odd features encountered in fieldwork which go so far to aid understanding of landscape development. Nevertheless, the record provides a good starting point if there are any major field monuments in the area under study.

Most counties now have some sort of Sites and Monuments Record, usually housed in the County Planning Department or the County Museum, and this tends to be based on the OS Archaeology Division records with further information added. Such records contain detailed 6–inch OS maps marked up with symbols of early sites and historic landscape features, together with collections of aerial photographs, ground surveys, references to museum collections, and so on. They provide a direct introduction to the existence of other material about the sites in an area and where this can be found, and the people in charge can often say how up-to-date parts of the record are and which areas of a county need more fieldwork, aerial survey and local history research.

How can these records aid our work of understanding the landscape? It is useful to know that there are field monuments of the Bronze or Iron Ages, or that a Roman villa has been found, or that there is a Norman church next to a motte and bailey castle, since each of these sites has implications for the landscape. Visits to them will often reveal further, less obvious, field evidence which has not so far been appreciated. Similarly, a collection of early pottery listed in such a record may indicate a site which can only be more fully understood when further investigation takes place. The record, then, can provide a beginning or base point for further work.

References to previous excavations contained in such records may be particularly useful. Even casual references to collections of pottery of a particular date or type, or the recorded depth of the bedrock in a certain spot, may help to indicate landscape changes. More detailed or large-scale recent excavations are likely to have revealed a great deal of information about the local landscape. This is particularly true where excavations have been accompanied by pollen or snail analysis or other environmental sampling, or where specialists have contributed reports on the local geology, soil or geomorphological changes or the botanical history of the area.

Palaeo-environmental evidence is becoming increasingly important and has great implications for the study of landscape history. Even though nothing may have been done on your area, it is important to appreciate the potential. Unless an expert is conducting research in your area it is unlikely that you will be able to learn much of the detail of local changes, although much more will be known of the environmental changes in the landscape in future from this type of data than from almost anything else, especially for the earlier periods. The chapter on prehistoric and Roman landscapes will show just how much can be found out.

The archaeological evidence so far discussed will provide a general background to the major field monuments and archaeological sites in the area and, if we are lucky, more detailed information from the occasional excavation or piece of environmental research will help. How can we supplement this, obtain a fuller picture and see the relationship of individual sites to the rest of the landscape? Various methods will be described below, and further excavation will add much new information. Fieldwork, simply and effectively carried out, will certainly provide one of the most cost-effective sources of additional information. Unlike excavation, it is non-destructive, leaving much of the evidence intact for future generations of researchers.

Fieldwork

Fieldwork at its most basic involves walking across the landscape recording features seen on the ground. In this section we are concerned with man-made features, but it is often difficult to separate these from natural aspects. It is thus advisable to record geological and botanical information as well; more will be said of this later.

Certain basic preparations need to be made before commencing fieldwork. Before work can begin, permission must be obtained from the farmer or landowner, and it is worth spending some time explaining to the owner what you are trying to achieve. Contacts and friendly introductions can smooth the path and gain access to some of the more private estates.

While compasses and survival kit are not generally necessary in this country, good footwear and warm waterproof clothing are essential. Since the best field-work is carried out in the winter (for reasons which will be explained below), rubber Wellington boots with several layers of socks are the best footwear: it is inevitable that streams and boggy ground will be encountered and stout walking shoes are not adequate. Similarly, layered clothing is best, because with exertion and our unpredictable climate a well-padded anorak is sometimes too heavy or too warm. A thin and a thick pullover, with a windproof and/or waterproof overlayer is best, enabling the maximum combination of layers for warmth and protection against wind or rain or both. Waterproof trousers that reduce to a pocket-sized parcel are also advisable.

Maps will be discussed below in more detail, but for fieldworking the 6–inch (1:10000) is the best widely available scale, although the

–inch (1:25000) should be carried for the general locality and the 25–inch (1:2500) map for detail of a small area. With the wide availability of photocopying machines, it is useful to have copies of the relevant bits of the map to mark on in the field. With modern maps there are copyright problems and so, as will be explained below, the first edition OS 6–inch maps of the 1880s are generally used. It is a pity that the OS do not produce a 12–inch to the mile (i.e. 1:5000) map, since this would be ideal, combining the detail of the large-scale maps with the page size of the

–inch or I–inch maps. If you have access to map reducing or enlarging facilities, and particularly if you are working in an urban or suburban area, this is a scale well worth considering.

In order to protect such maps while working in the field, plastic dockets of A4 size or thereabouts should be carried, together with a board to write on. It is not worth buying anything expensive, because a piece of hardboard which can go in the plastic docket with some metal clips (foldback not bulldog) is cheaper and much better. A notebook, or better still sheets of paper which can be filed together or separately, with a selection of pencils, hard and soft, coloured crayons, a penknife and rubber, should also be carried. Plastic bags will be needed for finds of pottery and other objects picked up from ploughed areas. Driving to the area in which you are interested is quite acceptable, but there is no substitute for walking across the landscape.

Your records should be intelligible to anyone else if they are to be of any value. Always work as if you are about to drop dead – date and sign your work, put on scales, north signs and adequate keys; complete cross-referencing should be clearly marked. Days later you may not remember what it all means.

Earthworks

So, what are we looking for? Almost anything you see may be useful, but there are obvious categories of evidence. Earthworks provide perhaps the greatest source of information, particularly for the more recent periods. Almost any bump, lump or hollow has something to tell us, even if it is of little significance. There are, however, a few rules of thumb to remember. Firstly, even though the mound or feature you have found, recorded, and even surveyed, may look like a typical example of a certain type of site, without further research (or even excavation) it is usually impossible to tell. The few field archaeological manuals that are available lead one to think that every mound is explicable, although usually only four out of five features recognised on any reconnaissance are easily identifiable as particular types of archaeological feature.

Secondly, areas of earthworks, while looking homogeneous today, may in fact have originated at widely different times for varying reasons. A site which at first seems to be a monastic complex, with good quality earthworks but no standing building, may in fact have earthworks of an abandoned village which predate the monastery, and the terraces and gardens of a post-dissolution mansion all mixed up with the obvious monastic earthworks. The present view is like looking at the stars – in one view many ages are seen (Fig. 26).

Finally, to work in isolation from the field evidence alone is likely to prove misleading. Adequate preparation with the maps indicating field names, local geology and something of the local history of the area can help avoid some of the worst ‘elephant traps’ of explanation into which we are all liable to fall from time to time.

There are a number of text books which assist in the identification of archaeological field monuments and areas of early landscape and it is not a skill easily taught in a book like this one. The best advice for the fieldworker is to be persistent, visiting as many types of field monuments, in as many different seasons and parts of the country as possible. If sites are visited that are already well recorded and even fully excavated, it will prove easier to recognise similar features and landscapes in other areas. Later chapters will assist in such work, but without the acquired expertise and appropriate local background research, it is easy to be misled.

Round mounds

Let us take, as an example, the case of round mounds. Most archaeological textbooks and manuals on field techniques give the impression that all round earthen mounds that a fieldworker may encounter are round barrows of the prehistoric Bronze Age. This is partly because there are many of them, especially in the areas traditionally of interest to field archaeologists, such as the chalk uplands of Wessex and Sussex and other uplands like the Peak District and the North Yorkshire Moors. It is also a reflection of the interest of most fieldworkers (certainly until the 1950s) in the prehistoric and Roman evidence, almost to the exclusion of everything later, and also of the focus of attention on specific archaeological sites rather than wider landscape implications.

In fact, there are many features in the landscape which end up as round mounds and most of them are not prehistoric burial mounds! Indeed, since the work of Leslie Grinsell (cataloguing barrows county by county across southern England), it is unlikely that large numbers of such sites will be found from now on; those that do turn up are likely to be degraded or damaged examples. What else, then, can round earthen mounds represent, and how can the fieldworker get clues to their original or previous use?

A host of recent activities has resulted in round mounds being constructed. In the Second World War, for example, ‘decoy towns’ were built to attract enemy bombers away from city targets. One of these remains at Black Down on the Mendips, south of Bristol. Here, parallel lines of small mounds about I am (39 m) in height run for long distances across the heathland. Nearby is a large air-raid shelter, and the lines of mounds run confusingly through a prominent prehistoric barrow cemetery! The site was one of a number of decoys in the West Country and fires were lit on the mounds to create the impression from above of pathfinders’ flares and burning buildings. Not far away on North Hill at Minehead in Somerset another piece of moorland has many larger earthen mounds, some with hollows in the top. This looks like a large spread-out barrow cemetery, but there are triangular ‘courses’ and the remains of a tank turret and shells to indicate the site's real use as a Second World War tank-training range. The most prominent earthworks were mobile target tracks with underground blockhouses at one end. It is, thus, important to recognise that features from the 1939–45 war have now become ‘archaeological’, and care in interpretation needs to be applied by the fieldworker.

From earlier crises, and more primitive methods of solving them, came beacons. In the West Country many hilltops were used for signalling purposes and the fires or fire baskets were often placed on mounds. Confusingly, some barrows were used for this purpose, such as Cothelstone Beacon and Westbury Beacon in Somerset, and it is not clear how much, or little, of the earlier structure was disturbed. Frequently, the beacon use has entered the local folklore to the exclusion of earlier and later use of the sites.

This use and re-use of sites at all periods poses very real problems for the fieldworker. Without excavation it is impossible to say what, or how many, uses a round mound may have had. For example, in the Middle Ages round mounds were built for early castles and to support windmills. In either case, earlier barrows could have been used for the later structure. Thus, at Brinklow in Warwickshire there is a fine motte and bailey castle of Norman date, but its motte stands on a ridge and may originally have been the ‘low’ or burial mound of the place name. Many early mottes of small Norman castles were interpreted on early OS maps as barrows, and though it is impossible to tell without excavation, the context of some of these sites may be significant. Less substantial earthworks demarcating the bailey and other subsidiary enclosures may have gone unnoticed. Yet, even if they are disguised under later hedges or within present–day properties, they can often still be detected and recorded. Field names help, but the main feature is that many of them are near to early churches and sometimes associated with village earthworks. A small mound 1–2 metres (3–6 feet) high at Rochford in Worcestershire is almost certainly a small castle motte, even though it is nearly cut in half by the river Teme and has had fruit trees planted on it. It stands next to the local church, which has a fine ‘Tree of Life’ tympanum over the Norman doorway.

Similarly, windmills were invariably built on hills, or at least locally prominent spots – just the sort of places to find earlier barrows. At Stoke St Gregory in Somerset a fine mound on a hill overlooking the Levels could easily be a barrow. As at other windmill sites, the local field name Windmill Hill and the characteristic cross-shaped hollow in the top help in interpretation. The latter feature is the ghost of the ‘cross-trees’ used to support the post mills, but barrow-robbing, with treasure-hunting holes dug in earlier times into the centres, could result in a similar feature being formed.

The conversion to Christian use of earlier pagan sites often meant the incorporation of earlier features into churchyards. Maxey Church in Northamptonshire is almost certainly built on a barrow, one of several in the locality. The others are now ploughed out and appear as cropmarks, or have been dug away in gravel extraction. However, at Berwick in Sussex a round mound sits in the churchyard next to the medieval church – probably an earlier pagan feature taken over in early missionary activity.

A number of other mounds formed the meeting places of the hundred courts in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and perhaps earlier. Frequently, this fact is reflected in the later hundred names, such as Swan-borough in Wiltshire and Secklow in Buckinghamshire (Fig. 18). Occasionally the mound remains, as at these sites, and also at King's Standing by Sutton Park on the outskirts of Birmingham.

Medieval fishponds are increasingly being recognised. Although usually dry, they remain as grassed hollows, sometimes with prominent dams. Again, the context is important, for a number have round mounds in the bottom which ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Acknowledgements
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 How do we know what we know?
• 2 Early landscapes
• 3 Estates and boundaries
• 4 Status in the landscape
• 5 Deserted villages and after
• 6 Surviving villages
• 7 Farms and hamlets
• 8 Sites and patterns
• 9 Land uses
• 10 Field systems
• 11 Communications – the links between
• 12 What does it all mean?
• Bibliography and references
• Index