The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

• 270 • Ian Whyte
LANDSCAPE
Approaches to the study of landscape have been largely empirical and qualitative, with explanations
usually grounded in economic change. From the sixteenth century, with the advent of more
detailed written surveys and estate plans, it becomes possible to quantify rates of landscape
change, measuring changes in elements like boundaries, field and holding sizes, and different
categories of land use, but such approaches are still at a pioneer stage (Hunn 1994).
The pace of landscape change over much of England was continuous, though accelerating,
from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century. However, there were often sharp contrasts
between adjacent parishes, some of which were enclosed in Tudor or Stuart times while others
remained in open field until the early nineteenth century. In Lowland Scotland, the medieval
landscape of scattered fermtouns and infield-outfield survived with only limited changes into the
eighteenth century. Landscape change, beginning on the home farms of some estates in the later
seventeenth century, continued through the first half of the eighteenth century but accelerated
dramatically from the 1760s. The countryside in most parts of the Lowlands was transformed
within two generations, leading to the observation that the Scottish rural landscape is one of
revolution rather than evolution.
The greatest visual change in the British countryside between the sixteenth and the nineteenth
centuries involved enclosure, with a shift from communal farming in open fields to individual
decision making (Butlin 1982). By the end of our period, only a few open field systems were left,
including the famous example at Laxton in Nottinghamshire. In the past, the emphasis of landscape
change has been on Parliamentary Enclosure in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
as part of a package of developments conventionally labelled the ‘Agricultural Revolution’. More
recently, it has been realized that enclosure in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, often
piecemeal and poorly documented, was more important in changing the landscape in many areas.
Unfortunately, while it is possible to estimate how much enclosure was accomplished before
Parliamentary Enclosure, it is much harder to determine how much of this post dated 1500.
Although Tudor enclosure brought population displacement and social problems to parts of
Lowland England, in other districts, such as Lancashire, Cumbria, and the Welsh borders, many
open field systems, less extensive and less complex in their organization, were enclosed
unobtrusively by private agreement, often over several generations (Porter 1980). Extensive areas
in the Home Counties were enclosed early under the influence of the London market. In the
later seventeenth and early eighteenth century, a similar process affected the country around the
rapidly growing industrial area of Tyneside. The build-up of population during the sixteenth
century encouraged the enclosure of land from waste by unauthorized squatting in some upland
and wood pasture areas, producing patterns of small, irregular enclosures similar to medieval
assarts (intakes from the waste), often easy to identify in the landscape but frequently difficult to
date.
By the early seventeenth century, the government had dropped its opposition to enclosure. In
succeeding decades, schemes proceeded more commonly by agreement than by the dictates of
individual landowners. The seventeenth century also witnessed substantial reclamation of land,
particularly in the Fens where some 142,000 ha of land were drained between the 1630s and
1670s. The Dutch engineers’ work in digging a new channel for the Bedford River 21 m wide and
34 km long was a major engineering achievement. Shrinkage of the drying peat surface created
drainage problems that were tackled by the construction of hundreds of windmills. There was
also considerable reclamation of heathland and low-lying clay soils at this period. Another
innovation, the floating of water meadows, has left many traces in the present landscape of
counties like Dorset, Hampshire and Wiltshire.