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Home > Hertfordshire Publications Landscape history > Hertfordshire
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Hertfordshire

A landscape history

Author: Anne Rowe, Tom Williamson

Price: £18.99 (free postage)

"

“The University of Hertfordshire has become an important publisher of landscape studies. Their distinctive black and white jackets now raise expectations of ground-breaking work in this field, and - with their reasonable prices – they populate many university reading lists. Like many good publishers (and indeed good universities), they have sought to build links with communities in which they sit, through imprints aimed specifically at the local market, and UHP have published ‘‘Hertfordshire Publications’’ for many years. Some of these books justify a more than local audience and Rowe and Williamson’s offering is one of these.”

-David Stocker,
International Journal of Regional and Local History

About the book

More than three decades after the publication of Lionel Munby's seminal work The Hertfordshire Landscape, Anne Rowe and Tom Williamson have produced an authoritative new study, based on their own extensive fieldwork and documentary investigations, as well as on the wealth of new research carried out over recent decades by others – both into Hertfordshire specifically, and into landscape history and archaeology more generally.

  • More about the book

    The authors examine in detail the historical processes that created the county's modern physical environment, discussing such things as the form and location of settlements; the character of fields, woods and commons; and the distinctive local forms of churches, vernacular houses, and great mansions, along with their associated parks and gardens.

    Both the rural landscape and that of Hertfordshire's towns and suburbs have their particular stories to tell, and the book reveals how the landscape is itself an important source of information about the past.

    The great diversity of Hertfordshire's landscapes makes it a particularly rewarding county to study. Dividing the county into four broad regions – the 'champion' countryside in the north, the Chiltern dip slope to the west, the fertile boulder clays of the east and the heavy, unwelcoming London Clay in the south – the authors show how, in the course of the middle ages, natural characteristics influenced the development of land use and settlement to create a range of distinctive landscapes.

    Change was small-scale and piecemeal and the development of the medieval environment organic and gradual. The authors argue that even the layout of the county's medieval towns was usually the consequence of gradual growth, rather than of deliberate 'planning'.

    Variations in farming economies, in patterns of trade and communication, as well as in the extent of London's influence, all added to this variety in the course of the post-medieval centuries, and the authors track Hertfordshire's continuing evolution right through to the twenty-first century.

  • Read a sample chapter

    Read an extract from Hertfordshire

  • About the Author/s:

    Anne Rowe

    Anne Rowe is a landscape historian and the author of Medieval Parks of Hertfordshire (reprinted 2019). She co-ordinates the research work of the Hertfordshire Gardens Trust.

    An active researcher of the Hertfordshire landscape, Anne has contributed several entries to the county’s Historical Atlas (2011) and lectures on various aspects of landscape and garden history.

    She has co-ordinated the Research Group of the Hertfordshire Gardens Trust since 1998 and represents the Trust on the executive committee of the Hertfordshire Association for Local History.

    Anne is an active member of the Braughing Archaeology Group, helping with field-walking surveys. She also takes a keen interest in the natural environment and regularly contributes to national bird and bat surveys.


    Tom Williamson

    Tom Williamson is Professor of Landscape History at the University of East Anglia. He has written widely on landscape archaeology, agricultural history, and the history of landscape design.

    He has extensive experience not only of archaeological and documentary research, but also of applying historical information in the conservation, restoration and interpretation of historic landscapes.

    Tom has worked on numerous occasions on legal cases, providing reports in rights of way and boundary disputes, and appearing in court as an expert witness.

    Other titles by this author

    • Hertfordshire: A landscape history – with Anne Rowe
    • The Origins of Hertfordshire
    • Rethinking Ancient Woodland - with Gerry Barnes
    • Trees in England - with Gerry Barnes and Toby Pillatt

ISBN: 978-1-909291-00-3 Format: Paperback, 320pp Published: Jun 2013

Other titles you may enjoy

Tudor and Early Stuart Parks of Hertfordshire
Tudor and Early Stuart Parks of Hertfordshire
Saving the People's Forest
Saving the People's Forest
Passing Through
Passing Through
Humphry Repton in Hertfordshire
Humphry Repton in Hertfordshire

Any questions

Contact us at UH Press if you have any queries or would like to find out more about this book.

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