Parks in the Hertfordshire Landscape: the Wider Implications
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of East Anglia digital repository Parks in the Hertfordshire landscape: the wider implications Linda Anne Rowe BSc Special Hons, MStud (Cantab) Doctor of Philosophy by Publication University of East Anglia School of History March 2020 This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived therefrom must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. Abstract The history of the Hertfordshire landscape and, in particular, the history of its deer parks has been a primary interest and focus of my research for the past thirty years, resulting in a significant number and range of publications. This commentary sets the findings of that research into the wider historiographical framework of parks scholarship, demonstrating its contribution to our growing understanding of an important aspect of landscape history. Extensive archival research combined with a multi-disciplinary approach have resulted in the most comprehensive analysis of the deer parks of any county between the eleventh and seventeenth centuries, providing new, empirically based evidence of their continuing significance and purpose over many centuries. The Hertfordshire data provides new insights into the relationship between the distribution of early parks and woodland, the continued importance of parks throughout the Middle Ages and into the Early Modern period, the variations in the extent of imparkment over time, both in terms of numbers and acreage, the social status of the park owners, the influence of London and of the hunting monarchs.
[Show full text]