Making Of The English Landscape

This book is a little stuffy, as many British writers of this genre tend to be. Nonetheless, it's an interesting guide and it seems to be well researched.

William George Hoskins (1908-1992) was a pioneering figure in the field of English local history, and in 1965 was appointed as the first ever university professor in that discipline (at the University of Leicester). This book, first published in 1955, has become something of a classic of its kind. I bought it in the 1970s Pelican edition when I came across it recently in a second-hand bookshop, largely for the purposes of comparison with Oliver Rackham's more recent work "The History of the Countryside". The two works cover slightly different ground. Hoskins (as his title indicates) limits himself to England, and does not touch on Wales, Scotland or Ireland; Rackham covers the whole of the British Isles, although in practice he deals with England in greater detail than the other three countries. Rackham (as his title indicates) confines himself to the countryside, whereas Hoskins also covers industrial and urban landscapes, and even in rural areas deals with villages and the built environment as well as woods and farmland. Their methodologies are also different. Rackham devotes a chapter to each different type of rural habitat- woodland, fields, heathland, moorland, marshes, etc, whereas Hoskins' book is written in chronological order from prehistoric times to the twentieth century. A key moment for Professor Hoskins was what he calls the "English Settlement"- the coming of the Anglo-Saxon invaders in the fifth century AD, after the withdrawal of the Roman legions. Few features of the modern English landscape can, in his view, be attributed to the Roman or pre-Roman period. Each succeeding age, however, has left a mark which still survives. The Saxons' great contribution was the English village; most of the population in Romano-British times either lived in towns and cities or in isolated hamlets and farmsteads. A few new settlements were founded in the Middle Ages, chiefly in upland districts or those with poor soil, which were consequently the last to be settled, but outside the industrial areas most of the settlements in existence today were founded between the fifth and eleventh centuries and mentioned in the Domesday Book. Like Dr Rackham, Professor Hoskins tends to concentrate on some parts of England more than others. In his case there is a particular emphasis on the East Midlands; Rutland may be the smallest county in England but more space is devoted to it in this book than to larger counties such as Cumberland, Hampshire or Norfolk. One reason for this emphasis may be that Hoskins (originally from Devon) lived and worked for a long time in Leicestershire, but another may be that it was this area, more than any other, which was affected by the Enclosure Acts of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Although he does not use those terms, Hoskins makes a distinction similar to the one Rackham was to make between "Ancient Countryside" and "Planned Countryside". In the "peripheral areas" of England- the south-west peninsula,

The best introduction to the evolution of the the English landscape. For professionals, students, travelers and all who seek to understand the processes - natural and human - behind the scenery, this is the best place to start. Erudite and readable with great photos and illustrations. Must take it with you on your next visit.