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Medieval settlement relocation in West Cambridgeshire: three case-studies
Planned nucleated settlement (often hand in hand with the creation of open fields) and subsequent settlement shift is a recognised common component in the complex development of the medieval landscape in much of central and southern England.
This paper takes three examples of settlement over earlier arable in west Cambridgeshire. In each case examination has suggested that sites, initially supposed to have represented the initial late Saxon nucleation, should be reinterpreted as relocations to new sites overlying open field furlongs, often soon after the Conquest. In each case, too, the evidence demonstrates a complex process in which the regularity of an underlying field system has been overlain by the additional regularity of a relocated planned settlement from a previous settlements), evidence for the site(s) of which is yet to be discovered.
The sites discussed here suggest that in Cambridgeshire some settlement re-planning seems to have followed from the reorganisation of land—particularly sokeman land—into new Norman manors, hand in hand with the re-ordering of the social hierarchy.
Until we know more about the predecessors of these secondary villages, we cannot say whether settlements in these parishes remained dispersed or were nucleated at the time that this open field landscape was laid out. Further, apparently primary nucleated settlements in open field areas need careful examination to distinguish them from settlements where villages appear to have moved or been moved onto open field land—in different periods and for a wide variety of reasons—from earlier dispersed and/or nucleated sites.
Medieval settlement relocation in West Cambridgeshire: three case-studies
Planned nucleated settlement (often hand in hand with the creation of open fields) and subsequent settlement shift is a recognised common component in the complex development of the medieval landscape in much of central and southern England.
This paper takes three examples of settlement over earlier arable in west Cambridgeshire. In each case examination has suggested that sites, initially supposed to have represented the initial late Saxon nucleation, should be reinterpreted as relocations to new sites overlying open field furlongs, often soon after the Conquest. In each case, too, the evidence demonstrates a complex process in which the regularity of an underlying field system has been overlain by the additional regularity of a relocated planned settlement from a previous settlements), evidence for the site(s) of which is yet to be discovered.
The sites discussed here suggest that in Cambridgeshire some settlement re-planning seems to have followed from the reorganisation of land—particularly sokeman land—into new Norman manors, hand in hand with the re-ordering of the social hierarchy.
Until we know more about the predecessors of these secondary villages, we cannot say whether settlements in these parishes remained dispersed or were nucleated at the time that this open field landscape was laid out. Further, apparently primary nucleated settlements in open field areas need careful examination to distinguish them from settlements where villages appear to have moved or been moved onto open field land—in different periods and for a wide variety of reasons—from earlier dispersed and/or nucleated sites.
Medieval settlement relocation in West Cambridgeshire: three case-studies
Oosthuizen, Susan (author)
Landscape History ; 19 ; 43-55
1997-01-01
13 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
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