hoskins' england class 5

W.G. Hoskins and the Making of the English Landscape

Class 5. An excess of sheep. Tudor and Georgian England.

Tutor: Keith Challis

hoskins-england.blogspot.co.uk

Recap: Last Week (Awaiting the Sound of a human voice)

The Colonization of Medieval England• The landscape of 1086• The clearing of woodland• Marsh, Fen and Moor• Buildings in a Landscape

The Black Death and After• The abandonment of villages• New colonization• New buildings

60 years on: Critique of Hoskins and a counterpoint

Hoskins’s England hoskins-england.blogspot.co.uk

Class Summary

• Hoskins Rural Idyll (?)• Tudor to Georgian England• 60 years on: Critique of Hoskins and a counterpoint

Coffee Break

• Historic mapping and Map Regression• Laxton Group project: Working with historic

mapping, Mark Pearce’s map of 1635


Structure

Class Summary Learning Outcomes

• Understand Hoskins’s view of the main trends in 16th-18th century rural England

• Appreciate how more recent ideas and evidence have challenged Hoskins’s orthodoxy

• Explore the use of old maps through map regression


Section 1: Tudor to Georgian England

Tudor to Georgian England

Hoskins’s Rural Idyll

• More than any other period this captures the essence of Hoskins’s England

• “The narrow margin between a hard life and death from starvation, which had haunted so many generations…had widened with the bringing into cultivation of millions more acres of land” (p163)

• The Stuart or Georgian yeoman reached for a book in the evenings, rather than for the axe or mattock of his forebears” (p163)




• A conscious romanticising of the past…

• “There was plenty of scope for poachers of fish and game, and plenty of fresh air and space for everybody, and silence if they wanted it. No industrial smoke, nothing faster on the roads than a horse, no incessant noises from the sky: only three million people all told, spread thinly about the country…how infinitely more pleasant a place England the was for the majority of her people!” (p 139)




• The contrast with the hated present of the mid 20th century

• “Few boys lived beyond easy walking distance of thick woodland, or of wild and spacious heaths where they could work off freely the animal energies that in the twentieth century lead too many of them in the foul and joyless towns into the juvenile courts” (p139)




Hoskins’s Rural Idyll• Hoskins’s archetypal story has its roots in this

period.

• How much does his romantic vision cloud his judgement?


Chapter 5. Structure

• The Landscape in 1500

• The Enclosure of the Midland Fields

• The Flowering of Rural England

• Country Houses and Parks



The Landscape in 1500

• “The most striking single aspect of the English landscape at the beginning of the sixteenth century was that there were about three sheep to every human being”

• An almost finished landscape struggling to reach its final great state

• Dominated by woodland and pasture

• Still wild in large part• Governed and shaped by

seigniorial interests (depopulation, enclosure, emparking)



The Enclosure of the Midlands Fields

• Enclosure, beginning in the late middle ages, is a new force in the landscape

• Population decline and agricultural reorganisation drive the trend

• Early enclosure by agreement is resisted by authority and law

• Post 1660 enclosure embraced by government



The Flowering of Rural England

• The 16th century ushered in an period of unprecedented economic and social stability

• Rural incomes increased• Wealthy landowners and

yeoman farmers invested income in new styles and sophistication in building

• Medieval dwellings were swept away by this great rebuilding



Country Houses and Parks

• Political stability made the castle obsolete

• Wealthy landowners invested in new county houses centred in increasingly designed landscapes

• Creation of deer parks and agricultural innovation together led to depopulation of villages

• Houses became increasingly ostentatious



• Discussion…


Section 2: Sixty Years on. Critique and Counterpoint


The Myth of the Great Rebuilding• Hoskins’s great rebuilding is now generally

considered to be only the most visible of a series of continuous rebuildings affecting rural dwellings

• Contrary to Hoskins’s assertion archaeology demonstrates the substantial survival of pre-15 th century rural houses, often much modified

• Archaeology provides evidence of waves of rebuildings from the early Saxon period onward



Aesthetics of Landscape

• Hoskins underplays the impact of new aesthetics of landscape on the designed landscapes of great houses

No mention for…

• Towns

• Rural industry

• Agricultural innovation



Coffee Break


Section 3: Historic Mapping and Map Regression

Map regression involves comparing maps drawn up at different dates, to understand changes over time. Modern and old Ordnance Survey, tithe, enclosure and estate maps can all be used for this purpose. Map regression can be used for a number of purposes:

• To understand and determine those features that have changed and those that have not.

• To locate features which may be on earlier maps but have vanished from modern maps.

• To determine the phases of a building, although there can be inaccuracies on maps when recording buildings especially on the earlier types of maps.

• To identify field and other boundaries, trackways and roads, as well as locating particular features.


Using Historic Mapping: Map Regression

How is map regression done?

Start with the most recent map, such as a modern Ordnance Survey map and gradually work back through time comparing the relevant maps.

Map regression is made simpler if all the maps have been reduced or enlarged to the same scale. Maps can then be overlaid.

A good starting point is to identify a number of features or structures, which have not changed, as this provides a framework from which to start locating other features and comparing maps.



1609 (Sherwood Map) 1610 1677

1744 1844 1861

Modern 1861



Modern 1861

Work on small areas!



Modern 1744



Modern 1610



Self Assessment

Learning Outcomes• Have a better understanding of the principal

themes of the b16th-18th century countryside• Critically assess the extent to which Hoskins’s

romantic view of the countryside coloured his judgement

• Recognise challenges to Hoskins’s ideas, such as the great rebuilding

• Feel able to work with comparative study of old maps


Further Study

Suggested Reading

• The making of the English Landscape chapter 6 • Pryor’s Making of the British Landscape

Self Study Themes• Work with the maps of Laxton published on the

website to explore maps regression


hoskins' england class 5

Documents

georgian englandthe

georgian englandtudor

georgian yeoman

parkshoskinss england

counterpointhoskinss

georgian englandchapter

place england

map regressionhoskinss