Parks in the Hertfordshire landscape: the wider implications

Rowe, Anne (2020) Parks in the Hertfordshire landscape: the wider implications. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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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.

In addition to providing arenas for elite hunting, parks became increasingly important as ornamental landscapes around major houses and the sixteenth century witnesses the dawning of landscape design in Hertfordshire. Parks provided the settings for some historically important gardens and surviving field archaeology for several of these – from Tudor times to the eighteenth century – has been recorded and published. Further aspects of parkland management have also been explored, including the prevalence of rabbit warrens and the management of parkland trees.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Publication
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of History
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	10 Dec 2020 14:30
Last Modified:	10 Dec 2020 14:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/77949
DOI:

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