1st October 1998 - 30th September 2002
ESRC Studentship
This thesis explores the development, organisation and regional distribution of field systems and other field arrangements in the West Riding of Yorkshire between the eleventh and mid-fourteenth centuries, during a period of demographic expansion and extension of margins of cultivation. The analysis switches the geographical focus of research away from the regular or ‘Midland’ field systems of eastern Yorkshire and other lowland areas to the much less extensively studied 'non-Midland' systems of the upland areas. The main themes of the research include the investigation of the morphology, operation and development of irregular field systems and their place in theories about lines of development; the changing form, function, organisation and scale of field arrangements during the high middle ages, and the relationship between settlement pattern and field arrangements.
The West Riding has good contemporary medieval documentary coverage. The research uses published and unpublished medieval deeds and cartularies as its primary source. The general scope of enquiry will be limited to documents dated prior to the mid-fourteenth century, but later archival material - terriers, detailed surveys and strip maps - will be used to support the earlier evidence. Feudal Aids and Kirkby's Inquest, Inquisitions Post Mortem and extents, Lay subsidies and the 1377 and 1379 Poll Tax assessment will be used to give a broad picture of medieval feudal, social, demographic structure and wealth levels. The use of GIS techniques, linking attribute data, such as wealth or population figures, with digital spatial data, will produce an accurate contextual framework for the research.
Because of the vast amount of documentary source material, disadvantaged by its incomplete geographical coverage, findings will be presented within a three-tiered framework. The historically distinct county of the West Riding of Yorkshire provides the top level of this framework. At the next level are general overviews of field arrangements in four regions of the West Riding, which represent the different environments of the upland Pennines, Pennine foothills, Vale of York and Marshlands. And finally the lowest level will explore the research themes within these different regional contexts by using detailed local case studies, of small groups of well-documented townships. Thus, the upland Pennines and Pennine foothills or intermediate zones of the West Riding are appropriate for particular study because of their late colonisation and/or staggered and somewhat partial development of field arrangements during the High Middle Ages.