West Midlands Regional Research Framework for Archaeology, Seminar 4: Hooke
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The Early Medieval Landscape
Della Hooke
The University of Birmingham
D.Hooke.1@bham.ac.uk
Sources of evidence
Historical documentation increases dramatically in the early medieval period, largely in
the form of place-names and charters, although it is also possible to work back from later
evidence. Such sources, for the first time, provide evidence for territorial organisation —
ranging from the 7th-century kingdoms down through the folk regions within them (such
as those of the Husmeræ in north-west Worcestershire, the Pencersæte and Tomsæte of
Staffordshire and the Wreocensæte of southern Shropshire), culminating in the
fragmentation which led first to the so-called ‘multiple’ or composite estates and then,
within these, to the smaller Anglo-Saxon estates. In these, we see the emergence of the
township communities and proto-manors which were themselves to be the building
blocks of the ecclesiastical parishes. At the beginning of the period, the region was still a
meeting place of boundaries rather than a recognisable entity, although the Hwiccan and
Magonsætan kingdoms were ultimately to be drawn into Mercia and in the 8th century
the construction of Offa’s dyke may have been a statement of political power against the
remaining Welsh kingdoms, particularly that of Powys (Fig. 1).
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Fig. 1. Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the west
midlands (from Hooke 1985a, fig. 2).
It is also possible to see how some of the land units referred to here as ‘folk regions’
appear to have been based upon the availability of complementary resources — based
upon a river valley area but extending up to areas of seasonal pastures on hills or in
wooded regions, areas which were often used increasingly for hunting as the AngloSaxon period progressed (Hooke 1985a, p. 82, fig. 22). Such an arrangement can be seen
to underlie the links between the Warwickshire Arden and Feldon which were to survive
into the medieval period, expressed in the dependent manors or the ecclesiastical
chapelries of Arden which remained linked to Feldon estates. In north-west
Worcestershire, too, the region of the Husmeræ extended from the Stour valley around
Kidderminster north-eastwards towards the Clent and Lickey Hills. The territories of the
Pencersæte and the Tomsæte in Staffordshire also appear to have extended from riverine
heartlands southwards into the uplands that lay along the northern border of
Worcestershire and the Arden uplands of Warwickshire. How ancient such an
arrangement might be is still a source of conjecture but such resource management was
based upon regional differences which must have been present at a very early stage of
territorial definition. (Patterns of field layout and/or early drove roads may be an
expression of this surviving in many areas — see below, Fig. 7.) More recently,
Coplestone-Crow (1989) has been able to identify some of the units within the
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Magonsætan kingdom, interestingly much more fragmented than say, Warwickshire, —
just as it appears to have been in the late Iron Age.
Central places can be identified with a degree of confidence, many of them royal vills or
the sites of early minster foundations (often both). The latter served their respective
parochiae which were carved, often, from the identifiable folk regions. The early
minsters are most easily identified in the Hwiccan kingdom where records were
maintained by the Church of Worcester. The use of stone in early church buildings is one
of the significant features in the early medieval period, when most buildings appear to
have been of wood, and detailed analysis of church fabric and the origins of the materials
used is still in its early stages (for Wootton Wawen, see Bassett 1983; for other parts of
the country see Pearson & Potter 2002). The presence of early stone ecclesiastical
buildings in some number along the River Avon strongly suggests that water transport
may have been used for the carriage of such heavy materials as quarried stone (Pelteret
forthcoming; Hooke forthcoming a). The parochiae, too, get broken up as ‘manorial’
lords establish churches on their estates from the 9th century or so onwards.
Within this framework an attempt can be made to postulate models of rural settlement
patterns — with apparently dispersed farmsteads across the region at the beginning of the
period but with increasing nucleation around the new estate nuclei in the more heavily
populated areas of intensive crop-growing from about the late 8th or 9th century —
probably here the later date. These tend to coincide with the areas with the heaviest
concentration of Romano-British farmsteads and especially the valley lowlands. This is
particularly clear in Worcestershire and Warwickshire. In the former county, known
Romano-British settlements are clustered thickly to the south of the River Avon in the
region in which nucleation was to become the dominant pattern of settlement by
medieval times. The Warwickshire Feldon shows a similar pattern of development,
although the more upland Wolds form a region which may have been developed
somewhat later. In the west midland region, nucleation seems to have been a gradual
process, with settlements near estate boundaries still being recorded in Worcestershire’s
Vale of Evesham in the 11th century (settlements which had entirely disappeared by
medieval times) (Hooke 1985b). In the western parts of the region, manorial nuclei often
remained small and the impression from later evidence is that full nucleation only
developed and persisted in the more densely peopled valley and lowland regions,
probably at a date long after the Norman Conquest. But settlement evolution is relatively
fluid and the reconstruction of past patterns frequently fails to take sufficient heed of
failed or shrunken settlements: in particular, many of the defended mottes and castles
established in the Borderland were to give rise to new settlement nuclei, but these did not
always outlast the medieval period. This is a process that cries out for more
archaeological investigation. The levels of occupation in the earlier period remain
conjectural. Given the amount of ‘waste’ recorded in Domesday Book it is clear that
relations with the Welsh in the region did not improve after Offa and that the region was
to suffer continuously from their depredations for many centuries.
It will be left to others to discuss the burhs and towns of the region (see Baker’s paper)
but Worcester was to become the location for the bishopric that was to serve the kingdom
of the Hwicce, Hereford the ecclesiastical focus of the Magonsætan kingdom. Tamworth
was the accepted ‘capital’ of Offa in 8th-century Mercia. Defensive measures taken in the
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late ninth and tenth centuries against the Danes, culminating in the establishment of the
defended burhs, accentuated the importance of some of these centres and also led to the
establishment of the midland counties and the further development of the county towns.
Warwick, which had hitherto lain on the boundary between the Hwiccan kingdom and
Mercia became the centre of an entirely new territorial unit. The northern part of the
Magonsætan kingdom was taken into Shropshire with Shrewsbury as its focus. The
continued prosperity of these towns, however, rested as much on their economic as on
their administrative function and, indeed, marketing had played a major role in their
revenue from the outset (for Worcester, see Sawyer 1968, S 223), amply facilitated by a
well-established system of roads.
Where charters are available, one has details of the late Anglo-Saxon economy and land
use. One can reconstruct, for instance, the saltways radiating out from Droitwich (Fig. 2)
and interpret with some confidence the information provided about methods of
production and the location of the salt works (Hooke 1981a). Excavations have identified
some of the salt-working areas (Hurst 1989), and the great salt well at Upwich may have
been in use throughout most of the early medieval period as it was, alongside others at
Helperic and Middlewich, at the time of the Norman Conquest (Domesday Book, fo. 172;
Hooke 1981a). Although links westwards appear to have been weaker in the late Iron
Age, when Herefordshire appears to have made use of Cheshire salt, trade had been reestablished with Droitwich by the time of the Norman Conquest and it had been
suggested that the region had earlier supplied wood for the salt-pans at Droitwich, later
commuting payment in kind to a money render (Round, VCH Herefordshire I, 1908, pp.
295-6). In 1086, Leominster, for instance, was buying wood for salt making closer to
Droitwich itself. There are fewer recorded Droitwich salt rights in Shropshire at this time,
and none in Staffordshire, and it is likely that these counties drew their salt from
Cheshire.
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Fig. 2. Pre-Conquest saltways (from Hooke
1985a, fig. 31).
Much of the topographical evidence describing the Anglo-Saxon landscape is derived
from the boundary clauses that accompany many of the charters and those produced in
the Worcester scriptorium are particularly detailed. These provide a kind of ‘word-map’
of the countryside which allows regional patterns of land use to be confirmed:
▪ Areas of intensive crop-growing where fields — probably, by the end of the period,
open fields — extend as far as estate boundaries, with furrows marked out by the plough
dividing them from the lands of neighbouring settlements, as in the Vale of Evesham
(Hooke 1985a, ch. 6, pp. 190-226, Fig. 3).
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Fig, 3. The Vale of Evesham: pre-Conquest settlement and land use (from Hooke 1985a. fig. 49).
▪ Areas where there are pockets of open field around settlements but also fields enclosed
by hedgerows and with pockets of woodland surviving along estate boundaries. This kind
of countryside can be identified in central Worcestershire (ibid., ch. 7, pp. 227-47, Fig. 4)
but was probably characteristic, too, of much of the Border country.
▪ More remote areas, again with many ancient hedgerows, but with less cropped land and
probably a dispersed settlement pattern set amidst a more wooded countryside, together
with evidence of hunting areas, as in the Worcestershire region to the west of the Severn
(ibid., ch. 5, pp. 154-89, Fig. 5).
The weakness of this kind of documentation for settlement studies, however, is that the
clauses relate only to the land lying along boundaries. Nevertheless, information about
land use even in such boundary locations can be invaluable, especially if it throws any
light upon developing field systems. The earliest charter referring to gemænan lande
‘commonland’ rather surprisingly is that of Cofton Hacket and Alvechurch in AD 849 (S
1272, Hooke 1990, pp. 135-42) occurring in a contemporary boundary clause in a wellwooded and pastoral part of Worcestershire. ‘Dole land’ is noted in Clifford Chambers,
Warks, in AD 966 while subdivided strips appear to be suggested at the same date at
Alveston, Upper Stratford and Fachanleah, the charter (S 1310) noting ‘every other acre
on the divided hide’ at Upper Stratford and ‘every third acre of feld land’ at Fachanleah’.
‘Every third acre at Didcot (in Beckford)’ is recorded again in AD 967 (S 1314) and
‘every third acre of beanland on Bishop’s Hill’ at Bishopton, Stratford-on-Avon, in AD
1016 (S 1388). That the meadow land could also be subdivided by this date is indicated
by a 10th-century charter of Huddington, Worcs, referring ‘the fifth acre of dole (or
partible) meadow [belonging] to the hide’ in AD 975 (collected in Hooke 1988). It is
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clear from the documentation that open field agriculture was being practiced in parts of
the region by at least the late 9th and 10th century. This does not negate the evidence that
older alignments may have continued to influence field and road layout in many areas.
Fig. 4. Mid-Worcestershire estates: pre-Conquest settlement and land use (from Hooke 1985a, fig. 53).
Unfortunately, charters with boundary clauses are not abundant across the whole region,
providing the richest data for Worcestershire, where many estates were held by the
Church of Worcester (Hooke 1990, 1999), although two important groups of charters,
those relating to Wolverhampton minster and a Burton Abbey group, also survive for
Staffordshire (Hooke 1983). South-western Herefordshire is covered by charters recorded
in the Book of Llandâf dating from the late 6th to the 9th century, although none refer to
the northern part of Ergyng after the mid-ninth century (Davies 1978, pp. 25-6). Although
bounds do refer here to topographical features (especially streams), woods, and even
earthworks, identification of the individual land units remains difficult and the clearest is
perhaps that of Llangunville in Llanrothal parish beside the River Monnow (Book of
Llandâf, 171b; Coplestone-Crow 1989, p. 135); however, the bounds add little to our
knowledge of land use in the area in the ninth century. References to a ‘great wood’ at
Llandinabo (?Harewood) c.585, and woods at Llancillo on the north bank of the Monnow
and beside the River Gamber, the last two areas not well wooded today, seem to indicate
a rather more wooded environment in these areas in the early medieval period.
Place-names offer a more general outline of the nature of the countryside and have the
advantage of being ubiquitous. In particular, it is possible to identify regions that were
still well wooded although most woodland is likely to have been relatively open in
character and used for wood pasture. References to groves and the such-like may indicate
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smaller areas from which stock was excluded, at least periodically, in order to produce
timber (Wager 1998). Indeed, the combination of the leah term, indicating woodland with
names, on occasions, for crops etc, or sometimes with thorns and saplings, seems to
indicate a changing land use cycle.
Yet, with all this wealth of detail, much of which can still be discerned in the landscape,
conventional archaeological evidence is still frustratingly limited and many questions
remain unanswered:
Fig. 5. The Malvern region of
Worcestershire: features associated
with hunting and woodland (from
Hooke 1989, fig. 6).
1. Ethnicity and ethnic identity
At present DNA evidence is not available for the west midland region — the recent UCL
study (Weale et al. 2002) examined no places between the towns of Ashbourne in
Derbyshire and Abergele in north Wales — and apart from perhaps the north-east of the
region, where the results may indicate more Anglo-Saxons or Danes present in larger
numbers, a strong British presence is suspected over most of the region, together with
early Christianity. There are no records of any conversion of the Hwiccan kingdom and
Bassett (1989) has argued for the role of St Helen’s as the late Roman or British church at
the focus and foundation of Worcester’s ecclesiastical power. An origin as a British clas
church has also been claimed for Hereford, Leominster and Much Wenlock, and
Christianity seems to have been well established in the Welsh Borderland by the 6th
century. The ‘Welsh’ region of southern Herefordshire, Archenfield or Ergyng, has a
name developed from the Romano-British centre Ariconium, implying a once-larger
territory, and the Book of Llandâv suggests that it also extended further north-westwards
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as far as the River Wye (Coplestone-Crow 1989, 2-5). This region retained its own
bishops until the 10th century and it is not surprising to find place-names indicating
dedications to British saints in this area or that of Ewyas to the west. These include
Dewchurch, Lann Deui C7, (St Dewi), Foy, Lann Timoi C9 (St Moi), and Llancillo C7
(St Tyssilio) among others. Within ‘Anglo-Saxon’ regions, however, a number of *ecles
place-names may indicate the survival of a British Christian community in sub-Roman
Britain (Thomas 1981, 264). These are found beyond the ‘late’ Welsh regions in such
places as Eccleshall, Staffs,and Exhall near Alcester and Exhall near Coventry in
Warwickshire, all, significantly, to have later minster churches founded close by.
Pagan Anglo-Saxon cemeteries and burials certainly appear to diminish in number
westwards (Fig. 6) and relics of Romano-British pre-Christian belief are difficult to
disentangle (Hooke forthcoming). There is one ingas name in the region — the
Stoppingas of Wootton Wawen. This type of name seems to indicate land given to an
Anglo-Saxon leader and his followers relatively early on in the period of Anglo-Saxon
colonization, here apparently granted a block of land of about 50 hides across the
headwaters of the River Alne in Warwickshire (Fig. 7a). But who gave this land unit —
the British of the Alcester region (possibly belonging to the folk group known as the
Arosæte) or the Anglo-Saxons who seem to have preferred Bidford (where a major
Anglo-Saxon cemetery has been excavated on several occasions)? Ford has argued that
the number of Anglo-Saxons settling in Warwickshire was relatively small, with
cemeteries such as Stretton-on-Fosse representing the burial of ‘no more than an
extended household’ (Ford 1996, p. 66; 2002 forthcoming), possibly entering the region
towards the end of the fifth, or early in the sixth, century and intermarrying with the
Romano-British population. As evidence of this, he cites the continuation of RomanoBritish methods of woollen cloth production and of native British burial rites. He also
argues that skeletons of higher-than-average stature may represent the Anglo-Saxon
element of the population. Although Anglo-Saxon culture was ultimately to prevail,
burials of a predominately youthful population at Alveston, near Stratford-upon-Avon,
appears to suggest a community under stress from ill health or starvation (Ford
forthcoming) and the early cemetery at Beckford, Worcs, is also characterised by the
apparent poverty of its grave-goods (Evison & Hill 1996).
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Fig. 6. The distribution of
pagan Anglo-Saxon cemeteries
and burials in the west
midland region
Why did the bulk of the population — if, indeed, large numbers of British survived, as
seems likely — eventually aspire to identify itself with an immigrant culture, even to the
extent of adopting a foreign tongue? Yet the British language was not entirely lost.
Within the region, we also have walh settlements representing Welsh-speaking enclaves
close to some estate centres as late as the 8th century — as, for instance, the two Walton
settlements associated with Wellesbourne in Warwickshire, an Anglo-Saxon royal vill, or
the Waltons near Eccleshall and Penkridge in Staffordshire. Both of the last two were
centres with strong British associations: the former as the site of a possible British
Christian community (above) and the latter as the focus of the Pencersætan folk territory,
the successor to Roman Pennocrucium and an Anglo-Saxon royal vill. These walh
settlements may have represented more servile communities serving the estate centre in a
way reminiscent of those maintaining Welsh maerdref centres (Hooke forthcoming b),
their servile status causing them to remain relatively self-contained, but such names
imply that the rest of the population was by then speaking Old English. How did this
come about? Bassett (2000) has argued that the population of the western and southern
parts of this region chose deliberately to put themselves under Mercian protection by the
late 7th century, opting ‘for an Anglo-Saxon future’, once that kingdom had accepted
Christianity, albeit if this entailed an acceptance of the ‘Roman’ church.
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Fig. 7a. The Stoppingas land unit
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Fig. 7b. Postulated drove roads linking Arden and
Feldon in Warwickshire (from Hooke 1996, fig.
2; Hooke 1998, fig. 55).
2. Settlement models and related field systems
Estimates of population numbers at present remain little more than intelligent guesses and
the possibility of a reduction in numbers in the earlier part of the Anglo-Saxon period
remains likely but unproven. The changes that occurred in settlement patterns later in the
period have been more fully researched. However, our settlement models, noted earlier in
this paper, still rely heavily on the evidence from eastern England — an area where there
are likely to have been more Anglo-Saxons and a greater use of pottery; or we have
relatively isolated examples from such places as Catholme in the Trent valley, where a
series of farmsteads were continually rebuilt over a period of some 400 years until the
time of the Danish attacks (Losco-Bradley & Wheeler 1984). What is known about the
wider settlement patterns of this region between the 5th and 7th centuries — or even later
— and is there any evidence for greater continuity here?
The problem of understanding the factors that led to settlement nucleation have been
touched upon above. Although villages and hamlet clusters are likely to have been
present in Romano-British times it is generally accepted that farming at that time was
based upon either villa estates or individual farmsteads. What does seem clear is that
settlement nucleation and emerging open field systems were closely linked and the
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growth of villages as farming communities appears to be a phenomenon of the latter part
of the early medieval period. Callmer (1991), arguing from the Swedish viewpoint, has
shown how small kin-based settlement groups might grow into larger communities and
follows Engelmark (1989) in identifying a number of factors which might have given rise
to subdivided field systems, usually based upon an infield/outfield type of open field
farming: ‘a need for higher yields on account of a new type of estate management with a
growing number of non-productive members; a need to use the same arable land for
longer periods than before, as ... there was little scope for the expansion of pasture land.
... The contractive processes may well have gone hand in hand with the emergence of
villages dominated by manors or their predecessors...’ (Callmer 1991, p. 346). Such a
scenario, attributed by many in Scandinavia to the Early Viking Age,1 corresponds with
the situation in late Anglo-Saxon England. Here, proto-manors were being established
across the region as estates were fragmented. Multiple estate networks were broken up
and the new estates lost any distant seasonal pastures that may have been present on parts
of the latter as a consequence of this fragmentation (Fox 1981), sometimes requiring the
addition of extra parcels of land to meet any deficiencies. With the emphasis upon
individual ‘manors’ having to provide their own revenues under increasing pressure from
tax and tithe there was a pressing need to produce an agricultural surplus (Hooke 1998,
pp. 114-21). In midland England, the late Anglo-Saxon estates within whose boundaries
field systems developed were to become the basis of the medieval townships. Township
evolution was not necessarily an instant occurrence for a detailed study of estates in the
central Avon valley of Warwickshire (Hooke 1997) has shown how their boundaries
became consolidated sometimes only over a period of time. Even if these arguments for
the evolution of open field agriculture are accepted, however, two outstanding problems
remain: where and when did the system originate? How was it influenced by local
environmental or social factors to produce the regional variations that were clearly
present?
Callmer has argued for the practice of crop rotation, an essential part of the open field
system, being introduced from the Baltic, and Tacitus (Germania 26) refers to the sharing
out of land by allotment among some Germanic plain dwelling tribes in Roman times,
prior to AD 98.2 The late Professor Nitz (1988) long argued for an early establishment of
the system in a relatively sophisticated form in Germany, seeing it being carried into
newly colonised regions in the mid-8th century. More in-depth European studies are
clearly to be welcomed3 but a recent conference held at Århus in Denmark (Fabech &
Ringtved 1999) produced no ready explanations for the dispersed and nucleated
settlement types that were under discussion, or for their field systems — clearly, access to
improved technologies was not confined to village communities. Myhre (1999) therefore
rejects technological change and lays the emphasis upon ‘ideological, cultural, social and
political factors’.
In the midland region, increased population levels (already high in Roman times) and an
emphasis upon crop growing might, under the new estate structure, seem to be strong
factors in the adoption of open field farming (Hooke 1981b). Although this was
introduced to a lesser degree in pastoral regions, the open fields appear to have been of
greater extent in areas such as the Worcestershire Vale of Evesham or the Warwickshire
Feldon. Along the Avon valley, in both counties, the charter evidence suggests that the
fields only reached their maximum extent after the Norman Conquest, for boundary
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settlements and enclosed fields (crofts) are recorded along estate boundaries here into the
11th century (Hooke 1985b). Few would question the likelihood of population pressure
leading to the subdivision and intermixture of holdings and to the over-expansion of
arable at the expense of pasture and woodland, thus necessitating more complex
communal organisation to ensure adequate management of the common pasture, meadow
and arable. in such regions, most of the peasantry were probably of bond or dependant
status although they were not denied a role in communal decision taking. But open field
arable was not confined to what have been the ‘champion regions’ of corn growing –the
areas of most intensive agriculture. In the Warwickhire Arden, for instance, where the
emphasis was probably upon pastoral farming, open field farming was certainly present
early in the medieval period although the area under subdivided open field was much
smaller and probably related to small manorial centres and outlying hamlets. In parts of
the Borderland there were often several manorial centres and hamlets within a parish and
literally dozens of patches of open field present by medieval times. The number of
ploughteams recorded in Domesday Book for south-east Herefordshire is on a par with
those other parts of England that have the highest recorded number of teams in 1086 —
southern Sussex, for instance — (Darby 1977) and seems to be disproportionate to
population levels but there may be other factors affecting the Domesday statistics —
were teams still scattered around a number of settlements rather than confined to one
centre? Further research needs to be carried out. Here one finds in medieval times the
smaller estate nuclei associated with often dozens of scattered patches of open field in
any one parish, often only 20–30 acres each — some 40 patches in Much Marcle and
Marden in Herefordshire, for instance, with extensive open fields only in the more
densely populated valley regions. The familiar midland three- or four-field system only
seems to have developed in the valley and plain areas where both levels of population
and crop cultivation were greater and here reorganisation after the early medieval period
must be suspected.
Williamson (2003, pp. 141-59) has recently argued that soil type was a significant factor
in East Anglia (a region in which population levels do not seem to have been a decisive
factor), requiring close cooperation in communities that farmed intractable soils such as
some categories of pelo soils which offered but a short season for ploughing. Pelostagnogleys remain waterlogged for long periods in winter and are clayey to the surface
rather than having upper layers of loam or silt; pelosols suffer less from compaction,
puddling and winter waterlogging but many can still be difficult to work, especially some
of the Evesham series. Indeed, the nature of the soil types found in those areas of midland
England in which regular open field farming developed to its fullest extent — the
Warwickshire Feldon and the Worcestershire Vale of Evesham - do seem to strengthen
Williamson’s thesis. These soils required the extra drainage provided by ridge and furrow
ploughing but, more importantly, cultivation had to be timed precisely and ploughing had
to be carried out within a very short window of opportunity — a greater number of
ploughteams had to be assembled with particular rapidity — and Williamson’s argument
is that co-aration, the sharing of teams (and the need on such soils for the full eight-ox
team), was most easily carried out from a nucleated settlement, encouraging farmers to
dwell together in compact villages, an argument already advanced by Higham (1990).
The subdivision of holdings would also help to guarantee fairer access to the ploughed
land. In the midlands, the difficulty caused by the cultivation of such soils was made up
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for by their potential fertility, most of them in the ‘champion’ regions being of a
calcareous nature.
The arguments presented above at present remain unproven but archaeology must
continue to search for ways of exploring the morphology of settlements and field
systems. Myhre (1999, p. 128) argues that ‘Settlement archaeology is cutting loose from
established hypotheses that were mainly based on written sources, place-names and
retrospective methods’ but can it yet contribute any more positive information? How far
can field systems be identified — especially those pertaining to the newly emergent open
fields? Regional variation will be a feature here. The spread of open field agriculture was
a feature right across Europe at this time and must reflect a change in landholding rights.
How far can the landscape be reconstructed in the Border counties where charters are
virtually absent?
3. Environmental evidence
Environmental evidence for land use in the midland region is still limited. Is there any
evidence for economic collapse after the Roman withdrawal in the 5th and 6th centuries?
The area of land under crops may well have receded with the withdrawal of the Roman
army and the apparent demise of the towns, and an increase in pasture, clearly apparent
over the chalklands of southern England, may reflect a return to native methods of
farming. It has been argued that the evidence for general woodland regeneration at this
time is patchy outside northern England, where climatic deterioration may have been a
contributory factor (Dark 2000, pp. 132-53), but others have suggested an increase in the
amount of land under woodland in places like the Weald. On the Birmingham Plateau,
there is pollen evidence from the fill of the ditch which surrounded the fort at Metchley to
indicate land use change once the fort had been abandoned. The pollen first shows the regrowth of scrub over a previously occupied Roman landscape with an abundance of
hawthorn and elder; subsequently this appears to have been replaced by secondary
woodland in which hazel, alder, ash and birch were to give way to mixed oak woodland
as the woodland matured. Only later were traces of human activity to increase, in the
form of rye cultivation and carbon from fires. A further phase showing an increase in
holly in what ma have been the medieval seems to indicate the use of the area as wood
pasture for the young branches of holly were often used as fodder. This sequence is not
unique for it is mirrored at a small number of other sites in the region (Greig
forthcoming).
Metchley lies within what seems to have been an extensive region in which wood pasture
was a significant type of land use in early medieval times. This region extended across
the Worcestershire/Staffordshire boundary region and into the Arden of Warwickshire
but was a type of land use common across the west midlands. Place-names and, where
present, charter boundary landmarks and topographical descriptions confirm the wellwooded nature of most of the districts in which woodland was to be abundant on the
manors of Domesday Book. The leah place-name, in particular, is particularly common
in north-west Warwickshire, across most of Worcestershire excluding the Vale of
Evesham, across much of Staffordshire apart from the Trent and Tame valleys, and, in a
somewhat decreased density, across much of Herefordshire and in a belt across central
Shropshire, with other pockets in the north of that county. Domesday woodland,
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generally, seems to have been most abundant in the eastern parts of the region although
different kinds of recording methods, such as an estimation of the number of swine a
wood could support, common in the Shropshire folios, may affect the perceived
distribution (Darby 1971, p. 438, fig. 155). Although pigs were probably the most
important animals to be pastured in woodland, being fattened on acorns or beech-mast in
autumn, almost every other kind of domestic stock, particularly cattle, could be pastured
in open woodland and place-names also indicate studs of horses being maintained,
especially within easy reach of such central-place estates as Alcester and Worcester.
So what was the nature of the supposedly more heavily wooded regions of the early
medieval west midlands — can we safely interpret OE leah as wood-pasture or secondary
woodland (Hooke 1989; Wager 1998)? A recent Dutch study lends credence to the
former (inf. T. Spek) and the term, derived from the OHGerman loh meaning ‘light’,
suggests the kind of open woodland now favoured by specialists as the most likely type
of natural ancient woodland present in prehistoric and later England (Vera 2000).
However, land use was rarely static and incidences of the leah term with the names of
various kinds of crops and animal shelters, or with thorns and young saplings, suggests a
cycle of changing land use, with clearings naturally giving way to secondary woodland
over time, perhaps as a deliberate form of management (Hooke 1978–9). Only when
animal grazing is prevented, at least temporarily, can trees regenerate with ease to form
dense woodland. There are reasons for the increasing protection of woodland in later
Anglo-Saxon times connected with the growing interest in hunting displayed by AngloSaxon kings but the wood-pasture appears to have been present in certain regions well
before it is confirmed by later Anglo-Saxon sources. Can more environmental evidence,
akin to that found at Metchley, be found to show if this been present since prehistoric
times or to confirm an economic collapse and subsequent woodland regeneration in the
so-called ‘Dark Ages’?
Conclusions
Opportunities for large-scale excavations outside towns are likely to remain limited. Can
less intrusive methods be used to examine selected sites in the rural countryside in an
attempt to obtain a fuller picture and to answer some of these questions? Can greater use
be made of, for instance, geophysical analysis, thermal imaging or soil analysis, the latter
looking at the chemical constituents in the soil for indications of settlement? Rippon
(2001) has used magnetic susceptibility and measures of phosphorus, particularly,
amongst other metals such as lead, copper, zinc etc, to identify areas of intense
occupation and associated midden dumping at Puxton in Somerset. And have we yet
exhausted the data to be found in field patterns, routeways (e.g. Fig. 7b), boundary
patterns, etc (usually involving retrogressive analysis), some of which show up nicely on
the new England, the Photographic Atlas (2002) and its associated web site? — I think
not. It seems clear that although conventional archaeology — utilising all the modern
techniques now becoming available — must play an important role in the search for
answers to some of the problems outlined here the discipline cannot fully operate alone
and future research must be based upon an interdisciplinary approach which fully takes
on board the expertise and knowledge of historians and historical geographers as well, a
broader approach already, indeed, being followed by many present-day archaeologists.
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Archaeology is in the strong position of being able to prove or disprove ideas put forward
by scholars in other disciplines and the future looks promising!
Notes
1. Widgren (1990) argues for the presence of subdivided strip fields in southern Sweden
at a much earlier date and in quite a different context, originating within prehistoric land
divisions during the Swedish Iron Age (which extended from about 500 B.C. to A.D.
1050).
2. Earlier translations of Tacitus’s Germania interpret this passage as also referring to the
practice of fallow but later editors reject this.
3. A book on this subject is currently being prepared for the Society of Landscape
Studies.
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