{"id":5850,"date":"2024-01-13T17:00:24","date_gmt":"2024-01-13T17:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.englishlocalhistory.org\/wp\/?page_id=5850"},"modified":"2024-01-13T17:00:27","modified_gmt":"2024-01-13T17:00:27","slug":"the-w-g-hoskins-lecture-1990","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.englishlocalhistory.org\/wp\/w-g-hoskins\/w-g-hoskins-lectures\/the-w-g-hoskins-lecture-1990\/","title":{"rendered":"The W G Hoskins Lecture 1990"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

‘Medieval rural settlements: problems and possibilities’ presented by Christopher Taylor<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The first Hoskins lecture<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

19 May 1990<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The first W.G. Hoskins Lecture was given by Christopher Taylor, Principal Investigator for the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments and President of the Medieval Settlement Research Group. Many of the Commission’s volumes on Dorset and Northamptonshire owe much to Chris Taylor’s pioneering approach to fieldwork. Among his other works are Fieldwork in Medieval Archaeology<\/em>, Fields in the English Landscape<\/em> and Roads and Tracks of Britain<\/em>. His Village and Farmstead<\/em> was described by a reviewer in The Times as “the most startling work of history I have ever read”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taylor began his lecture by reviewing some of the work of W.G. Hoskins at different scales: Wigston Magna, Devon, the Highland Zone and the national study The Making of the English Landscape<\/em> were all mentioned. Taylor then posed the question which has intrigued scholars since Hoskins’s day and before: when did the Midland village begin?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are four sets of methods which can be used to answer the question, and hence there are our sets of materials, each with their own particular problems. The first discipline analysed was history. Here Taylor identified the ‘Henry II syndrome.’ There are few documents before the late twelfth century and as Midland village origins are likely to lie before this period, written materials are not likely to be of much use. The detailed study of place-names was also dismissed as being of little value. The problem here was one of not knowing – other than in a very general way – when names originated or if they had changed in the lifetime of the settlement under review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taylor then turned to topographical studies which he regarded as ‘splendid stuff’. Yet he argued topography in itself did not provide dates, for these it relied on history and place-name studies and was thus beset with the problems he had already identified. Furthermore he argued that certain aspects of topography – notably studies of village morphology – were fundamentally flawed. Village shapes can change, he argued, and the most recent plan may bear no resemblance to the original. The examination of the north Devon landscape by one of W.G. Hoskins’s successors – Harold Fox – was cited as one example of this change, as was Taylor’s own research into his home settlement of Whittlesford, Cambridgeshire. Finally Taylor turned to ‘the final arbiter’: archaeology. This was dismissed as slow and extensive, and, as a result, expensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One general problem was then outlined: that of perception.This was considered to affect all approaches to medieval settlement research, but was thought to be particularly noticeable in archaeology. Here Taylor cited the example of Knaptoft, thought by Hoskins to be a deserted medieval village, but by others regarded as variously a quarry, a fishpond or a garden. The argument was widened to include present perceptions on patterns of nucleated and dispersed settlement. The present perception of nucleations, according to Taylor, is one which sees these settlements as of a late origin, perhaps late Saxon or eleventh or twelfth century in date. The more widespread patterns of dispersion are, he continued, usually interpreted as secondary settlement of poor land, ‘late’ place-names and documentary evidence being used to support this view. Taylor, however, argued that dispersal ought to be seen as ‘normal’ as it was the main characteristic of the landscape up to the early medieval period and beyond. The earlier views of many scholars, including Hoskins’s on the pre-Saxon and perhaps pre-historic origins of settlement in the Celtic West, were nevertheless too simplistic. If this was the case, Taylor contended, why had the excavations at Roadford in Devon produced nothing for the period before the twelfth century? It is possible, he continued, that dispersed settlements, like nucleations, are mobile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In conclusion Taylor turned to the problem of how medieval settlement patterns ought to be studied. If mobility and dispersal are normal then determinism is no longer a valid approach. It is ‘an obsession’ which is no longer appropriate. Taylor concluded that there is now more need to study people – as owners and tenants, as producers and consumers and as the makers and breakers of settlements – and that individuals not geology should govern how we ought to perceive village origins. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the audience departed for an excellent tea at Marc Fitch House, this author mused on how much had changed. He had escaped from jargon-ridden, largely irrelevant and wholy impractical fringes of archaeology into medieval landscape studies, an area which Taylor had made understandable, exciting and worth pursuing. Now he was being sent back. Perhaps he had not escaped; only perceived that he had done so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From an original report by Jonathan Kissock<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\n‘Medieval rural settlements: problems and possibilities’ presented by Christopher Taylor The first Hoskins lecture 19 May 1990 The first W.G.…\n<\/div>\n
Continue reading “The W G Hoskins Lecture 1990”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4678,"parent":4463,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5850","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9993,"url":"https:\/\/www.englishlocalhistory.org\/wp\/w-g-hoskins\/w-g-hoskins-lectures\/the-w-g-hoskins-lecture-2025\/","url_meta":{"origin":5850,"position":0},"title":"The W G Hoskins Lecture 2025","author":"John Parker","date":"11 May 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Looking at Medieval Houses: Dwellingscapes before the \u2018Great Rebuilding\u2019 presented by Prof. Mark Gardiner. 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