Wessex : A Landscape History / Hadrian Cook.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cook, Hadrian, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Landforms--England.

Landforms.

Landscapes--England--Wessex.

Landscapes.

Wessex (England)--Description and travel.

Wessex (England).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (382 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Archaeopress Publishing Ltd, [2024]

Summary:

Wessex is famous for its coasts, heaths, woodlands, chalk downland, limestone hills and gorges, settlements and farmed vales. This book provides an account of the physical form, development and operation of its landscape as it was shaped by our ancestors. Constituting no modern political entity, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom and archaeological province of 'Wessex' may be defined by its natural resources and connectivity by both land and sea, for its borders include the English Channel and Severn Estuary. Following the tundra environments that dominated south of the ice sheets during the past two million years, the Wessex area experienced dramatic changes in climate, something reflected in its soils and vegetation cover. Humans hunted in the 'wildwood' established after the Ice Age, then cleared the land for agriculture and settlement in a 6,000 year old process. In more recent times, areas of cultural importance and nature conservation have been established as well as a thriving economy based largely on natural resources, trade and manufactures. The region comprises the counties of Hampshire (including the Isle of Wight), Dorset, Wiltshire, historic Somerset, and Berkshire. Whether through Thomas Hardy, a water company service area, or a royal title, Wessex has lingered in the imagination and secured its place in the construction of English history. The reader is taken through not only the physical landscape, but also the human institutions that have affected its evolution, including manors, great estates, monasteries and hunting forests; major themes include the development of agriculture, settlements, industry and transport.

Contents:

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Contents Page

List of Figures and Tables

Figure 1.1. The Wessex Region (after J.H. Betty, 1986. Wessex from AD 1000, Longman, London)

Figure 1.2. NCA Profile areas in south-west England (Natural England)

Table 1.1. Geological timescale

Figure 1.3. The regional geology of Wessex. (Ben Heaney)

Table 1.2. Dates comparing geological time, archaeological periods, and history.

Figure 1.4. Valley-fill of the Avon Valley (British Geological Survey)

Figure 1.5. Example soil map: soils at the Harnham Water Meadows (the author)

Table 1.3. Hydrometric areas and key rivers in Wessex.

Figure 1.6. Hydrometric areas and key rivers in Wessex (National River Flow Archive https://nrfa.ceh.ac.uk/hydrometric-areas below; Catchment Data)

Table 1.4. Dates taken as ‘Prehistoric’ in this book

Table 1.5. Dates of the historic periods referred to in this book

Figure 1.7. Schematic of coastal cell for sediment movement (After Orford 1986). J. D. Orford, S.C. Jennings and D.L. Forbes (2001). Origin, development, reworking and breakdown of gravel-dominated Coastal Barriers in Atlantic Canada: Future scenarios fo

Figure 1.8. Concordant coastline: Bay development Isle of Purbeck (After R.J. Small (1970) The study of landforms. Cambridge University Press)

Figure 1.9. The chalk ridge above Mupe Bay east of Lulworth cove, looking due east. In the middle distance is the chalk cliff at Arish Mell, in the distance (right) the headland is Worbarrow Tout on the east side of Worbarrow bay (the author).

Figure 1.10. Discordant coastline between Bridgwater Bay and Weston super

mare, Somerset (2 miles is c. 3.2 km) (public domain)

Figure 1.11. Timeline for the New Forest and its vegetation (from C.R. Tubbs, 2001. New Forest, the history, ecology and conservation, New Forest Ninth Centenary Trust, Lyndhurst)53

Figure 1.12. The Land Use Regions of Hampshire (public domain)

Figure 1.13. LiDAR image of an area of Savernake Forest, near Marlborough (copyright Natural England)

Figure 1.14. Section of a geophysical survey of the area around Old Sarum Castle, near modern Salisbury (copyright K. Strutt and Environment Agency)

Figure 1.15. Diagrammatic representation of the disciplines involved in landscape studies (the author).

Table 2.1. Key mineral resources in Wessex (from various sources).

Figure 2.1. Shallow freestone quarrying Isle of Purbeck (the author).

Figure 2.2. Contact between presumed downland and (in the middle distance) ploughed rendzina soils in April 2020 (the author)

Figure 2.3. Local historians’ perception of a complex channel network at Romsey, Hampshire (Romsey Local History Society)

Figure 2.4. Excavated stone wall at Céide, Co Mayo in Ireland (the author) Generated by AI.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Part of the metadata in this record was created by AI, based on the text of the resource.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781803275369

1803275367

OCLC:

1430663161