Hoskins' england class 3

W.G. Hoskins and the Making of the English Landscape

Class 3. Becoming a land of villages The English settlement

Tutor: Keith Challishoskins-england.blogspot.co.uk

Recap

Last Week (Darkening Hills)

• Hoskins and the Romantics

• Hoskins on early Britain

• Field archaeology

• Introduction to Laxton

Hoskins’s England hoskins-england.blogspot.co.uk

Class Summary

• Hoskins and Englishness• Becoming a land of villages

• 60 years on: Critique of Hoskins and a counterpoint

Coffee Break

• Working with aerial photographs• Laxton Group project: Working with photographs,

and published mapping


Class Summary Learning Outcomes

• Appreciate Hoskins’s view of England as personified by landscape.

• Explore aspects of landscape and national identity

• Understand Hoskins’s view of Anglo-Saxon England.

• Explore ways in which new evidence has revised our view of this period.

• Appreciate some of the uses of and evidence to be gleaned from aerial photography in landscape studies.


Section 1: Hoskins and Englishness

Hoskins and Englishness

• What is Englishness?



An English Landscape?


Hoskins and EnglishnessHoskins’s Englishness (from One Man’s England)• “I have explored England, or parts

of it, now for sixty years, for pure pleasure, often not knowing what I was really looking at…” Hoskins 1978

• “Every few square miles of England has its own marked character…” Hoskins 1978

• “There is not just one English landscape, there are probably a hundred or more, and man’s making of them has taken very different forms in different parts of England. The process of creating England as we know it, tackling the great wastelands of heath and moor…began much farther back in time than we thought.” Hoskins 1978




An English Landscape• To Hoskins the English landscape was essentially

a manufactured thing (contra Romanticism)– Largely the work of the Middle Ages– Progressively destroyed since the enclosures– With nothing of value after 1914– Ruined by the modern era and polluted by visitors

• But where do these ideas come from and how have they influenced us?

Hoskins and EnglishnessLandscape and National Identity• Obsession with landscape as a facet of

national identity is largely a 20th century phenomenon

• 1920s and 30, emergence of movement for preservation of landscape through progressive change. Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE). The Planner-preservationist.

• The face of the land, the Design and Industries Association yearbook for 1929, included electricity pylons and arterial roads as examples of modern elements bringing ordered beauty to the landscape.

• Organizations like the CPRE sought not only to manage the landscape but to codify ways in which it was used by the urban population increasingly using the countryside for leisure.


Hoskins and EnglishnessLandscape and National Identity

• In contrast to the organic earth movement, the counter-current of Englishness, promoted the vision of an organic England.

• Emphasised the preservation of a natural cycle, in which national health was promoted through the consumption of pure, unimproved organic foods produced by manual toil.

• Englishness as deep rooted in ‘English Earth’.

• War and reconstruction transformed the understanding the English landscape

• The second world war allowed the planner-preservationist vision of landscape and Englishness to achieve a position of dominance.



Landscape and National Identity

• Hoskins was writing in this social and intellectual context from the 1950s

• His views were shaped by his own experience and a dawning historical vision of the character of a vanishing England

• “It was the signal achievement of…Hoskins, to have revolutionised the historical perceptions of his fellow countrymen…What informs the most fertile years of his writing is nothing less than a new vision for the whole of English history” (Pythian-Adams 1992)



Landscape and Decay

• Hoskins’s great obsession was with the impact of the 20th century on English landscape.

• “I had the good fortune to be born in a part of England which had suffered very little change over many generations, in a small and ancient city with unravished country all around it.” Hoskins 1978

• “…in so many parts of England I cannot help feeling that its fate today may be in the balance…” Hoskins 1978.




Hoskins’s Developing Vision of England




Hoskins in 1949




Quote from historian C.P Skrine in Hoskins’s notebook, 1940s

Hoskins’s notebook 1940s







Notice for one of Hoskins’s Leicester Evening Classes (1947)


Landscape and Englishness (Picturing History), David Matless

David Matless argues that landscape has been the site where English visions of the past, present and future have met in debates over questions of national identity, disputes over history and modernity, and ideals of citizenship and the body. Landscape and Englishness is extensively illustrated and draws on a wide range of material - topographical guides, health manuals, paintings, poetry, architectural polemic, photography, nature guides and novels.


Book Recommendation

Section 2: Becoming a Land of Villages

A Land of Villages

Hoskins on the English Settlement• “The Anglo-Saxon settlement was spread over

some twenty generations between about 450 and 1066. During this time England became a land of villages” (Hoskins 1955)

• The Anglo-Saxons covered the whole of England with their villages…”(ibid)

• Axe, fire and animals combined to reduce the dense and continuous woodlands of Anglo-Saxon England.” (ibid)


A Land of Villages

Scandinavian Settlement

• “From the late ninth century onward the Scandinavian conquest of a good deal of England resulted in a great number of new villages being founded…” (Hoskins 1955)


A Land of Villages

Village Layout

• “There are three great types into one of which most villages fall: the village grouped around a central green or square, the village strung out along a single street, and the village which…consists of dwellings planted down almost haphazardly.” (Hoskins 1955)


A Land of Villages

• The Anglo Saxons gave us the pattern of villages we know today by colonising the post Roman wood and waste.

• The open fields were the product of generations of progressive clearance

• Scandinavian settlement topped up the distributions of villages and added outlying subsidiary settlements

• Villages fall into several relatively simple plan forms which may be used to explain their origins


A Land of Villages

• Discussion…


Section 3: 60 Years on: The Myths of the English Settlement

The English Settlement

Origins• Post Roman

settlement from Denmark and north Germany

• Co-existence with native Romanised British populations

• Complex social and racial mixing



Material Culture• Highly distinctive

material culture, largely evidenced in grave goods

• Architectural innovation

• Language



Death and Burial• Large cremation

cemeteries imply substantial immigrant population

• How much is a processes of acculturation of collapsing Romanised British population?


The English SettlementSettlements• Not villages!• Small clusters of simple

dwellings (Hall House/Grubenhaus)

• Local clearance or adoption of existing agricultural lands

• Revealed by later 20th century archaeology (West Stow, Mucking, etc)




Mucking


Catholme

• Middle Saxon settlement

• Hall houses with enclosures

• No evidence of continuity with later villages


Middle Saxon England


Middle Saxon England• By mid 7th century

emergence of larger polities

• Kingdoms documented in Tribal Hidage

• Increasing social complexity

• Towns and trade

Middle Saxon England


Christianity and the State

• Promotion of ideal of kingship

• Innovation in land holding (and influence on organisation of land?)

• Role in cementing emerging polities

Late Saxon England


Scandinavian Settlement• Raiding, organised

campaigns of conquest and settlement

• Socially complex• Uncertain impact on

landscape• England part of

Scandinavian hegemony of northern Europe

Late Saxon England


Late Saxon England

• Complex society part of European and Scandinavian political and economic milieu

• Beginnings of evidence for settlement continuity (10th/11th century activity in many excavated village sites)

• Character of settlement remains uncertain

Origins of Villages

• The origin of villages remains uncertain

• Important to draw a distinction between the legal entity of the vill and a nucleated settlement

• Village plans are vastly more complex than Hoskins suggested!


• Coffee Break


Date of field trip• Revised to 23rd March if consensus


Section 3: Group Project

Hoskins, Crawford and Field Archaeology

• Crawford codified the method of Field Archaeology in his book Archaeology in the Field (1953)

• Combination of map and documentary research, aerial photography and field work

• Central concept was that of landscape as palimpsest, ie a document erased and written on over and over again


Aerial Photography


Vertical Oblique

Aerial Photography


Vertical Photography

Usually for mapping or reconnaissance purposes, not often archaeological.

Fixed camera mounted on plane flying at constant height.

Photographs contain inherent distortions due to curvature of lens and irregularity of ground surface.

A series of overlapping photographs are usually taken for large area coverage. By overlapping photos by c.60% each part of the ground is covered by at least two images which can then be combined using a stereoscope to create a three-dimensional model.

Vertical photographs can be used for producing accurate plans, providing the images are adequately georeferenced.

However, since they are not flown specifically for archaeological purposes the information they contain may not always be as clear as with obliques.

Aerial Photography


Oblique Photography

Handheld camera used to record a specific site/monument as it is being flown over.

Provides a perspective view that can often emphasise and clarify the nature of a site far more than vertical shots.

The elevation and angle of the shot can be more easily manipulated to obtain the best conditions for the photograph.

Oblique photography is far more difficult to georeference, sometimes limiting the use of the technique in providing archaeological plans.

Oblique photography is most often taken from low flying light aircraft, but can also be taken from any elevated position (e.g. buildings/hilltops…).

Aerial Photography


Visible variation in the growth of plants due to buried features.

Positive cropmarks = The plants grow taller due to negative archaeological features such as ditches, pits, postholes. Provide increased moisture retention and higher nutrient content.

Negative cropmarks = The plants growth is reduced due to subsurface features which block the root system. Provide reduced moisture and nutrients than the surrounding soil.

The window of opportunity in which to see cropmarks depends on a variety of factors: soil type, crop, climate…

What we can see: Cropmarks

Aerial Photography


Some archaeological sites become visible in a field that has been ploughed in preparation of sowing.

Features are usually apparent through colour changes between the archaeology and the surrounding soil.

Negative features such as pits or ditches often contain humic-rich fills which show up as darker tones. Equally, plough damage to walls or rubble can bring some of this material to the surface.

Soil marks are at their clearest immediately after ploughing, with subsequent mixing of layers obscuring the newly revealed features.

It is important to note that soil marks reflect the actual archaeological deposits themselves, rather than their effect on overlying vegetation or topography. If a site is visible as a soil mark then it is already being eroded.

What we can see: Soilmarks

Aerial Photogrphy


Earthworks can be visible through aerial photography as shadow sites. The topographic changes cause variation in the extent and position of shadows.

The height and position of the sun is crucial in determining how well an earthwork site can be seen. Low winter sunlight (either early morning or late afternoon) is often the best, creating long shadows and picking out even microtopographic changes.

The direction of the sun in relation to the orientation of the earthworks is another key factor.

The presence of snow cover on archaeological sites can help to emphasise any earthworks due to the contrast between the highly reflective snow and the dark shadows. Likewise, standing water following heavy rainfall will accumulate in earthwork depressions.

What we can see: Shadow Sites

Aerial Photogrphy


• As well as the visibility of archaeological sites requiring very particular environmental and atmospheric conditions, the interpretation of visible features should be treated with caution.

• Potential pitfalls in interpretation can be caused by the presence of geological features, agricultural activities and modern land use practices.

Aerial Photogrphy


Soil marks of ring earthworks ENE of Bishop Wilton, Humberside (SE 825564), 12 May 1969.Photo : University of Cambridge, copyright reserved

Groups of ring earthworks similar to those shown in this photography are known from the Yorkshire Wolds, East Anglia and the Trent Valley south of Derby.

Site of searchlight batteries from WWII.

The eastern bias of their distribution is due to the direction of the perceived threat.

Aerial Photography


Crop marks WNW of Store Anst, Ribe amt, Jutland, 27 June 1967.Photo: University of Cambridge, copyright reserved

Densely concentrated arrangement of ring ditches suggestive of Iron Age / Migration Period cemeteries in Denmark.

But…arrangement and overlapping features reveals they are actually the effects of irrigation using lines of rotary sprinklers.

The two water jets were misaligned causing a ring of soil that was not as heavily watered.

Aerial Photography


The National Air Photo Library

Based at NMRC in Swindon.

Consists of c. 2.7 million photographs divided into vertical and oblique collections.

Vertical collection comprises reconnaissance and survey photography and covers whole of England. Most flown by RAF but others by OS, Meridian Airmaps Ltd, EA, etc.

Oblique collection contains photographs of particular sites, initially cropmark reconnaissance but now also industrial and agricultural developments. Oblique photography covers c.66% of England.

Oblique photographs from 1880 – present, mainly taken by RCHME/EH but also by independent fliers and from historical collections (e.g. OGS Crawford).

Aerial Photography


To access the NMR aerial photography a coversearch is carried out based on an OS NGR (e.g. SK423 890 + 500m).

Once a search has been made an appointment to view the photographs has to be made.

The oblique collection is open for public browsing at the NMRC.

The photographs can be supplied as photocopies (black+white, photographic and colour). These services incur a cost.

The NMR do not always hold copyrights for the photographs and so photocopies are not always available.

Aerial Photography


• The Cambridge University Collection of Aerial Photographs (CUCAP) is held in the photographic library of the Unit for Landscape Modelling (ULM).

• The catalogue has its origins in the pioneering work of Dr J.K. St Joseph. As lecturer in geology at Cambridge University, St Joseph was provided with access to an RAF aircraft and pilot for ten days in July 1945. This process continued until in 1948 he was appointed Curator in Aerial Photography, a post designed to manage and control the increasing library of images.

• The library now contains c. 500,000 photographs, approximately half of which are vertical (blue) and half are obliques (red).

• Appointments have to be made to view the photographs and charges are applied for obtaining copies (digital or photographic prints).

Aerial Photography


http://www.geog.cam.ac.uk/cucap/

Aerial Photography


Open sources such as GoogleEarth/Maps and Bing Maps

Aerial Photography


1948 1971 2000

Using a time series of photographs reveals recent landscape change

Aerial Photography


Systematic transcription of evidence to a map is crucial

Laxton


Aims Today

• Examine maps and photographs

• Familiarise self with topography of Laxton

• Make observations


Self Assessment

Learning Outcomes

• Understand the influence of the romantic movement on shaping Hoskins’s thinking and hence contemporary landscape archaeology

• Recognise the limitations in Hoskins 1950s view of early Britain

• Understand how aerial photography an be used in landscape studies


Further Study

Suggested ReadingMatthew Johnsons’s blog post on Hoskins

Charles Pythian-Adams’s appreciation of Hoskins in TLAHS

(see blog for both)

Self Study ThemesMaking of the English Landscape, Chapters 3

and 4

Hoskins’ England hoskins-england.blogspot.co.uk

Hoskins' england class 3

Documents

Transcript of Hoskins' england class 3