Book Description

The county of Worcestershire, finally formed before the Conquest around the burh of Worcester, is exceptionally rich in charter material. The charters contain an unusual amount of valuable topographical detail -in descriptions of location, in comments on the appurtenances of an estate and especially within the boundary clauses which accompany many of the grants or leases. From this very full body of texts, Dr Hooke has been able to identify features which have enabled her to reconstruct the landscape of Anglo-Saxon Worcestershire to a remarkable degree. Della Hooke is widely known for her pioneer work on Anglo-Saxon charters, through which she has been able to reconstruct the Worcestershire landscape as it was almost a thousand years ago. The county -part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the Hwicce -responds particularly well to her techniques. It is exceptionally rich in Anglo-Saxon charters and the physical features of the county, which has remained largely agricultural, are relatively easy to identify. Careful study of the charter evidence throws light on the history of settlement and land use, and shows that many features of the medieval county, for instance the rich arable lands of the Vale of Evesham and the wooded landscapes of Malvern and Wyre, were already present in Anglo-Saxon Worcestershire. The book presents all the topographical detail in the charters, together with all the estate boundaries; each charter is individually mapped and the charter's landmarks located. The result is the first such study for any county, providing valuable and readily available data for historians and students of land use. DELLA HOOKEis Research Fellow in the School of Geography, University of Birmingham. She is a council member of the Council for Name Studies in Great Britain and Ireland and of the English Place-Name Society, and editor of Landscape History, the journal of the Society for Landscape Studies. Her published work relates to her long-standing interest in the use of Anglo-Saxon charters to trace the evolution of regional landscape.@RIGHT ALIGN = published price 45