Laxton in 1835

George Sanderson's 1835 map of Twenty Miles Round Mansfield provides a fantastic introduction to historic mapping.  Published by subscription just before the first Ordnance Survey map of Nottinghamshire, but at a larger scale of about two and a quarter inches to the mile, Sanderson, who worked variously as a surveyor and Enclosure commissioner, based his map on his own surveys of the countryside.  Beautifully drawn, the map captures an early 19th century landscape in transition.  The open fields are largely gone, but Nottingham still sits among fields, the Park is still a deer park, and the railways just a threatened line across the landscape (often wrongly placed as the routes were changed after Sanderson published his map).

The whole map has been republished several times, most recently in 2001 as a two book reprint by Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Library Services, which is sometimes to be found in bookshops and is well worth having if spotted.  Below is a zoomable extract for the parish of Laxton, compare with the modern Ordnance Survey mapping to try and discern just what has changed in Laxton over the past 180 years.

Montaillou: Village Life in the Middle Ages

It is hard to place ourselves into the minds of medieval peasants and understand how they viewed the landscape and their relationship to it, or indeed how they lived worked and socialized together.  There are very few historical sources that give an authentic voice to this period.  One of the most remarkable are the records of Catholic Inquisition of the Cathar village of Montaillou, high in the hills of the Midi in the Ariège department in southwestern France.  In the late 13th century the local bishop Jacques Fournier, later Pope Benedict XII, launched an inquistion against the  Albigensian belief also known as Catharism, considered heresy by the dominant Roman Catholic powers.  The records of the inquisition, dozens of interviews with the 250 odd inhabitance of the village, preserve the minute details of life in Medieval France and were taken to the Vatican Library by Fournier when he became pope.  A fascinating precis of the records was published in 1975 by radical French historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie as Montaillou: Cathars and Catholics in a French Village 1294-1324.  Translated into English a new edition of the book was published in 2005 and is widely available second hand from Amazon. Le Roy Ladurie's Montaillou is a fascinating glimpse into the medieval mind that reads like a good historical novel.  History is rarely more satisfying or more accessible than this.

Mapping Laxton

If you are starting to look at the Google and Microsoft provided aerial photography of Laxton we discussed in class it might be useful to have a fresh copy of a good large scale Ordnance Survey map of Laxton to hand to compare with the photographs and for sketch mapping.  Below is Microsoft Bing maps Ordnance Survey 1:25k mapping of Laxton. It's also worth signing up for the Ordnance Survey's free Get a Map service for customized mapping you and print and download.

View Larger Map  View Bird's Eye

Book Recommendations: Landscapes, Englishness and Heritage

Landscape and Englishness (Picturing History) by David Matless

Landscape has been central to definitions of Englishness for centuries. 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. The author first examines the inter-war period, showing how a vision of Englishness and landscape as both modern and traditional, urban and rural, progressive and preservationist, took shape around debates over building in the countryside, the replanning of cities, and the cultures of leisure and citizenship. He concludes by tracing out the story of landscape and Englishness down to the present day, showing how the familiar terms of debate regarding landscape and heritage are a product of the immediate post-war era, and asking how current arguments over care for the environment or expressions of the nation resonate with earlier histories and geographies.

On Living in an Old Country: The National Past in Contemporary Britain by Patrick Wright

The hulk of Henry VIII's flagship is raised from the seabed in an operation that captures the mind of the nation. The leader of the Labour party wears an informal coat at the Cenotaph and provokes a national scandal. An elderly lady whose ancient house is scheduled for demolition dismantles it, piece by piece, and moves it across the country... 

On Living in an Old Country probes such apparently fleeting and disconnected events in order to reveal how history lives on, not just in the specialist knowledge of historians, archaeologists and curators, but as a tangible presence permeating everyday life and shaping our sense of identity. It investigates the rise of 'heritage' as expressed in literature, advertising, and political rhetoric as well as in popular television dramas, conservation campaigns, and urban development schemes. It explores the relations between the idea of an imperiled national identity and the transformation of British society introduced by Margaret Thatcher.   This is the book that put 'heritage' on the map, opening one of the defining cultural and political debates of our time, and showing why conservation is a subject of such broad significance in contemporary Britain. This new edition includes an extensive new preface and interview material reflecting on the ongoing debate about the heritage industry which the book helped to kick-start.

Making a Home: Matthew H. Johnson on English Culture and English Landscape

Making a Home. English Culture and English Landscape by Matthew H. Johnson University of Southampton

Every weekend, thousands of people take a walk in the English countryside. A walk in the country is about exercise, but it is also much more than that. It is enabled by the tracks and paths, the public rights of way over private property. The surrounding scenery is of fields, hedges, grasslands, moorlands, studded by the spires and towers of medieval churches, and the distant prospect of Georgian houses amidst parklands.

All these elements are and were human creations...Read More

Making a Home : The Public Value of the Humanities : Bloomsbury Academic

Laxton from the Air

Both Google Maps and Microsoft Bing Maps have useful aerial imagery of Laxton. Look in particular for he shadows of subtle earthworks on the Bing Maps image.

Google Maps

Microsoft Bing Maps

Laxton

The village of Laxton in Nottinghamshire and its landscape will form the subject of our group practical study underaken as part of this course.  We will be applying Hoskins's research and field methodology to the Laxton landscape. Today Laxon is best known for the survival of Open Field farming, but its interest lays well beyond this peculiarity in the richness and diversity of its landscape and the wealth of surviving documentary evidence and historic cartography.  

For now a good introduction to Laxton can be had from the Visitor Centre website.