Laxton Castle

You can learn more about Laxton's castle from a mini website dedicated to the castle and the student and community lead survey work. Read about it here. Also on the Laxton Castle website is a copy of my paper on the development of the village (with a very unHoskin's title!) published some while ago in Transactions of the Thoroton Society.  Read it here.

Virtual Laxton

If you were intrigued by the computer game generated virtual Laxton castle glimpsed at the end of last weeks class you can watch the full video below.  There are a number of other game generated virtual archaeological sites available from here.

Broadside Ballads Online

The Bodleian Library has produced a searchable database of its substantial collection of original Broadside Ballads, which includes digitized facsimile copies of every ballad.  This fantastic resource provides access to the authentic voice of 18th and 19th century England and shouldn't be missed.

Laxton Manuscripts at the University of Notingham

The Manuscripts and Special Collections section of the University of Nottingham Library hosts a dedicated website presenting part of their extensive collection of documents relating to Laxton. The website explores aspects of life in Laxton between 1635 and 1908. Despite the fact that Laxton was never fully enclosed, it was a typical example of a Midlands open field village and its history can therefore shed light on life in hundreds of similar places.

• Theme 1: Landholding and enclosure
• Theme 2: The open field system and the manorial court
• Theme 3: The Village Population

The resources include images and transcripts of original archive materials including maps, surveys, manorial and ecclesiastical court records, correspondence and reports. 

Mark Pierce's Map of Laxton Lordship in 1635

The original copy of Mark Pierce's 17th century map of Laxton is held by the Bodlian Library at the University of Oxford.  The Bodlian have made digital copies of the nine panels of the original map available via their website.  The resource includes the digtised map and a digital facsimile of the entire field book that accompanied the map. The panel that includes the village is reproduced below.



The University of Nottingham hosts copies of the Orwin's tracing of the map on their website.

Map Regression

Map Regression is an important tool for exploring and understanding the development of landscape. Laxton is fortunate in having a wealth of historic mapping, allowing analysis of landscape change and development at a high resolution. 

You can compare two of the principal sources of mapping that of Mark Pierce (1635) and George Sanderson (1835) using the interactive maps on this website.

Map Regression Exercise
Using the historic mapping of Laxton provided below trace the development of either Town End Farm or Church Farm. 



Your aim is to understand the origin and antiquity of features of the modern landscape – so aim to produce a map of the present farm that demonstrates these two based on you map analysis.  You might care to visit the English Heritage website to investigate the context for such analysis of historic farms.

• Laxton in 1635 Map
• Laxton in 1789 Map
• Laxton in 1812 Map
• Laxton in 1812 Map
• Laxton in 1834 Map
• Laxton in 1862 Map
• Laxton Today