Class 1: Unravished England

The slides for Class 1, Unravished England can be downloaded from here.  They are in Adobe PDF format, you will need Adobe Reader (a free download) to view and print them.

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

Have you ever wondered by the landscape around us looks as it does, who shaped the fields, villages and towns that we live in and when?  Nearly sixty years ago the Leicester landscape historian W.G.Hoskins published The Making of the English Landscape, a book that for the first time set out to explain the evolution of the English landscape as we know it.  This seminal book and Hoskins’s approach to the study of landscape had a profound impact on landscape studies influencing things as diverse as the format of Time Team to ideas of what it means to be English.  

This website accompanies a series of classes run by me (Keith Challis) for the Workers Educational Association (WEA) in Burton Joyce, Nottingham in Autumn 2013.  During the classes we will embark on a guided reading of Hoskins’s book taking in the development of his ideas, discussing their relevance today and examining new evidence gathered over the sixty years since publication and their impact on our appreciation of Hoskins’s world view.  

As the classes progress I will use the website to share lecture content and slides, make reading recommendation via the on-line course bookshop (run by Amazon) provide digital copies of handouts and other resources and expand on ideas discussed in class.

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.