The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

• 272 • Ian Whyte
gardens had been small, often
walled, incorporated into courtyard
layouts or within defensive
perimeters. From the reign of
Henry VIII, these gave way to
formal gardens on a far grander
scale (Figure 15.5), while parks
began to be developed in more
diverse ways than merely as deer
sanctuaries. While many medieval
parks disappeared and were
converted to agricultural uses, new
ones were laid out on some estates,
often with profound consequences
for the local population as well as
the landscape. The creation of
landscaped parks sometimes
Figure 15.5 Garden and landscaped park, Mellerstain, Scottish Borders. involved the removal and rebuilding
Source: I. Whyte
of entire villages. In the later
seventeenth century, British gardens were influenced by those at Versailles; by the early eighteenth
century, French influences were considered unpatriotic and went out of favour. Less formal
garden designs became fashionable, under the influence of ideas regarding the picturesque, with
a wealth of temples, grottoes and statues. The work of Capability Brown represented a reaction
against this fussiness with his use of grass, trees and water on a sweeping scale. Although his
ideas dominated the second half of the eighteenth century, they gave way to a greater emphasis
on the formal once more under Humphry Repton and the creation of more varied scenes with
the introduction of exotic trees and plants. Aerial and ground survey as well as excavation have
identified a range of earthwork features associated with gardens (Daniels and Seymour 1990).
INDUSTRY
Although industry is traditionally considered separately from agriculture, it is important to
appreciate that for much of the period under consideration agriculture and industry were closely
related, complementary rather than competing elements of a dual economy in a predominantly
rural landscape. In 1500, most industry was small in scale, operating at the level of the individual
workshop or craftsman, and widely dispersed, although textile manufacture, mining and
ironworking had more marked concentrations. Population growth led to unrestricted squatting
on waste land in many parts of northern England, with smallholders spinning and weaving cloth
as an adjunct to subsistence agriculture. This produced the densely settled landscape of small
farms and thickly scattered weavers’ cottages that is a feature of many parts of the southern
Pennines, such as the area around Haworth, West Yorkshire.
The iron industry, centred on the Weald in south-east England, still used primitive bloomery
forges in the early sixteenth century. The introduction of the blast furnace, used first in the
Weald at the very end of the fifteenth century and only spreading to areas like south Wales and
Shropshire by the 1560s, involved an increase in the scale of operations and required a more
careful choice of site. As the available charcoal resources, produced from carefully managed
coppice woodlands, became inadequate to support further growth in the Weald, the industry
moved to more remote areas like the West Midlands, the Forest of Dean, south Wales and Furness.