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| Book Report
"The Making of the English Village" by Brian K Roberts
A village plan may be defined as the distinctive pattern resulting from the association of the various parts of a village: farmsteads, cottages, great house and church, property boundaries, open greens, roads and footpaths. These elements form a framework for the economic and social life of teh settlement, and while investigators have given much attention to the village buildings and village communities, surprisingly little work has been done on village plans. This book draws together extensive investigations carried out by the author and many other scholars, and is structured around commentaries upon nearly one hundred full-page line drawings. Beginning with questions of classification, it shows how plans can be dissected, analysed and dated, demonstrates the presence of important regional contrasts, examines the processes creating, altering and destroying plans through time, and finally shows how events in individual villages can be viewed as part of changing settlement patterns.
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The commentaries and drawings are interlocked and arranged so as to create an almost continuous narrative. The text is cast in a format and language which should prove attractive to both professional scholars and 'professional amateurs', and yet be of value to anyone with a general interest in the countryside. |
Brian Roberts is a Senior Lecturer in Geography at the University of Durham Published by Longman Scientific & Technical, 1987
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