The Archaeology of a Great Estate

Book excerpt: The Peak District is a historic upland landscape, with a rich palimpsest of features which invoke the many generations of people who have inhabited the area. The great estate of Chatsworth reflects the Peak in microcosm. Its landscapes are diverse and contain many exceptional features including archaeological earthworks of medieval open fields and later enclosures in the park, and prehistoric stone circles, barrows, fields and settlements on the Estate moorlands. This book tells the story of the historic landscape and its archaeology; it is a companion volume to Chatsworth: A Landscape History (Barnatt & Williamson), but in contrast to that book includes the whole of the Estate landscape, including the extensive farmland and moorlands beyond the park and concentrates on visible archaeology and what it can tell us about the past. The result is a fascinating in-depth portrait of one of the major estates in Britain.