The Landscape of Anglo-Saxon England

Book excerpt: This book concerns the landscape that surrounded early medieval man, often described as he saw and experienced it. The Anglo-Saxon period was one of considerable change in settlement and land use patterns but the landscape regions that emerge, documented for the first time in history, are still familiar to us today. The image conjured up, and for the present it can hardly be any more than an image, is tentative and incomplete, for many more threads have been embroidered upon it in the thousand succeeding years; but the early patterns often guided the latter and occasionally still show through. This book examines the Anglo-Saxon's view of his natural surroundings and how he utilized the resources available -- the cropland, woodland and marginal land of pasture and fen -- and how this is reflected in administrative patterns, how it influenced settlement, communications and trade and, moreover, influenced the landscape patterns of successive ages.