The Historic Landscape of the Quantock Hills

Description

With illustrations by Elaine Jamieson. E-book (PDF) published 2012. The Quantock Hills, famous for their associations with Coleridge and Wordsworth in the 19th century, have been the canvas on which are sketched the shadowy images of people who lived on the land from prehistoric times to the present. There are Bronze Age cairns and burial mounds, Iron Age hillforts, Roman settlements, medieval manors and post-medieval estates, right through to stark monuments of the Second World War and the Cold War. This book presents and interprets the Quantocks landscape after a dedicated programme of archaeological fieldwork, air photograph transcription and architectural investigation by English Heritage. It describes the results in a readable book including full colour illustrations and line drawings throughout, plus a series of lively reconstruction paintings by the artist Jane Brayne. Illustrations vi Foreword by Lady Gass and Chris Edwards vii Acknowledgements viii Summary ix Resumé x Zusamenfassung xi Introduction xii 1. A special place? The landscape of the Quantock Hills 1 Cheerful beauty: the natural landscape 1 The man-made landscape 6 The English Heritage archaeological survey of the Quantock Hills AONB 14 2. A ritual landscape? The early prehistory of the Quantock Hills 15 Handaxes and early humans in the Lower Palaeolithic period 15 The ice was all around: climate change and the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic periods 15 Hunters in the forest: the Mesolithic period 18 Landscapes of death and life in the Neolithic period 19 The Bronze Age: funerary and mundane landscapes 28 The funerary landscape: Bronze Age burial monuments 30 The mundane landscape: Bronze Age settlement 43 3. A defended landscape? The Quantock Hills in Iron Age and Roman times 51 Beyond the pale of civilisation: the Iron Age 51 Business as usual? The Roman occupation 72 4. A managed landscape? The Quantock Hills in the medieval period 77 The migration and early medieval periods: Britons and Anglo-Saxons 77 The later medieval period: lords of the manor 85 5. A Romantic landscape? The Quantock Hills in the post-medieval period 115 A changing landscape: enclosure, improvement and industry 115 Gardens bright with sinuous rills: designed landscapes on the Quantock Hills 115 A working landscape: farms, farming and industry in the Quantock Hills 127 6. A remembered landscape? The Quantock Hills in the 20th century 152 A rural idyll? The Quantock Hills in the early 20th century 152 The Second World War and the Cold War: the Quantock Hills in the later 20th century 153 A changing landscape? The historic landscape of the Quantock Hills in the 21st century 159 Appendix 1: Site gazetteer 162 Appendix 2: English Heritage Quantock project survey reports 163 References 164 Index 168