Roadworks: Medieval Britain, Medieval Roads

Description

This collection of essays offers an interdisciplinary study of roads and wayfinding in medieval England, Wales and Scotland. It looks afresh at the relationship between the road as a material condition of daily life and the formation of local and national communities, arguing that the business of road maintenance, road travel and wayfinding constitutes social bonds. Setting Britain's thoroughfares against the backdrop of the extant Roman road system, it argues for a technique of road construction and care that is distinctively medieval and challenges the long-held picture of a medieval Britain lacking in technological sophistication. This accessible collection draws out the imaginative, symbolic and cultural significance of the road. It synthesizes information on medieval road terminology, roads as rights of passage and the road as an idea as much as a physical entity. Individual essays look afresh at sources for the study of the medieval English road system, legal definitions of the highway, road-breaking and road-mending, wayfinding and the architecture of the street and its role in popular urban government. The book also explores subjects including hermits and the road as spiritual metaphor, royal itineraries, pilgrimage roads, roads in medieval English romances, English river transport, roads in medieval Wales and roads in the Anglo-Scottish border zone. This book will appeal to scholars of early and late medieval Britain in all disciplines. Its theoretical foundations will also ensure an audience among scholars of cultural studies, especially those in urban studies, transport studies and economic history. Cover Half-title Series page Title page Copyright information Table of contents List of figures List of tables List of contributors Acknowledgements List of abbreviations 1 Introduction: roads and writing Roads and writing Naming The road as right of way On Roman roads and their construction The chapters Notes 2 Sources for the English medieval road system Introduction Documentary evidence Place names Itineraries Map evidence Archaeological evidence A theoretical approach Towards a national medieval transport network Notes 3 Once a highway, always a highway: roads and English law, c. 1150–1300 Notes 4 When things break: mending roads, being social A: Broken tracks afford no passage B: The way affords passage Therefore C: The way is not broken Notes 5 The word on the street: Chaucer and the regulation of nuisance in post-plague London Introduction Troilus and Criseyde The regulation of nuisance in London Civic reform The people’s voice? Notes 6 Getting there: wayfinding in the Middle Ages Who is travelling? Route planning Which way? Asking directions Guides: medieval fixers Pilgrims on the holodeck: maps and itinerary maps On the road: signs and landmarks Learn fast phrases in French to get around! Signage Conclusion: medieval wayfinding as spatial practice Notes 7 The function of material and spiritual roads in the English eremitic tradition The development of the eremitic vocation Hermits, labour and work Metaphorical roads, labour and work in late eremitic literature Literal roads, labour and work in connection with later hermits Space syntax, medieval roads and medieval hermits Conclusion Notes 8 The royal itinerary and roads in England under Edward I Notes 9 The pilgrimage road in late medieval English literature Politics, polemic and the pilgrimage road The pilgrimage road as heterotopia The pilgrimage road in Middle English romance Conclusions Notes 10 The romance of the road in Athelston and two late medieval Robin Hood ballads Geoffrey of Monmouth: a double history of roads Brothers of the road: the politics of friendship in Athelston A rough guide to Watling Street Wayside distractions: the politics of roads in two late ­medieval Robin Hood ballads Seizing the road Notes 11 London: the hub of an English river transport network, 1250–1550 Jurisdiction and regulation Goods transportation and the lightermen Passenger transport and the watermen Conclusion Notes 12 Conquest, roads and resistance in medieval Wales Roadways, princes and power Axes, maps and poetry Recolonizing and decolonizing roads and woodlands Conclusions Notes 13 Trackless, impenetrable and underdeveloped? Roads, colonization and environmental transformation ... Notes Bibliography Manuscripts and Unpublished Primary Sources Printed Primary Sources Secondary Works Internet Sources Index