Search results for ""Author Anne Rowe""

To date, over sixty medieval parks have been identified in Hertfordshire - a large number for a relatively small county. In this ground-breaking study of parks created in Hertfordshire between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries, author Anne Rowe has adopted a holistic approach to landscape history. The geographical locations of the parks have been determined and, in most cases, mapped using a combination of field- and place-name evidence, old maps and detailed fieldwork. The documentary history for each park has been compiled, including, where available, details from manorial accounts, which provide an insight into park management in medieval times. All the data for each park is presented in a valuable gazetteer, together with the cartographic and field evidence which has been used to locate the parks in today's landscape. In addition, Anne Rowe has carried out detailed analysis of the parks and their owners and explains how the parks related to the physical and social geography of the county in medieval times. There was a marked difference in the numbers of parks in different parts of the county: the density of parks in the east was double that in the west. The underlying reasons for this pattern are explored, focusing in particular on the unusual relationship between the distribution of the parks and the distribution of woodland in the county at Domesday. Based on an enormous amount of original work, this meticulously researched book opens a window onto medieval Hertfordshire and illuminates a significant aspect of the county's landscape history. A second volume, Tudor and Early Stuart Parks of Hertfordshire (2019), is also published by University of Hertfordshire Press.

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Reviews ‘Anne Rowe, a scrupulous Murdoch scholar of many years’ standing, has written a slim but comprehensive overview of the writer’s career, attending successively to aspects of her output in both genres, encompassing matters intellectual, spiritual, experiential and geographical.’ Stuart Walton, The London Magazine

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This book forms a continuation of the research published in Medieval Parks, Anne Rowe's highly regarded volume of 2009. Now she turns her attention to the deer parks that existed in Hertfordshire during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Drawing on the earliest county maps, most notably those produced by Saxton in 1577 and Norden in 1598, and both State papers and estate records, Anne Rowe builds a detailed picture of Hertfordshire's Tudor and Early Stuart parks. At least 60 parks existed in Hertfordshire at various times between 1485 and 1642, but for only 46 of those parks is there evidence that they contained deer at some point during the period. These confirmed or probable deer parks form the focus of this study. Of course not all of them were sixteenth-century creations: less than one-third were `new' parks, the remainder had been in existence for much longer, in one or two cases being recorded in Domesday Book. In the first part of the book detailed evidence for who created and owned the county's parks and how they were used and managed is given. The dawning of design in Hertfordshire's park landscapes is also explored. Part 2 gives an account of the presence of the Tudor and early Stuart monarchy in Hertfordshire. Several monarchs and members of their immediate families spent significant periods in Hertfordshire and played a notable part in the history of its parkland; indeed, by 1540 Henry VIII held about 70 per cent of the parkland in the county. Part 3 is a gazetteer in which each entry brings together the documentary, cartographic and occasional field evidence available for a park, with a map showing its probable extent in the period covered. At this time hunting continued to be the most popular leisure activity, as it had been for centuries. Wealthy landowners enjoyed a range of hunting activities essentially unchanged from the medieval period, including deer- and hare-coursing on foot, falconry, fishing and wild-fowling. But the pursuit of a stag or buck on horseback accompanied by a pack of hounds was considered the noblest hunting experience. Based, like the first volume, on an enormous amount of original work, this meticulously researched book opens a window onto Tudor and early Stuart Hertfordshire and once again illuminates a significant aspect of the county's landscape history.

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Dividing the county of Hertfordshire into four broad regions—the “champion” countryside in the north, the Chiltern dip slope to the west, the fertile boulder clays of the east, and the unwelcoming London Clay in the south—this volume explains how, in the course of the middle ages, natural characteristics influenced the development of land use and settlement to create a range of distinctive landscapes. The great diversity of Hertfordshire’s landscapes makes it a particularly rewarding area of study. Variations in farming economies, in patterns of trade and communication, as well as in the extent of London’s influence, have all played a part during the course of the postmedieval centuries, and Hertfordshire’s continuing evolution is followed into the 21st century. Lavishly illustrated with maps and photographs, this authoritative work is invaluable reading for all those with an interest in the history, archaeology, and natural transformation of this fascinating county.

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Iris Murdoch and Morality provides a close focus on moral issues in Murdoch's novels, philosophy and theology. It situates Murdoch within current theoretical debates and develops an understanding of her work as a crucial link between twentieth and twenty-first century writing and theory.

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