Landscapes 7 (2)

An interdisciplinary approach combining archival research and the use of field names with fieldwork and an understanding of the ecology allows the reconstruction of the landscape and farming economy of a South Yorkshire township before the development of the coalfield brought huge changes in the nineteenth century. Although no manorial or estate papers survive, two Tudor surveys, the archives of Trinity College, Cambridge, glebe terriers, and a tithe award and map are used to describe the pattern of open fields, river meadows, moors, assarts and a communal wood. Of particular interest is the way that the extensive flood-plain was drained and farmed in communal ings, which made Wombwell `an extent of agricultural ground remarkably rich and fertile'. No formal enclosure took place, as most of the township came under single ownership, but with the sale of the estate in lots in the late-eighteenth century considerable changes in ownership and farming practices were introduced. These are examined through nineteenth- and twentieth-century crop returns and farm surveys held at the National Archives. Since the collapse of the coal-mining industry, regeneration projects have altered the landscape again and destroyed some of its inherited distinctiveness.

Personal memoirs of Maurice Beresford and his work in landscape studies, by a number of his friends and colleagues.