Dartmoor's Alluring Uplands

Transhumance and Pastoral Management in the Middle Ages
Erscheinungsjahr 2012
ISBN: 978-0-85989-865-2
Verlag: University of Exeter Press

Buch, Englisch, 322 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 170 mm x 244 mm, Gewicht: 558 g

A striking and famous feature of the English landscape, Dartmoor is a beautiful place, with a sense of wildness and mystery. This book provides a new perspective on an important aspect of Dartmoor’s past. Its focus is transhumance: the seasonal transfer of grazing animals to different pastures.

In the Middle Ages, intensive practical use was made of Dartmoor’s resources. Its extensive moorlands provided summer pasture for thousands of cattle from the Devon lowlands, which flowed in a seasonal tide, up in the spring and down in the autumn. This book describes, for the first time, the social organisation and farming practices associated with this annual transfer of livestock. It also presents evidence for a previously unsuspected Anglo-Saxon pattern of transhumance in which lowland farmers spent the summers living with their cattle on the moor.

Winner of the Devon Book of the Year Award 2013.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fox, Harold

Dyer, Christopher

Tompkins, Matthew

Fachgebiete

• Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Ebenen & Grasland
• Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Regionalgeographie
• Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Humangeographie Wirtschaftsgeographie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie Umweltgeschichte & Umweltarchäologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie Mittelalterliche, neuzeitliche Archäologie (Europa)
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Agrarsoziologie
• Naturwissenschaften Agrarwissenschaften Tierhaltung

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Colour Plates

List of Figures

List of Tables

Editors’ Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Introduction by Christopher Dyer and Matthew Tompkins

1. Definitions and limitations

Defining Dartmoor’s resources

Dartmoor and its parts

Transhumance and its types

Limitations of this book

2. The red tides: impersonal transhumance and the central moor

The central moor: ownership and commoners

Distances travelled and middlemen

Pastoral management: the herdsman’s year

Livestock: numbers and types

3. The red tides: impersonal transhumance and the outer moors

Ownership and commoners

Pastoral management: drifts, structures, strays

Perambulation and dispute resolution

Order and disorder: outer moors and the central moor

4. Personal transhumance: distant detachments

Cockington and Dewdon

Ipplepen, Abbotskerswell and their links

Detached parts of the hundreds of Exminster, Wonford and Kerswell

Kenton with Heatree

Paignton and its parts

Lifton and Sourton

Northlew, Venn and Lettaford

Tavistock and Cudlipp

Bickleigh and Sheepstor

The significance of the detachments

5. Personal transhumance: archaeology, topography, place-names

and history

Archaeology and topography

Place-names and history: economy and society

6. Domesday Book and beyond: the transition from personal to impersonal transhumance

The role of colonists

The role of lords

The role of the Crown

7. Dartmoor and beyond

Droveways

Pastoral husbandry

The implications of transhumance for lowland farming

Conclusion by Christopher Dyer and Matthew Tompkins

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

The late Harold Fox was born and brought up in South Devon, and was Professor of Social and Landscape History at the Centre for English Local History, University of Leicester. He was a recognised authority on late-medieval landscape, agrarian and social history, particularly in the South-West and Midlands, and had served as president of the Medieval Settlement Research Group, chairman of the Society for Landscape Studies, vice-president of the English Place-Names Society and president of the Devon History Society.

Sadly he died before completing the final stages of this book, but two colleagues from the University of Leicester’s Centre for English Local History have brought it to the point of publication.

Matthew Tompkins is Honorary Visiting Fellow at the Centre for English Local History, University of Leicester. Christopher Dyer is Emeritus Professor at the Centre for English Local History, University of Leicester.