Reviews > Book review

Medieval Parks of Hertfordshire

By Anne Rowe

Hertfordshire Publications, 2009, £18.99, ISBN: 978-1-905313-48-8

The Medieval Parks of Hertfordshire is the culmination of twenty years growing interest and research into origins of the Hertfordshire countryside. Originally conceived of a single work which would also have covered the post-medieval period, the book now sits as a complementary volume to Hugh Prince’s Parks in Hertfordshire since 1500.

The understanding of the complex functions of parks has developed considerably over the last two decades. Although it can be reasonably argued that the inclosure of an area for deer was the original purpose of emparkment, there is a great deal of variety in their size, form and function. Much consideration is given in the book to the distribution and location of parks in relation to soil, topography and tenure, as well as the spatial relationship between the park and the park owner. Taking the Domesday Book as a starting reference point the development and expansion of the park system in the county is assessed and analysed.  Although there seems to be an association between parks and pre-existing woodland at the local level, the larger scale association in terms of density of parks in heavily wooded areas is found to be an oversimplification. A great many of the parks were, however, formed from manorial waste and generally located on poorer soils.

Rowe has gathered information from a variety of sources including a good deal of field work. Park boundaries are particularly interesting features and the author has found very few that conform to the classic scenario of having the ditch on the inside of the bank to prevent the deer from escaping.

It is perhaps the comprehensive gazetteer that will appeal to the majority of landscape and medieval historians. This is well illustrated often using the 1880s 1st Edition Ordnance Survey and the RAF aerial photographs from the 1940s to demonstrate the persistence of features.  The large scale format of the book lends itself very well to this degree of detail permitting close scrutiny of the richness of the landscape not afforded by modern maps. The countywide analysis and interpretation of the landscape in the introduction do not undermine the author’s keen sense of detail.

Rowe takes a refreshing look at the origins, distribution and functions of early parks and is not afraid to challenge the findings of some well-respected landscape historians, occasionally chasing secondary sources back to a non-existent origin. If there is one area that is lacking attention it is the context of Hertfordshire in relation to the surrounding counties. It was one of the few counties that was not subject to forest law at any time although the extensive forest of Essex ran along its eastern boundary.  It would have been instructive to know more about how the surrounding counties differed from Hertfordshire, or if they did at all.

Reviewed by Ben Lennon, PhD student at the University of Bristol; researching the landscape history of Savernake.