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This excellent and stimulating set of papers originates in a conference on post-medieval estate landscapes held by the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology in April 2003. Twelve papers look at different aspects of estate landscapes, ranging from the sixteenth to the twentieth century and from Britain and Ireland to the Caribbean. After a brief preface and an introductory paper by Tom Williamson, the papers are divided into three groups.
In the first group, 'Landscapes and Improvement', Jonathan Finch examines the Castle Howard estate and shows how the 'ornamental' and 'productive' elements of the landscape should be considered together. Robert Silvester and Judith Alfrey examine the development of Vaynor in the Severn Valley. Sam Turner's paper looks at a rather lower social group. In what for me was the most interesting and original of the papers, Turner examines a 'difficult' and complex Devon landscape, largely enclosed by c. 1400, and picks out from it subtle elements of agricultural improvement, in particular the development of regularised, rectangular fields around 'barton' farms. He is thus able to push a socially...