Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #blush
Most recents (4)
THREAD. The fun of landscape history is that, quite often, it’s little, insignificant details in plain sight that reveal past now-lost landscapes. They turn a country walk into a detective story - like this amble in Comberton, Cambs., reconstructing its vanished village green. 
2. All that’s left today is this small grassy area and duck pond at the centre of the village - jam-packed with signals to its communal function: village sign, gritting box, benches, litter bin, & a bus stop just out of shot on the L. The 19thC OS map shows even more of them ...
3. The duck pond is the rounded feature 117 just NW of the crossroads near the bottom of the map. Communal facilities in 1880 included a smithy, a malting for brewing beer, & the Red Lion (all plot 119); & a school & schoolteacher’s house across the road, as well as a maze ...
THREAD. This entry is typical of the Cambs. #Domesday Book (1086).
1st, it lists the major landowners after the Norman Conquest - here at Barton, Humphrey was Guy de Raimbeaucourt’s tenant in 1086.
2nd (& this is what I’m interested in) it lists the landowners *before* ...
1st, it lists the major landowners after the Norman Conquest - here at Barton, Humphrey was Guy de Raimbeaucourt’s tenant in 1086.
2nd (& this is what I’m interested in) it lists the landowners *before* ...
2. ... 1066. As you can see, there were 24 of them & they were all free men - they could grant and sell their land without permission from anyone else. They didn’t ‘belong’ to a manor, but farmed independently.
And DB tells us a number of other interesting things about them ...
And DB tells us a number of other interesting things about them ...
3. They were commended to the king for patronage and protection, & in return performed specific services for him - in this case they carted his goods, people, crops, etc.from one place to another, & they provided a mounted escort for the Sheriff when he undertook official duties.
Thrilled earlier in the week, during a short trip to the Netherlands, to find that the main road from/to Hoek van Holland runs along the top of the Maasdijk, a massive 13thC earthen bank running fir miles along the N side of the estuary of the R Maas ...
2. .. to protect the low-lying coast to the N from flooding. You can see the road running from top L towards bottom R on this topographical map, coloured to show height above sea level. Almost everything behind the dyke is at sea level...
3. FOR miles, darn it, for miles along the N bank of the Maas. #blush
THREAD. Artificial watercourses across the Cambridgeshire #fenland are called ‘lodes’ locally - from the Old English (ge)lād (derived from the verb ‘to lead’) - because they lead water from one place to another. Why was that necessary? The #landscape holds the clues..
2. Lodes are the largest in an interconnected hierarchy of man-made watercourses - the other two in that list are catchwaters and ditches. We’ll start with lodes, move on to catchwaters, and then to ditches - and suddenly the whole landscape makes sense (at least, to me)
3. Here’s the example of Wicken Lode to illustrate the principles. It runs from the edge of the dry ground (coloured orange, in the top R of the map) to the river Cam on the L. It is fed....
