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Prof Susan Oosthuizen Profile picture
@DrSueOosthuizen
Dec 9, 2019 • 11 tweets • 6 min read • Read on X
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#FunWithLandscapeHistory we paused briefly in Thame’s High Street (here, looking E) at the weekend to buy a small something to take to a friend’s for tea. Hmm... the street’s very wide which suggests a planned market, most likely medieval and (if so) 12/13thC... /1 Image
2. Oh, look! An angled entry on one of the properties on the S side. Is it an aberration or one of a pattern? Image
3. And another angled entry... Image
4. And another! (No idea why life-size plastic models of livestock are a thing, but they are fun. Specially a pig on a roof.) Image
5. The OS confirms that this is a pattern not an accident - these are the properties of a medieval town laid out over strips in one of Thame’s medieval open fields, with their characteristic backward-S curve (like these at Mursley, Glos). ImageImage
6. Some of the the properties on the N side of the street show the same curve, though they are shorter, and the pattern less extensive. It suggests the possibility that the High Street runs along a headland between two fur,ones in the medieval open fields. Image
6a. Furlongs, darn it, furlongs, you ridiculous spellchecker
6. And then I got home and found Thame’s excellent local history site thamehistory.net/maps/Davis1797… with this terrific map of 1797 and ... Image
7. also the @VCH_London’s excellent volume on Thame which confirms a market in place by the 12thC and the establishment of a new town around it british-history.ac.uk/vch/oxon/vol7/… with lots more exciting detail besides ImageImage
8. And this is why I love #landscape #history - there’s always something to look at even when everything else is as mundane as trying to find an offering to take to tea with a friend 😝 Image
9. PS Beresford & St Joseph’s wonderful book - available at ridiculously low prices 2nd hand - is a brilliant introduction to new towns, markets, ridge and furrow, & lots more #swoon . And then there’s a Gazetteer of medieval market grants via archives.history.ac.uk/gazetteer/gazw… END😇 Image

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More from @DrSueOosthuizen

Prof Susan Oosthuizen Profile picture
May 8, 2022
Short🧵. As many people know, Laxton, in Nottinghamshire, is one of the few places in England where large-scale #medieval open #fields survive, still collectively organised & managed in the same way that they were 6 and more centuries ago. … /1
The term ‘open fields’ has become shorthand for large (often huge) areas of arable, subdivided into unhedged blocks (‘furlongs’), subdivided in turn into narrow strips (‘selions’). #medieval #landscape. /2
And the strips (selions) in each furlong were shared out, one by one in repetitive order, between the village’s farmers. This 1617 map from Balsham, Cambs., names of the farmer of each strip. By 1617 some had acquired & merged neighbouring strips, others had subdivided theirs. /3
Read 9 tweets
Prof Susan Oosthuizen Profile picture
Sep 9, 2021
Pollard willows along a river bank are such a vivid reminder of centuries of unremembered famers’ labour in supporting the present with hope for a sustainable future. Here’s the story they tell… THREAD
2. Most obviously, willows are trees that prefer damp conditions so they’re often planted along rivers, streams & canals so that their root systems will help to keep the banks stable in times of flood (photo: John Sutton). But that’s the least interesting part of their story.
3. More interesting - at least to me - is their use for millennia as a crop, for making all sorts of things. Here are a few examples. Friends, I give you a reconstructed willow hurdle from fish weir c3934-2681 BC (exarc.net/issue-2018-4/e…).
Read 23 tweets
Prof Susan Oosthuizen Profile picture
Sep 1, 2021
Every walk has a puzzle or more that might tell the story of how that landscape evolved. That’s what makes for so much fun. So here’s a 🧵about a recent amble in case you might enjoy it too.
2. We walked past this pair of houses, one set closely behind the other. Which was the earlier? How might one tell?
3. Well, there’s a rule of thumb in Cambs. that chimney location, shapes and materials are a good place to start:
(a) the earliest chimneys in ordinary houses were set along the roof line - not on the end walls. They mostly tend to date from the 17thC though they can be earlier
Read 20 tweets
Prof Susan Oosthuizen Profile picture
Jun 6, 2021
The great historian G. M. Trevelyan on the enchantment of history:

‘The appeal of History to us all is in the last analysis poetic. But the poetry of History does not consist of imagination roaming at large, but of imagination pursuing the fact & fastening upon it. (1/n)
2. That which compels the historian to ‘scorn delights and live laborious days’ is the ardor of his own curiosity to know what really happened long ago in that land of mystery which we call the past. To peer into that magic mirror and see fresh figures there every day ... (2/n)
3. ... is a burning desire that consumes and satisfies him all his life, that carries him each morning, eager as a lover, to the library and muniment room. It haunts him like a passion of almost terrible potency, because it is poetic.
Read 8 tweets
Prof Susan Oosthuizen Profile picture
Feb 4, 2021
THREAD. There’s so much water in the fields at present - fields are floating in water. Here in the east of England it’s a practical lesson explaining so much about land use before under-field drainage began in the 17thC.
2. Seasonal springs are suddenly bubbling with water ...
3. and everything is sodden underfoot.
Read 17 tweets
Prof Susan Oosthuizen Profile picture
Dec 22, 2020
THREAD. A seriously muddy walk across one of the high, flat, clay plateaux of S Cambs. today, was full of reminders that this land, too heavy for ox-drawn ploughs, was medieval common pasture studded with managed woodland..
2. The fields were full of water despite being at the top of the hills - too flat to drain well, studded with small pockets of low land that made temporary ponds..
3. Coming across Eversden Wood in this waterlogged landscape reminded me of the great Oliver Rackham’s truism that #medieval #woods are not found on land that’s good for woods, but on land that’s no good for anything else - and of his advice on how to recognise them..
Read 17 tweets

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