Exploration of Lothinglandwith Google Earth

-some questions

John Peterson, University of East Anglia

HypotheticalSouth Norfolk ACadastre

Norfolk, UK1997

Lothingland

South Norfolk

Norwich

VentaIcenorum

Features appearing to relate to the South Norfolk A cadastre on modern OS 1:25,000 topographic maps.

Leaving aside features in today’s landscape, what other linear features might be related to the hypothetical South Norfolk A Cadastre?

NHER 43591

NHER 18388

NHER 43592(part)

NHER 43495(west boundary)

Other similar features

Circa 180m (600 feet)

20m

How are churches related to the survey grid of the hypothetical South Norfolk A Cadastre?

Churches on limites

e.g. Lound

Total: 3

Churches on mid-century roads

e.g.Fritton

Total: 3

Churches on mid-century lines

e.g. Ashby

Total: 3

Each church is located by a placemark.

Each church is located by a placemark.

Distances from a 10 actus grid are calculated, and plotted.

Placemark coordinates are converted from WGS84 to OS grid.

There is a difference between each observed and expected value.

In this case the chance is less than one in 2,000. So we are justified in saying that the distribution is very probably not random.

Its greatest value measures the chance that the observed distribution could be a random set of observations.

In all this, I had to convert between OS and WGS84 coordinates. I’ll confess I was not aware of Irwin Scollar and Rog Palmer’s article in AARGNews 37, nor the possibility of using the OS conversions.I went my own way, with a much more specialised approach.

The accuracy of my hypothetical grid is only to 10m, so positions seem to agree with paper maps, but I may have done some unnecessary programming.

Another issue of concern (to me) is the way in which this particular landscape is seen.

The current “official” view is to be found in the Suffolk Landscape Character Assessment

(Local Authority generated)

“Plateau Estate Farmlands

Flat landscape of light loams and sandy soils

Large scale rectilinear field pattern

….

In the north-east [I.e. Lothingland] the planned character of the fields is very obvious, with large rectangular units surrounded by straight hedges. This regular pattern results from the parliamentary enclosure of common fields and of numerous commons and heaths in the first two decades of the 19th

century”.

Source: David Butcher (2008)

From a manor roll of 1618

“However, by the time that the tithe map of 1842 came to be drawn, all the little enclosures and strips of over 200 years before had been amalgamated into the classic, rectangular configuration of fields anything between three and twelve acres [1-5 ha] in area - the pattern which has become regarded as the quintessential English landscape.” (p206)

Source:Hodskinson (1787)

Probable boundary of Boyton Common (Hodskinson 1787).Mapped by OS as parish boundary and hedge (at this point), early and mid 20th century.

Modern field boundaries running east-west seem to approximate and “tidy up” parish boundary.

Section of parish boundary on slightly sinuous footpath, formerly track.

These three features, a possible Roman Road and two east-west sections of parish boundaries, all have an orientation close to that of many other boundaries in Lothingland.

All the interpreters known to me see this as a reflection of early 19th century landscape planning.

I must disagree. The north-eastern boundary of (former) Boyton Common has been in place for at least two centuries. The possible Roman road or track must be earlier than that and so cannot have been planned recently.

Nor is it at all likely that the sinuous east-west parish boundary sections are the work of 19th century surveyors. Indeed, I suggest that field boundaries of that date approximate one of them, and hence postdates it.

The initial assumption made by interpreters in this environment seems to be as follows:

Features conforming to an obvious regularity of the modern landscape are modern.

Elsewhere within the Roman world, different assumptions are made. Regularity of the modern landscape is seen as a potential indicator of ancient planning.

Source: IGN Mission Béziers-Agde 1963.(M Clavel-Lévêque 1983)

In such circumstances, features seen in aerial imagery that conform to the general orientation are taken to be ancient, unless proven otherwise.

Why is this approach so different from that taken in Lothingland?