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Domesday Woodland in Southwest England
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2015
Extract
The distribution of woodland and the stages of its gradual disappearance were of fundamental importance in the early historical geography of England. Wood was a valuable element in medieval economy and one of the chief factors affecting the nature of settlement, The evidence concerning the extent of the woodland in early England is of two kinds : (1) the surface geology, which provides a basis for the reconstruction of the original extent ; (2) the statistics of the Domesday Book: these refer to the eleventh century, but they may have some retrospective value. The present essay is an attempt to examine the Domesday evidence for the south and south-western counties of Berkshire, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset, Devon and Cornwall.
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References
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9 D.B., r, 68. Five hundred years later, in the same village of South Newton, the tenants had to undertake the transport of timber to the lord's seat at Wilton : Roxburghe Club, ‘Survey of the Lands of William First Earl of Pembroke’, ed. C. R. Straton, (1909), 31
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36 Morgan, F.W. ‘The Domesday Geography of Berkshire’, Scottish Geographical Magazine (1935), 51, 353.Google Scholar
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49 These spaces would be larger if a league of less than 12 furlongs be assumed
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