University of Nottingham
  

Changing landscapes, changing environments: enclosure and culture in Northamptonshire, 1700-1900

Project outline

Supported by English Heritage and the John Clare Trust, this project sought to examine the long term cultural impact of parliamentary enclosure - the enclosing of common land by Act of Parliament 1760-1845 - on both the Northamptonshire landscape and the communities living there.

The project had four main aims: 1) to explore enclosure in relation to the Northamptonshire aristocracy; 2) to evaluate the visual and cultural impact of enclosure for contemporaries; 3) to examine the culture of formal religious observance in the parish; 4) to ascertain how traditional belief systems were affected by the wave of rationalisation heralded by enclosure.

Detail from: 'Paulerspury' by George Clarke, A History of the County of Northampton: Volume 5: The Hundred of Cleley (2002), pp. 245-289 Paulerspury Rectory 
 
 

Achievements

The project's research activities and achievements have included: the building of a database detailing all 213 enclosures in Northamptonshire; the organisation of a two-day interdisciplinary conference; the creation of an online exhibition; the publication of peer-review papers. More broadly, the project has helped to increase our understandings of the impact of enclosure, and to enhance the popular understanding of the landscape.

 

Ongoing influence

Created after the close of the project, as part of a project website, Ian Waites' online exhibition of George Clarke of Scaldwell's drawings continues to attract and inform vistors beyond the life of the project.

A relational database for material relating to gravestone inscriptions gathered during the final phase of the project is in development. The materials should suggest answers to a series of questions abut popular attitudes to religion. The project team are also investigating the potential for a follow up project application on this theme.

The project's Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Briony McDonagh, who is now a Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Hull, developed two further projects from her research undertaken during the Changing Landscapes project. She won a prestigious Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship to work on her 'Elite Women & the Agricultural Landscape, 1700-1830' project (March 2010-Jan 2014). This was followed up by a successful application for an AHRC Early Career Fellowship (Feb-Oct 2014), which is enabling her to write a monograph on this research: Beyond the Park Pale: elite women and the agricultural landscape 1700-1850 (contracted to Ashgate for submission in 2014).

Award details

Duration: June 2007 - June 2011

Principal Investigator:
Professor Matthew Cragoe

Higher Education Institution:
Department of History, University of Sussex

Project team:
 

Selected publications

The team have published a monograph and a number of peer-review journal articles. 

 
 

Landscape and Environment Programme

School of Geography
University Park
University of Nottingham
Nottingham, NG7 2RD

telephone: +44 (0) 115 84 66071
email: landscape@nottingham.ac.uk