In 1818 the Royal Forest of Exmoor was sold by the Crown to the Worcestershire ironfounder John Knight. Through the nineteenth century the Knight family embarked on the largest upland reclamation scheme in southern England, on the biggest remaining area of uninhabited land. Their efforts were enormously costly, and only a partial success. The story of thwarted agricultural ‘improvement’ was told by C.S. Orwin’s ‘The Reclamation of Exmoor’, first published in 1929. With funding from The Lev...

A revelatory new history of the Irish Great Famine, showing how the British Empire caused Ireland’s most infamous disaster.“Vigorous and engaging.” —Fintan O’Toole, The New YorkerIn 1845, European potato fields were attacked by a novel pathogen. But it was only in Ireland that the blight’s devastation reached apocalyptic levels, leaving more than a million dead and forcing millions more to emigrate. In Rot...

WINNER OF THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR CONSERVATION 2025A WATERSTONES AND GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF 2024'Both dynamite and medicine' AMY-JANE BEER'Timely and rousing' THE TIMES________________________________The lie of the land: that Britain’s landowners care for the countryside.Our landowning elite are paid billions of taxpayer pounds to be good st...

****WINNER OF THE HISTORY AND TRADITION CATEGORY, EAST ANGLIAN BOOK AWARDS 2020****LONGLISTED FOR THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE 2021****'A real page-turner ... a warning about what happens when the rich and powerful dress up their avarice as "progress" - a lesson we could do with learning today.' Dixe Wills, BBC Countryfile magazineFROM A MULTI-AWARD-WINNING HISTORIAN, AN ARRESTING NEW HISTORY OF THE BATTLE FOR THE FENS.Between the English...

In late eighteenth-century Britain a handful of men brought about the greatest transformation in human history. Inventors, industrialists and entrepreneurs ushered in the age of powered machinery and the factory, and thereby changed the whole of human society, bringing into being new methods of social and economic organisation, new social classes, and new political forces. The Industrial Revolution also dramatically altered humanity's relation to the natural world and embedded the belief t...

Archaeologies and histories of the fens of eastern England, continue to suggest, explicitly or by implication, that the early medieval fenland was dominated by the activities of north-west European colonists in a largely empty landscape. Using existing and new evidence and arguments, this new interdisciplinary history of the Anglo-Saxon fenland offers another interpretation. The fen islands and the silt fens show a degree of occupation unexpected a few decades ago. Dense Romano-British set...

The domestic linen industry left an indelible imprint on Ulster history. It was introduced by colonists from the north of England in the seventeenth century, before the arrival of the Huguenots, and encouraged by the landlords to improve their rentals.Earnings from raising flax, spinning yarn and weaving cloth, provided farming families with regular incomes that enabled them to lease small farms and improve marginal land. Continual improvements by Ulster bleachers in the finishing ...

Many family historians will come across direct links to ancestors who lived and worked in the countryside as farmers, laborers, landowners, village tradesmen and professionals for most of us have rural ancestors. Yet despite the burgeoning interest in genealogy, these people have rarely been written about with the family historian in mind. No previous book has provided a guide to the documents and records, from medieval times to the twentieth century, that researchers can use to find out a...

This classic study of Irish culture, extensively illustrated with photographs, maps and drawings, and reissued with a new foreword and an updated bibliography, gives a detailed yet panoramic view of Ireland. It follows in the great tradition of French historiography, adding the testament of landscape, antiquities and folk custom to that of document-based history as a primary source of knowledge of our past. It is a justly acclaimed, stimulating work of instruction, entertainment and enligh...

'Meticulously researched yet accessible' GeographicalStanding in the busy streets of South London today, it is hard to imagine that much of this suburban townscape was once a vast wood, stretching unbroken for almost seven miles from Croydon to the Thames at Deptford. In The Wood That Built London, C.J. Schüler takes us on a journey through time, telling tales of invaders and trade guilds, map makers and soldiers, royals and working class people. From the 8th century to current conservatio...

Forestry in Ireland has never been so contentious. Over the last century the area of Irish woodland has increased tenfold, mostly through the planting of imported conifer species; government policy is to plant more trees to supply industry and to tackle climate change, both urgent priorities. But there has been a backlash from farmers, local communities, environmentalists and EU regulators. The rate of planting has plummeted. And up to one-third of new plantations in Ireland are failed for...

Medieval Rural Settlement: Britain and Ireland, AD 800-1600 is a major assessment and review of the origins, forms and evolutions of medieval rural settlement in Britain and Ireland across the period c. AD 800-1600. It offers a comprehensive analysis of early to late medieval settlement, land use, economics and population, bringing together evidence drawn from archaeological excavations and surveys, historical geographical analysis and documentary and place-name study. It is intended to be...