‘By 1330 … nearly every line was drawn’; New Light on Devon’s Landscape History, 70 years after W. G. Hoskins

W. G. Hoskin’s seminal book Devon was published in 1954. It suggested the pattern of the county’s historic landscape was established by the later Middle Ages. Recent research using innovative geoarchaeological methods has enabled new analyses of Devon’s historic field boundaries, showing that the medieval field pattern which survives today first developed several centuries earlier than once thought. 

Sam Turner is a Professor of Archaeology at Newcastle University.