This volume prints for the first time the 'perambulation' of Cumberland compiled by the lawyer, Thomas Denton, for Sir John Lowther of Lowther in 1687-8. Denton's manuscript provides the most detailed surviving description of the county in the seventeenth century. Taking the methods of earlier antiquaries as a framework, and incorporating much of the text of the history of Cumberland written c.1603 by John Denton, the perambulation includes a wealth of contemporary detail for almost every parish and township in the county, including particulars of land tenure, valuations of estates, population estimates, descriptions of buildings and the histories of landed families. Appended to the description of Cumberland, are a perambulation of Westmorland, and the texts of two important tracts, the genealogy of the Clifford family and a treatise on customary tenantright. The volume is rounded off by descriptions of the Isle of Man and Ireland, taken in part from Camden's Britannia but including detailed topographical accounts of Man and Dublin, based on Denton's own observations. ANGUS J.L. WINCHESTER is Senior Lecturer in History, Lancaster University.

This innovative and interdisciplinary book makes a major contribution to common pool resource studies. It offers a new perspective on the sustainable governance of common resources, grounded in contemporary and archival research on the common lands of England and Wales - an important common resource with multiple, and often conflicting, uses. It encompasses ecologically sensitive environments and landscapes, is an important agricultural resource and provides public access to the countryside for recreation. Contested Common Land brings together historical and contemporary legal scholarship to examine the environmental governance of common land from c.1600 to the present day. It uses four case studies to illustrate the challenges presented by the sustainable management of common property from an interdisciplinary perspective - from the Lake District, Yorkshire Dales, North Norfolk coast and the Cambrian Mountains. These demonstrate that cultural assumptions concerning the value of common land have changed across the centuries, with profound consequences for the law, land management, the legal expression of concepts of common 'property' rights and their exercise. The 'stakeholders' of today are the inheritors of this complex cultural legacy, and must negotiate diverse and sometimes conflicting objectives in their pursuit of a potentially unifying goal: a secure and sustainable future for the commons. The book also has considerable contemporary relevance, providing a timely contribution to discussion of strategies for the implementation of the Commons Act of 2006. The case studies position the new legislation in England and Wales within the wider context of institutional scholarship on the governance principles for successful common pool resource management, and the rejection of the 'tragedy of the commons'.

This innovative and interdisciplinary book makes a major contribution to common pool resource studies. It offers a new perspective on the sustainable governance of common resources, grounded in contemporary and archival research on the common lands of England and Wales - an important common resource with multiple, and often conflicting, uses. It encompasses ecologically sensitive environments and landscapes, is an important agricultural resource and provides public access to the countryside for recreation. Contested Common Land brings together historical and contemporary legal scholarship to examine the environmental governance of common land from c.1600 to the present day. It uses four case studies to illustrate the challenges presented by the sustainable management of common property from an interdisciplinary perspective - from the Lake District, Yorkshire Dales, North Norfolk coast and the Cambrian Mountains. These demonstrate that cultural assumptions concerning the value of common land have changed across the centuries, with profound consequences for the law, land management, the legal expression of concepts of common 'property' rights and their exercise. The 'stakeholders' of today are the inheritors of this complex cultural legacy, and must negotiate diverse and sometimes conflicting objectives in their pursuit of a potentially unifying goal: a secure and sustainable future for the commons. The book also has considerable contemporary relevance, providing a timely contribution to discussion of strategies for the implementation of the Commons Act of 2006. The case studies position the new legislation in England and Wales within the wider context of institutional scholarship on the governance principles for successful common pool resource management, and the rejection of the 'tragedy of the commons'.

The first authoritative survey of the history of common land in Great Britain from the medieval period to present day. More than a million hectares of Britain has the status of common land, most of it consisting of semi-natural environments of mountain, moorland, wetland or heath. Formerly much more extensive, common land was, and in many places remains, an integral part of the pastoral economy. Even where it is no longer used by farmers, it plays an increasingly important role in modern life, as recreational space and for its value for nature conservation. This book provides for the first time an authoritative survey of the history of common land across all three nations of Great Britain from medieval times to the present day. It charts how commons have been viewed and valued across the centuries, how they have been used, and how their vegetation has changed, highlighting parallels and differences between the histories of common land in England, Scotland and Wales. It traces the distinctive legal status of common land and the management regimes which regulated the exercise of common rights; considers the role of commons as spaces for communal gatherings and as a resource for the poor; charts the loss of common land (but also its persistence) during the era of enclosure in the century 1760-1860; and explores the changing conceptions of the value and right use of commons since the nineteenth century, and the impact this has had on their ecological character. Eight case studies of individual commons illustrate the richness of common landscapes and their history at local level. They include crofters' common grazings in Sutherland, mountain commons in the Lake District and Snowdonia, lowland commons in Co. Durham, Herefordshire and the New Forest, turbary allotments in Lincolnshire, and the urban commons of Wimbledon and Putney Heath.

New and definitive edition of the earliest history of Cumberland. John Denton's history of Cumberland, compiled in the first decade of the seventeenth century, formed the basis of almost all antiquarian writing on Cumberland for some two hundred years, and continues to be cited. It is the earliest known attempt to write a history of Cumberland and one of the first generation of antiquarian accounts of an English shire. This volume presents a completely new, critical edition of the manuscript history of Cumberland, replacing that published in 1887 by Richard S. Ferguson under the title An Accompt of the most considerable Estates and Families in the County of Cumberland [ hitherto the only published version]. The new edition attempts both toreconstruct as much as possible of the original text from surviving copies and to identify the sources from which it was drawn, enabling the factual accuracy of Denton's work to be assessed. Angus Winchester is SeniorLecturer in History at Lancaster University and a Past President of Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society.

Dry stone walls create much of the character of upland landscapes across Britain. How do we go about dating dry stone walls? Why were they built and by whom? This book seeks answers to these questions and also suggests how walls themselves may be 'read' as historical evidence, shedding light on past farming practice and the history of local communities. The first part of the book traces the history of dry stone walls from medieval times to the present. The standard form of most dry stone walls probably dates from Tudor times but the great era of wall-building in the uplands took place comparatively recently, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. There are numerous regional variations: 'Galloway dykes' in south-west Scotland; stone slab fences, found from Orkney to mid-Wales; 'consumption' walls, built to absorb vast quantities of stone from the fields. The second part of the book looks at dry stone walls as part of Britain's cultural heritage. The walls themselves contain evidence of why they were built and how they functioned as part of the hill farming system. They sometimes preserve information about their builders and owners or evidence of lost features in the landscape.

First full-length survey of the fluid relationship between these two areas at a time of rapid change. This book provides the first comprehensive analysis of the development of northern England and southern Scotland in the formative era of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. How did "middle Britain" come to be divided between twoseparate unitary kingdoms called "England" and "Scotland"? How, and how differently, was government exercised and experienced? How did people identify themselves by their languages and naming practices? What major themes can be detected in the development of ecclesiastical structures and religious culture? What can be learned about the rural and the emerging urban environments in terms of lordly exploitation and control, settlement patterns and how the landscape itself evolved? These are among the key questions addressed by the contributors, who bring to bear multi-faceted approaches to medieval "middle Britain". Above all, by pursuing similarities and differences from a comparative "transnational" perspective it becomes clearer how the "old" interacted with the "new", what was exceptional and what was not, and how far the histories of northern England and southern Scotland point to common or not so commonfoundations and trajectories. KEITH STRINGER is Professor Emeritus of Medieval British History at Lancaster University; ANGUS WINCHESTER is Professor Emeritus of Local and Landscape History at Lancaster University. Contributors: Richard Britnell, Dauvit Broun, Janet Burton, David Ditchburn, Philip Dixon, Piers Dixon, Fiona Edmonds, Richard Oram, Keith Stringer, Chris Tabraham, Simon Taylor, Angus J.L. Winchester.