The Making of the English Landscape (Nature Classics Library)

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For what a many-sided pleasure there is in looking at a wide view anywhere in England, not simply as a sun-drenched whole, fading into unknown blue distances, like the view of the West Midland plain from the top of the Malvern Hills, or at a pleasant rural miniature like the crumpled Woburn ridge in homely Bedfordshire; but in recognizing every one of its details name by name, in knowing how and when each came to be there, why it is just that colour, shape, or size, and not otherwise, and in seeing how the various patterns and parts fit together to make the whole scene. [8] Foreword" in West, John. Village Records (London: Macmillan; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1962) ISBN 0-85033-444-6 William George Hoskins was born at 26–28 St David's Hill, Exeter, Devon on 22 May 1908: his father, like his grandfather, was a baker. [1] Progression for students who have completed this course is offered in a range of our Undergraduate Certificates, such as our Undergraduate Certificate in the Study of Early Medieval England (FHEQ Level 4.) Students can also progress onto one of our Undergraduate Diplomas in Archaeology (FHEQ Level 5) The Face of Britain. Midland England: A Survey of the Country Between the Midlands and the Trent (London & New York: B.T. Batsford, 1949)

He became the first professor of local history at the University of Leicester in 1965 when he was appointed Hatton Professor of English History. He retired in 1968. [4]

When the Roman emperor Claudius invaded Britain in AD43, he came, Crane says, with “an army of psychopathic builders” and the British landscape was soon altered beyond recognition. Camps and towns were built along gridded streets. Trees were felled, turf was cut, ditches dug and streams diverted to lace the island with roads. Within four generations, Britain had 24 major cities, palaces, amphitheatres, mosaic flooring and hot baths. It was warm and the soil produced food. And then the climate changed once more. Hoskins was awarded the Fellowship of the British Academy in 1969 [4] and the CBE in 1971. [4] [12] He was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1973, and received the Murchison Award of the Royal Geographical Society in 1976. [12] I suspect this is the great legacy of Hoskins's masterwork. He started a movement that has continued with increasing vigour even though, like many an initiator, he has been somewhat outstripped by his successors. Hoskins inevitably made some errors in this preliminary study. He greatly underestimated, for example, the extent of Mesolithic forest clearance and woodland management and his vision of a pristine, densely forested England in the 15th century is some thousands of years out of date. It's of little consequence and does not detract from the groundbreaking work that The Making did. This certificate course is based on, and updates, W. G. Hoskins' iconic - and poetic - book, The Making of the English Landscape, published in 1955, revised and annotated, but still in print. It uses the evidence of the landscape itself together with maps and documents, archaeological and ecological evidence as well as that of churches and secular buildings to trace long-term continuities and changes in the making of the rural English landscape from prehistory into the nineteenth century. Teaching takes place on Saturdays and Sundays at the Institute of Continuing Education on the following dates: 15-16 February 2020 and 14-15 March 2020

The last chapter of the body of the book – if Chapter 10 is considered more or less an epilogue – covers towns seen as part of the English landscape. Hoskins justifies this on the grounds that understanding towns brings pleasure. He describes in turn planned towns, the open-field town, and the market town. Towns were planned as early as Norman times, Abbot Baldwin planning Bury St Edmunds between 1066 and 1086; Stratford-on-Avon was laid out in 1196. Another burst of town planning came with the spa towns in the late 18th century, and of new industrial towns like Middlesbrough and Barrow-in-Furness in the mid 19th century. Open-field towns like Nottingham, Leicester, and Stamford grew naturally in their own open fields, but were trapped by pasture rights from growing in the 19th century, giving Nottingham slums, and Leicester a problem that it just managed to solve, growing across its fields: while Stamford stopped growing entirely, becoming fossilised as what Hoskins calls a museum piece of a beautiful 17th and 18th century town. [19] Finally, the market towns like Marlborough grew up around their often large and handsome market places, which are however of any number of shapes. As founder of the Department of English Local History (now the Centre for English Local History) at the University of Leicester, his achievements are commemorated by the Friends of the Centre for English Local History each year in the annual W. G. Hoskins lecture, and another at St Anne's College, Oxford. [12] Hoskins was appointed Assistant Lecturer in Commerce at University College, Leicester in 1931. He found the trade statistics to be dull lecture material, but he enjoyed the evenings that he spent teaching archaeology and local history at Vaughan College. His academic researches covered historical demography, urban history, agrarian history, the evolution of vernacular architecture, landscape history and local history. He became a member of the Leicestershire Archaeological Society in September 1935. [3]Once you are logged into the VLE you can familiarise yourself with the learning environment. There is also guidance about how to access course materials and activities. Hoskins, W. G. (1973). English Landscapes. How to read the man-made scenery of England. BBC. ISBN 0-563-12407-5. The book is a landscape history of England and a seminal text in that discipline and in local history. The brief history of some one thousand years is widely used in local and environmental history courses. [2] During the course you will assessed by a series of assignments, totalling 3000-4000 words per unit. Further details will be provided in the course guide. Matthew H. Johnson, writing a chapter on English culture and landscape in the edited book The Public Value of the Humanities, identifies "six key points" established by Hoskins: [25] 1. The landscape is of great antiquity ("everything is much older than we think" [26]) [25] 2. Landscapes often changed suddenly, as in the 18th century enclosures. [25] 3. Hoskins, following O. G. S. Crawford's 1953 Archaeology in the Field, stressed we had to read the landscape using research to reveal its cultural value. [25] 4. Hoskins thus told a "grand and emotive story about that landscape." [25] Johnson compares this to J.R.R. Tolkien's account in The Lord of the Rings when the hobbits return to a "despoiled and industrialized landscape of the Shire". [25] 5. The narrative is populist, to be disseminated "to anyone who would listen." [25] The result was that it became part of English post-war culture. [25] 6. It was "openly anti- modernist". In evidence, Johnson cites Hoskins's "most famous passage" from the concluding chapter: [25]

There are no formal academic entry requirements for this course but as it is taught at university level applicants should be able to read, write and speak English fluently. a b Boyd, William (11 May 2013). "William Boyd: rereading The Making of the English Landscape by W. G. Hoskins". The Guardian . Retrieved 26 May 2014. During the course you will submit a termly,3,500-4,000 word assignment further details of which are given in the course guide. a b c d e f "Professor W G Hoskins CBE – historian". Exeter Memories. 2 May 2011 . Retrieved 26 May 2014.The introduction sets out Hoskins' stall with "No book exists to describe the manner in which the various landscapes of this country came to assume the shape and appearance they now have", [4] mentioning geology ("only one aspect of the subject"), [4] the clearing of woodlands, the reclaiming of moor and marsh, the creation of fields, roads, towns, country houses, mines, canals and railways: "in short, with everything that has altered the natural landscape." [4] Editions and translations [ edit ] "A sunken lane in East Devon". A 7th century Saxon estate boundary between the royal estate of Silverton (left) and the Exeter Abbey estate (right) was marked by a "double ditch", creating high earth hedgebanks on both sides. The work has been widely admired, but also described as grandly emotive, populist, and openly anti-modernist. Writers have praised the book for helping them understand and interpret the landscape in which they lived. This course is not suitable for students from outside the EU and EEA who do not already have immigration permission to be in the UK. The University cannot provide visa support for this course.* Hoskins describes how England was settled with Anglo-Saxon people between c. 450 and 1066 AD, making the country a land of villages. Estate boundaries from this period survive in features such as sunken lanes and banks. The Scandinavian conquest of much of England from the late 9th century added more villages, though many with Scandinavian placename elements such as -by ('village') may simply have been renamed Saxon settlements.

In 1955, Hoskins published the book that was to make his name. The Making of the English Landscape is a landscape history of England and a seminal text in that discipline and in local history. The brief history of some one thousand years has become a standard text in local and environmental history courses. [5] Hoskins sets out his stall in the introduction with "No book exists to describe the manner in which the various landscapes of this country came to assume the shape and appearance they now have...". [6] The brief concluding chapter contains only one image, Plate 82, "The completed English landscape" showing a tall tree in a wide open field, a strip of hedges and villages just visible in the distance. The chapter laments the damage caused to parts of the English landscape, mentioning bulldozers and tractors, nuclear bombers and by-passes, and ends by celebrating again the wealth of detail within a few hundred yards of Hoskins' study window at Steeple Barton.The first “little ice age” hit around 6700BC. About 500 years later, a huge North American lake broke through its dam and dumped such a huge amount of fresh water into the Atlantic that the Gulf Stream shut down. Temperatures plummeted, trees died, sea water pushed into rivers and Britain’s landscape changed again. Only 200 years later – a geological blink – a tsunami crashed over Doggerland. Britain became an island and isolated. Two thousand years later it was nearly inhabited, and then the climate changed again. The next wave of immigrants arrived – the “house people”, who crossed the channel in their boats and built the first rectangular houses. Leicestershire: an illustrated essay on the history of the landscape. (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1957) Crowley, D. A., ed. (1983). "The Borough of Marlborough". British History Online . Retrieved 27 May 2014. The course is taught through a mixture of informal lectures and seminars, practical sessions and discussion.