Introduction

The countryside of Devon and Cornwall preserves an unusually rich legacy from its medieval past. This book explores the different elements which go to make up this historic landscape - the chapels, crosses, castles and mines; the tinworks and strip fields; and above all, the intricately worked counterpane of hedgebanks and winding lanes. Between AD 500 and 1700, a series of revolutions transformed the structure of the South West Peninsula's rural landscape. The book tells the story of these changes, and also explores how people experienced the landscape in which they lived: how they came to imbue places with symbolic and cultural meaning.

Contributors include: Ralph Fyfe on the pollen evidence of landscape change; Sam Turner on the Christian landscape; Peter Herring on both strip fields and Brown Willy, Bodmin Moor; O. H. Creighton and J. P. Freeman on castles; Phil Newman on tin working; and Lucy Franklin on folklore and imagined landscapes.