MAPPING BAMPTON: A JOURNEY IN SPACE AND TIME

6. THE LANDSCAPE AS MEANING

The term ‘historic Landscape’ has been used throughout this book. It addresses evidence of historic buildings, settlement patterns, field systems, communication networks and land uses. But the historic landscape is made up of more than physical features. Patterns of land ownership, occupancy, management and regulation all form a part of how we understand the spaces of the past. Milson and Brookes, writing in Peasant Perceptions of Landscape, describe it well: managing the open field system actually shape the landscape? What was their relationship with manorial authority? Conversely, how did the physical developments of Bampton affect the interactions between those who lived, worked, and farmed the land here?

In 2023 how does a new landscape invite us to change the way we interact with our neighbours? I posit that everything is our historic environment, or none of it is.

They ascribe this to a tendency of landscape characterisation studies to focus on landscape on “structure rather than as meaning”. The historic landscape is expressed in boundaries, sizes of enclosures, value, etc, perhaps we should perhaps consider the landscape instead as an expression of the relationships between the people who inhabited it. The “Sixteens” of Aston are a case in point: To what extent did their involvement in