A Landscape Transformed: The English countryside during the long thirteenth century

This chapter explores on the scale and variety of landscape interventions that characterized the period; and looks to identify the principal drivers that explain why the English landscape was transformed in the way it was during the long thirteenth century. Landscape interventions are disruptive and costly, and their long-term effects often unpredictable. Several clauses in Magna Carta were written with a view to the preservation or removal of physical elements in the landscape. Moat-making thus reflected the more general trend, witnessed across the long thirteenth century, of the widespread adoption of landscape components, formerly the preserve of the elites, at lower levels of society. New landscapes of agricultural and industrial production emerged, and regional economies became more specialized. The chapter discusses the range and scope of the remaking of the English landscape witnessed during the long thirteenth century and set this in its wider demographic, climatic, economy, and legal contexts.