The development of the landscape and human settlement in West Norfolk from 350-1650 AD, with particular reference to the Launditch Hundred.

The aim of the thesis was to take a relatively small area of the Norfolk countryside and to discover how the settlement patterns have developed through Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Medieval and recent times. The area chosen was a "hundred" in west central Norfolk containing 41 medieval villages. Research involved a combination of detailed archaeological fieldwork and excavation and a study of both manuscript and printed documentary sources. An appraisal of the four Dark Age linear earthworks of West Norfolk included a re-interpretation of their plan and function. The overall pattern of these monuments was considered in relation to the expansion of Anglo-Saxon settlement into central Norfolk. Of the 41 villages, 14 were considered in detail, and the rest more superficially; many were traced well back into Anglo-Saxon times. Much use was made of coloured maps to display the outlines of the settlement patterns in the different periods. For comparison one village in Breckland was also examined, and very similar results were obtained. Coupled with this general survey there was an excavation over several seasons of the settlement adjacent to the Anglo-Saxon cathedral at North Elmham. The evidence from 25 buildings was considered for the development of Anglo-Saxon domestic architecture and carpentry. It was found that the East Anglian village patterns of today are largely the product of the decline of the rural population after the Middle Ages. Settlement in pre-conquest times was often on very different sites and of entirely different character; green villages for example are almost always Medieval and not Anglo-Saxon in origin.