Abstract

Medieval rural settlement: changing perceptions Christopher C. Taylor It is a truism of historical studies that every thus its settlements, over many centuries (Maitland generation rewrites history and thus the perceived 1897; Chadwick 1907, p. 12; Oman 1929; Lennard past is merely a pale reflection of the present. In 1933; Collingwood & Myers 1935; Stenton 1943). the study of medieval rural settlements in England It is obvious, of course, thatnoneofthedocuments, the last thirty years has seen the intervals between whether they were The Anglo-Saxon Cbrontcle, the rewriting reduced from a generation to periods Domesday Book or indeed any other medieval often as short as a few months. The result has been material, actually proved any of these hypotheses. that many students of rural settlement regularly These hypotheses were simply interpretations of find themselves in the situation of metaphorically the various documents based at best on deep stretching out their arms to see if the walls of knowledge and expertise and at worst on the reality are still there. Other historians working on dangerous concepts of 'common sense' or 'the different aspects of the past also, of course, find obvious'. In addition they were all coloured by the themselves in