Monasteries in the Landscape

Aston (landscape archaeology, University of Bristol, emeritus) builds on the work of the late Dom David Knowles and others to situate the monasteries of Britain in the context of the landscape in which they were built. He also looks at the social environment of the religious houses, noting that after the Celtic period, most of them were not in remote places but included villages and the estates of their founders and patrons. Beginning chronologically, he describes the earliest houses of the Celts, of which little trace remains, those of the Anglo-Saxons before and after the Viking raids and the Normans before turning to those founded by the new orders in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. He then turns to an examination of the peripheral buildings of the monasteries: the granges, mills, forges, fishponds and villages. With schematics, photographs and color plates, Aston shows that monasteries were not isolated, self-contained units but inextricably connected to the landscape and neighborhood in which they existed. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Known to millions from Channel 4's 'Time Team', Mick Aston is Professor of Landscape Archaeology at the University of Bristol. He is a tireless - and immensely popular - lecturer and the author of the best-selling Mick's Archaeology.