Humphry Repton: Landscape Design in an Age of Revolution

mission of the classical technology by which they were created. For this subject, the volume relies heavily on the Historia Ecclesiastica, and seeks to tie the archaeological evidence closely into Bede’s championing narrative. The grid planning evident at the Canterbury churches is thus viewed as a result of Augustine himself bringing surveyors on his mission in 597, after which the techniques were taken northward to plan the monumental complex at Yeavering in the 620s. Likewise, Wilfred (d.710) is credited with extending the technology to Winchester, and Benedict Biscop to Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, apparently as a result of their entrepreneurial zeal. While a solid case is made for the broad social and cultural milieux in which careful grid planning may have emerged, attempting to deploy the archaeology into the narrative of documented individuals and events stretches credulity. The project team have also noted the differential use of short perches of 15 imperial feet (4.57 m), which largely appear in eastern England and the East Midlands, and grids which draw upon long perches of 18 feet (5.5 m) that are found further south. Such a regional distinction is no doubt significant, but it is argued here that these are ‘Anglian’ and ‘Saxon’ perches and the zones in which they were used represent a ‘cultural fault line running through what tends to be conceived as homogenous Anglo-Saxon territory’ (p.102). This model and the terms used to develop it some will find contentious, especially in a climate which is more openly questioning the use of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and other nomenclature. In spite of these issues, there is no doubting the quality and rigour of the research presented here and the meticulous nature in which the three authors have undertaken their task. Indeed, the very publication of this volume at this point is significant in itself, in demonstrating quite how far early medieval settlement studies has come in the past two decades. This is not purely the product of an increased database, but also the result of a more comprehensive shift amongst scholars that no longer see places of habitation as a poor relation of funerary archaeology. The text is successful too in bringing to light not just celebrated type-sites, but a variety of material derived from a range of research contexts including commercial intervention. As for the central thesis of perches and grids, some will be more convinced than others, and divergence of opinion will likely happen on a case-by-case basis. The excavation of further sites will surely put these hypotheses to the test, and it is perhaps only in the years and decades to come that the veracity of the regular measures as an idea will be borne out.