Amazon.com description: Product Description: The historic counties of Lancashire and Cheshire - at the periphery of the kingdom, both politically and economically - have been comparatively neglected in the history of the English landscape. This important book redresses the balance. N. J. Higham portrays North West England as a frontier landscape which, between c. 1050 and 1550, went through successive changes which have left a deep impression on the region today.



The book paints a picture of the North West at the time of Domesday: a sparsely settled land of little hamlets, fells, woods, marshes and mosses; tells the story of the region's economic growth between 1100 and 1350: the development of open fields, new exploitation of wastes and woodland, and an expanding population; shows how the North West did not, unlike much of England, stagnate economically in the late thirteenth-century; explores the impact of Tudor enclosure; discusses the medieval growth of Manchester, Liverpool and above all Chester as potent urban centres.



Richly illustrated with maps and pictures of the North West's medieval landscapes and buildings, this book is more than a regional landscape history. It is a book which will change our perspective on the landscape history of medieval England.

N. J. Higham is Reader in Medieval History at the University of Manchester.