Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Waterways and Canal-Building in Medieval England

Waterways and Canal-Building in Medieval England

Blair, John

Hardcover

Series: Medieval History and Archaeology

Medieval & Renaissance HistoryLinguisticsTransportation General

ISBN10: 0199217157
ISBN13: 9780199217151
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: Mar 1 2008
Pages: 336
Weight: 1.60
Height: 0.75 Width: 6.69 Depth: 9.61
Language: English
A book centring on late Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman canals may come as a surprise; it is generally assumed that no such things existed. Persuasive evidence has, however, been unearthed independently by several scholars, and has stimulated this first serious study of improved waterways in England between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries. England is naturally well-endowed with a network of navigable rivers, especially the easterly systems draining into the Thames, Wash, and Humber. The central middle ages saw innovative and extensive development of this network, including the digging of canals bypassing difficult stretches of rivers, or linking rivers to important production centres. The eleventh and twelfth centuries seem to have been the high point for this dynamic approach to water-transport: after 1200, the improvement of roads and bridges increasingly diverted resources away from the canals, many of which stagnated with the reassertion of natural drainage patterns.

This new perspective has an important bearing on the economy, landscape, settlement patterns, and inter-regional contacts of medieval England. In this volume, economic historians, geographers, geomorphologists, archaeologists, and place-name scholars bring their various skills to bear on a neglected but important aspect of medieval engineering and economic growth.

Also from

Blair, John

View All

Also in

Medieval & Renaissance History

View All