THE SETTLEMENT PATTERNS OF BRITAIN i THE SETTLEMENT PATTERNS OF BRITAIN Past, Present and the Future Foretold in Eight Essays ab In writing Te Settlement Patterns of Britain Nick Green was inspired by the short story genre. His book is a collection of eight non-fction short stories or essays, where the characters are the places, some of which appear more than once, usually as bit-part players, occasionally as the main protagonist. Preceded by a prologue describing Britain’s prehistory as a European peninsula, each essay covers a fxed period in the history of the development of Britain’s settlement patterns, sometimes long, more often quite short, beginning around 2,500 BC and ending about one hundred years in the future. Nick Green chose those periods that are particularly instructive in revealing how settlement patterns come to exist in the form they do and how they might develop in the future. Settlement patterns are not just about where a place is, but about how that place relates to others. Tey wax and wane with circumstance, and around each settlement’s fxed core, the patterns of living and working shift constantly, driven by forces beyond the control of any individual town or city or village. From Bronze Age communities to computer simulations, from the mediaeval wool trade to the hyper-networked society, from Viking invasions to the post-industrial era, the essays cover a broad sweep of history. Tey appear in chronological order, but are not intended to provide a continuous, linear historical narrative – nor do they: each essay is freestanding so they can be read in whatever order the reader prefers. Nick Green is a Senior Tutor in the School of Planning and Environmental Management, University of Manchester. He is a member of the Town and Country Planning Association and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. ii THE SETTLEMENT PATTERNS OF BRITAIN Planning, History and Environment Series Editor: Ann Rudkin, Alexandrine Press, Marcham, UK Editorial Board: Professor Arturo Almandoz, Universidad Simón Bolivar, Caracas, Venezuela and Pontifcia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile Professor Nezar AlSayyad, University of California, Berkeley, USA Professor Scott A. Bollens, University of California, Irvine, USA Professor Robert Bruegmann, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA Professor Meredith Clausen, University of Washington, Seattle, USA Dr Jefrey W. Cody, Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles, USA Professor Yasser Elsheshtawy, Independent Scholar, Philadelphia, USA Professor Robert Freestone, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia Professor John R. Gold, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK Professor Michael Hebbert, University College London, UK Selection of Published Titles Planning Europe’s Capital Cities: Aspects of nineteenth century Healthy City Planning: Global health equity from neighbourhood development by Tomas Hall to nation by Jason Corburn Council Housing and Culture: Te history of a social experiment Good Cities, Better Lives: How Europe discovered the lost art of by Alison Ravetz urbanism by Peter Hall Planning Latin America’s Capital Cities, 1850–1950 edited by Te Planning Imagination: Peter Hall and the study of urban Arturo Almandoz and regional planning edited by Mark Tewdwr-Jones, Nicholas Exporting American Architecture, 1870–2000 by Jefrey W. Phelps and Robert Freestone Cody Garden Suburbs of Tomorrow? A new future for cottage estates by Te Making and Selling of Post-Mao Beijing by Anne-Marie Martin Crookston Broudehoux Sociable Cities: Te 21st-century reinvention of the Garden City Planning Middle Eastern Cities: An urban kaleidoscope in a by Peter Hall and Colin Ward globalizing world edited by Yasser Elsheshtawy Modernization, Urbanization and Development in Latin Globalizing Taipei: Te political economy of spatial development America, 1900s–2000s by Arturo Almandoz edited by Reginald Yin-Wang Kwok Planning the Great Metropolis: Te 1929 Regional Plan of New New Urbanism and American Planning: Te confict of cultures York and Its Environs by David A. Johnson by Emily Talen Remaking the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge: A case of Remaking Chinese Urban Form: Modernity, scarcity and space, shadowboxing with nature by Karen Trapenberg Frick 1949–2005 by Duanfang Lu Great British Plans: Who made them and how they worked by Planning Twentieth Century Capital Cities edited by David L.A. Ian Wray Gordon Homeland: Zionism as a housing regime, 1860–2011 by Yael Planning the Megacity: Jakarta in the twentieth century by Allweil Christopher Silver Olympic Cities: City agendas, planning and the world’s games Ordinary Places, Extraordinary Events: Citizenship, democracy 1896–2016, 3rd ed. edited by John R. Gold and Margaret and urban space in Latin America edited by Clara Irazábal M. Gold Te Evolving Arab City: Tradition, modernity and urban Globalizing Seoul: Te city’s cultural and urban change by development edited by Yasser Elsheshtawy Jieheerah Yun Stockholm: Te making of a metropolis by Tomas Hall Planning Metropolitan Australia edited by Stephen Hamnett Dubai: Behind an urban spectacle by Yasser Elsheshtawy and Robert Freestone Capital Cities in the Aftermath of Empires: Planning in central Trajectories of Confict and Peace: Jerusalem and Belfast since and southeastern Europe edited by Emily Gunzburger Makaš 1994 by Scott A. Bollens and Tanja Damljanović Conley Planning Abu Dhabi: An urban history by Alamira Reem Bani Orienting Istanbul: Cultural capital of Europe? edited by Deniz Hashim Göktürk, Levent Soysal and İpek Türeli Temporary Cities: Resisting transience in Arabia by Yasser Te Making of Hong Kong: From vertical to volumetric by Barrie Elsheshtawy Shelton, Justyna Karakiewicz and Tomas Kvan Planning Singapore: Te experimental city edited by Stephen Urban Coding and Planning edited by Stephen Marshall Hamnett and Belinda Yuen Planning Asian Cities: Risks and resilience edited by Stephen No Little Plans: How government built America’s wealth and Hamnett and Dean Forbes infrastructure by Ian Wray Staging the New Berlin: Place marketing and the politics of Being Urban: Community, confict and belonging in the Middle reinvention post-1989 by Claire Colomb East edited by Simon Goldhill City and Soul in Divided Societies by Scott A. Bollens Festival Cities: Culture, planning and urban life by John R. Gold Learning from the Japan City: Looking East in urban design, 2nd and Margaret M. Gold edition by Barrie Shelton Riyadh:Transforming a desert city by Yasser Elsheshtawy Te Urban Wisdom of Jane Jacobs edited by Sonia Hirt with Building Colonial Hong Kong: Speculative development and Diane Zahm segregation in the city by Cecilia Chu Of Planting and Planning: Te making of British colonial cities, Te Settlement Patterns of Britain: Past, present and the future 2nd edition by Robert Home foretold in eight essays by Nick Green THE SETTLEMENT PATTERNS OF BRITAIN iii THE SETTLEMENT PATTERNS OF BRITAIN Past, Present and the Future Foretold in Eight Essays ab NICK GREEN iv THE SETTLEMENT PATTERNS OF BRITAIN First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxfordshire OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Nick Green Tis book was commissioned and edited by Alexandrine Press, Marcham, Oxfordshire Te right of the authors has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Te publisher makes no representation, express or implied, with regard to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested HB: 978–0–415–69877–1 PB: 978–0–415–69874–0 eBook: 978–1–003–30335–0 DOI: 10.4324/9781003303350 Typeset in Adobe Jenson Pro and Aktiv Grotesk by PNR Design, Didcot THE SETTLEMENT PATTERNS OF BRITAIN v CONTENTS ab Preface and Acknowledgements vii Te Dawning of the Tenth Wave: A Prologue to the Eight Essays 1 0 Of Hillforts and Homesteads: Settlement Patterns in the Bronze and 1 Iron Ages 13 See, Te Conquering Bureaucrat Comes: Roman-British Settlement 2 Patterns, c. 150 AD 33 To Be, Ten Not To Be: Te Demise of the Hamlet in England, 850–1086 51 3 A Small Town in Gloucestershire: Cirencester and the International 4 Wool Trade 71 Travels with Mr Defoe and Some Others: Journeys Trough Britain’s 5 Pre-Industrial Settlement Patterns 93 Towards Hyper-Polycentricity: Or What a Giant Fungus Can Teach Us 6 About Settlement Patterns 119 Te Uses of Consolatory Fables: How Computer Models Can Help Us 7 Understand Settlement Patterns 143 Biography of an Island Foretold 163 8 Bibliography 177 Index 185 vi THE SETTLEMENT PATTERNS OF BRITAIN All our knowledge of the world, even in the living present, is very small  from John Fowles’s introductory essay to Fay Godwin’s 1986 book, Land THE SETTLEMENT PATTERNS OF BRITAIN vii PREFACE and ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS  The essays in this collection are my attempt to understand something of the history Britain’s settlement patterns: to see more clearly what had seemed to me rather obscure – and perhaps to others too. Tey are small perambulations through history, and if the reader fnds at the end of each essay they are more or less back where they started, I hope that along the way they have seen familiar places in a new light, caught one or two quotidian views from novel perspectives, and perceived the whole more clearly. Inspired by the short story anthologies of fction, this is really a collection of non- fction short stories. Te characters are the places, some of which appear in more than one essay, usually as bit-part players, occasionally as the main protagonist. Te location is always Britain, or part of it. As with any short story, the ‘action’ in each essay takes place over a fxed period of time, sometimes long in historical terms, more often quite brief. And like other collections of short stories, these essays do not add up to a single tale, even if certain themes recur. In fact, the title of the fnal essay, ‘Biography of an Island Foretold’, might be an alternative the title for the book. Written last of all, this essay is where the echoes of the past reveal themselves as the ghosts of some unwritten future.   Te essays do not cover Britain’s settlement history in a single narrative sweep. Each is instead a snapshot, and so is aficted with the snapshot’s faws and attendant unanswered questions. What happened before and after? What was excluded from the framing, and why? With one exception, they each cover a short period in Britain’s history going from around 2,500 BC to roughly a hundred years in the future. Te exception is the last-but-one, which explores the ways in which computer simulations have been used to model the development of settlement patterns over time. I have chosen each period for the simple reason that I fnd it particularly intriguing in terms of how settlement patterns came to exist in the form they do. Britain’s prehistory as a European peninsula is also described in a short prologue – but that is more for the sake of completeness than anything else. If there is a common thread that runs through the book, it is that settlement patterns are not just about where a place is, but how a place relates to other settlements. For it is a general rule that settlements do not physically move. Instead, they and their smaller- scale constituent neighbourhoods wax and wane with circumstance: gaining or shedding viii THE SETTLEMENT PATTERNS OF BRITAIN people; making or losing fortunes; acquiring importance or fading into half-remembered obscurity. Around each settlement’s fxed core, the patterns of living and working shift constantly, driven by forces beyond the control of any individual town or village. Mercurial, toxic on occasion, these forces take an infnite variety of forms: the vicissitudes of the economy; locally available natural resources; political upheavals; ease of movement around the settlement by whatever means – and that is to name just four. Te basic need to survive prevails, and this truism explains much about why people choose to live where they do. Te means by which people survive have, of course, changed, although fnding an amenable base for hunting and gathering is still the basic aim. Instead of a safe corner close to water, forest, and meadow, it is a safe neighbourhood tolerably close to place of work and shops and school that is sought; and added to foot and hoof, to move around we have the car or the bus or the tram or the train or the bicycle – or even the e-scooter. From Bronze Age communities to computer simulations, from the medieval wool trade to the hyper-networked society, from Viking invasions to the post-industrial era, the essays cover a broad range of history. Although presented in chronological order, they are not intended to provide a continuous, linear historical narrative – nor do they: each essay is freestanding and so they can be read in whatever order the reader prefers. In writing these essays, I have run up considerable debts of gratitude to several people. First and foremost to Ann Rudkin, the editor of the book series and these essays. Without her erudite suggestions and patient encouragement, this collection would never have happened. Professor Mike Batty of UCL and Professor Dagmar Haase of the Humboldt University of Berlin were both interviewed for the seventh essay, although I fear the best bits may have ended up on the fabled cutting room foor; my thanks to them both. Tanks also go to Professor Tim Darvill, whose book on Prehistoric Britain was freely plundered for the frst two essays. Dr Bertie Dockerill provided helpful comments on some of the essays, and Professor Stephen Marshall provided extremely valuable insights and suggestions on the collection as a whole. Unless otherwise stated the photographs are mine. Tose by third parties are credited in the captions. Colour originals have been converted to black and white for this book. Lastly, I would like to thank Eunice for her patience and understanding. Any mistakes in the book are of course mine alone. Tis book is dedicated to the memory of Sir Peter Hall. Nick Green December 2021 THE DAWNING OF THE TENTH AGE 1 0 ab The Dawning of the Tenth Wave A Prologue to the Eight Essays Near Hawkshead, Cumbria. A landscape carved out by glaciers. (Photo: Nick Green)