Dividing Lines in a Moorland Landscape: Territorial Boundaries in Upland England

Abstract

In village landscapes of lowland England, as F. W. Maitland noted, parish boundaries 'seem almost to draw themselves'. In upland landscapes, by contrast, territorial patterns are complicated by the dispersed, scattered settlement pattern and also by the large expanses of unsettled mountain or moorland between settled areas. The administrative landscape of the uplands contains a variety of distinctive features: extra-parochial land; land common to more than one township; detached portions of parishes and townships; and a host of local territorial entities: 'hamlets', 'graveships'; 'quarters'; 'bounds'. Taking evidence from the early-medieval period to the nineteenth century, and examining evidence from different areas of upland England, this article explores how scattered settlements became bound together into territorial units, and when and why territorial boundaries were drawn across the unsettled upland wastes.Three considerations are revealed as paramount in explaining the distinctive nature of territorial patterns in the uplands: lordship and landownership, patterns of local government, and grassroots communal arrangements.