People and houses in South Oxfordshire, 1300–1650

Abstract

This article is one outcome of an intensive study of inhabitants’ perceptions of landscape in south Oxfordshire over the long period 500–1650. Analysis of late medieval and early modern vernacular buildings was an important part of the research project, in particular for working out how houses might have been used as part of the wider social space of the village. The study area, the fourteen parishes of the former hundred of Ewelme, is particularly useful for such an investigation because it incorporates a range of settlement types, from the villages of the south Oxfordshire vale to the scattered hamlets of the Chiltern Hills to the south-east. What follows is an initial summary of results, including information about the character and size of tenant houses, discussion of the way internal spaces were organised, and an assessment of key phases of plan-form change. Emphasis is placed on the physical relationship between houses, roads and other features, and the potential implications for the way people engaged with each other on a day-to-day basis. Data collected from recording work on 53 houses (including some new dendrochronological and radiocarbondates) is combined with analysis of documents, notably a survey of Ewelme manor in 1609.