The park - a feature of the landscape we always associate with the hunting of deer - played an important role in the psyche of Britain's medieval aristocracy. This well-illustrated book offers a reappraisal of the park by a new generation of landscape researchers, who use a diversity of approaches to assess its economy, ecology and social role. They show how parks actually had many functions other than deer management and hunting; they were integrated into the wider rural economy, and also provided a means by which seigneurial control of the landscape might be demonstrated. They varied considerably across Britain, and are of considerable conservation significance today. c.256p, 69 illus, 35 in col (Windgather Press 2007)
Table of Contents
Introduction (Robert Liddiard). Part One: Approaches to the Medieval Park: The Sociology of Park Creation in Medieval England (S A Mileson); 'The King's Chief Delights': A Landscape Approach to the Royal Parks of Post-Conquest England (Amanda Richardson); Animal bones and Animal Parks (Naomi Sykes); The Social Construction of Medieval Park Ecosystems: An Inter-disciplinary Perspective (Aleksander Pluskowski); The Historical Ecology of Medieval Parks and the Implications for Conservation (Ian D Rotherham). Part Two: Parks in the Landscape: The Medieval Parks of Yorkshire: Function, Contents and Chronology (Stephen Moorhouse); The Distribution of Parks in Hertfordshire: Landscape, Lordship and Woodland (Anne Rowe); Hunting Suffolk's Parks: Towards a Reliable Chronology of Imparkment (Rosemary Hoppitt); Baronial and Manorial Parks in Medieval Cumbria (Angus J L Winchester).

The importance of hunting to medieval lords and ladies can not be over stated and any understanding of the castle has to consider the role many castles had as the centre of wider landscape in which hunting was a major pleasure pursuit. The role of the castle in the ultimate form of political negotiation (warfare) is often discussed but the more usual negotiations were often done in the context of leisure.