School of History, Politics and International Relations

Landscape History

Video transcript

My name is Richard Jones and I'm a landscape historian.

Landscape History is the study of past societies, smaller communities and individuals through the physical signatures that they have left on the ground including castles and abbeys, and the field systems of peasants.

The English landscape has been described as the richest historical document that we possess. It allows us to get to people who often don't get recoreded in official documents.

There's so much that we can get out of the historical record of course, the written record. But it's when you combine that with the landscape evidence that you get more than the sum of the parts.

We can learn about Landscape History in the lecture theatre and in the classroom, but it's so much better to get out in the field and that's why I lead students into the field throughout the academic year.

I very much look forward to welcoming you to Leicester where we can explore the landscape together, and discover what histories it can tell.