This book presents results of excavations at the moated sites of Barrow Old Hall and Twiss Green, in Warrington, North West England, including evidence for possible aisled halls at both sites, as well as a significant assemblage of medieval and early post-medieval pottery.

The Open Fields of England describes the open-field system of agriculture that operated in Medieval England before the establishment of present-day farms surrounded by hedges or walls. The volume encompasses a wide range of primary data not previously assembled, to which are added the results of new research based upon a fifty-year study of open-field remains and their related documents. The whole of England is examined, describing eight different kinds of field-system that have been identified, and relating them to their associated land-use and settlement. Details of field structure are explained, such as the demesne, the lord's land, and the tenants' holdings, as well as tenurial arrangements and farming methods. Previous explanations of open-field origins and possible antecedents to medieval fields are discussed. Various types of archaeological and historical evidence relating to Saxon-period settlements and fields are presented, followed by the development of a new theory to explain the lay-out and planned nature of many field systems found in the central belt of England. Of particular interest is the Gazetteer, which is organized by historic counties. Each county has a summary of its fields, including tabulated data and sources for future research, touching on the demesne, yardland size, work-service, assarts, and physical remains of ridge and furrow. The Gazetteer acts as a national hand-list of field systems, opening the subject up to further research and essential to scholars of medieval agriculture.

This original and pioneering book examines the role of the castle in the Norman conquest of England and in the subsequent administration of the country. The castle is seen primarily as an instrument of peaceful administration which rarely had a garrison and was more often where the sheriff kept his files and employed his secretariat. In most cases the military significance of the castle was minimal, and only a very few ever saw military action. For the first time, the medieval castle in England is seen in a new light which will attract the general reader of history and archaeology as much as the specialist in economic and social history.

This study of Cheshire and Lancashire society in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries is a unique attempt to reconstruct the social life of an English region in the later Middle Ages. Drawing on the voluminous archives of the two palatinates and the extensive muniment collections of local families, it offers an unusually rich and wide-ranging analysis of a dynamic regional society at a dramatic stage in its history.