Leverhulme Research Fellow;
Emeritus Professor of Regional and Local History

Contact Details

• Tel: +44 (0)116 252 2765
  
• Email: cd50@le.ac.uk
  
• Office: Room 10, Marc Fitch House, Salisbury Road

Research Interests

Past Research Interests

The economic and social history of medieval England, which includes the management of  landed estates, agrarian history, peasant mentality and rebellion, standards of living (including diet and housing), consumers and consumption, relations between town and country, the role of towns, especially of smaller towns, the conditions and attitudes of wage earners, poverty, the origins of capitalism, landscape history, rural depopulation, and money and commerce. Much of this research has been focussed on the west midland region (Gloucestershire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire) but has also included the east midlands,  East Anglia and Yorkshire.  

Current Research Interests

The main project is to complete work on ‘Peasant farming 1200-1540’ which is being funded by the  Leverhulme Trust. This is intended to make a new assessment of the types of farming practised by peasants, and to evaluate their role in the economy.
In addition the  publication of various landscape projects, on Admington, Compton Scorpion and Westcote, and Weston juxta Cherington  (all in Warwickshire), and the preparation for publication of work already completed on peasant material culture.

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Publications

Edited Books

1. (with C. Richardson), William Dugdale, Historian, 1605-1686 (Woodbridge, 2009)
2. (with Richard Jones), Deserted Villages Revisited (Hatfield, 2010)
3. (with Andrew Hopper, Evelyn Lord and Nigel Tringham), New Directions in Local History since Hoskins (Hatfield, 2011)
4. (with Matthew Tompkins), Dartmoor’s Alluring Uplands (Exeter, 2012)

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Booklets

Caldecote, Hertfordshire: A History of the Village (Caldecote, 2010)

Articles and chapters

1. (with S Watt), ‘Historical and documentary background’, in S. Litherland et al, ‘The archaeology of the Severn Trent Southam area rationalization scheme, Warwickshire’, Trans Birmingham and Warwickshire Archaeological Society, 112 (2008), pp. 80-1
2. ‘Costs and benefits of English direct taxation, 1275-1525’, in S. Cavaciocchi (ed.), La fiscalità nell’economia europea. Secc.  XIII-XVIII (Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica ‘F.Datini’, XXXIX Settimana di Studi, Prato, 2008), 861-75.
3. ‘Building in earth in late-medieval England’, Vernacular Architecture, 39 (2008), 63-70
4. ‘‘Introduction’ and ‘Conclusion’, in C.Dyer and C. Richardson (eds), William Dugdale, Historian, 1605-1686 (Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 1-9, 232-6.
5. ‘Excavations and documents: the case of Caldecote, Hertfordshire’, Medieval Settlement Research, 24 (2009), 1-5
6. (with D. Aldred), ‘Changing landscape and society in a Cotswold village: Hazleton, Gloucestershire, to c. 1600’, Transactions of the  Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society,  127 (2009), pp. 235-70
7. ‘Villages in crisis: social dislocation and desertion, 1370-1520’, in C. Dyer and R.Jones (eds), Deserted Villages Revisited (Hatfield, 2010), pp. 28-45
8. ‘Methods and problems in the study of social mobility in England (1200-1350)’, in S. Carocci (ed.), La Mobilità Sociale nel Medioevo (École Francaise de Rome, 2010), 97-116
9. ‘Did the rich really help the poor in medieval England?’, in Ricos y Pobres: Opulencia y Desarraigo en el Occidente Medieval (XXXVI Semana de Estudios  Medievales, Navarra, 2010), 307-22.
10. ‘The crisis of the early fourteenth century. Some material evidence from Britain’, in D. Boisseuil, P. Chastang, L. Feller and  J. Morsel (eds.), Écriture de l’Espace Social. Mélange d’Histoire Médiévale Offerts à  Monique Bourin (Paris, 2010), 491-506.
11. ‘Luxury goods in medieval England’, in Ben Dodds and Christian D. Liddy (eds.), Commercial Activity, Markets and Entrepreneurs in the Middle Ages. Essays in Honour of Richard Britnell (Woodbridge, 2011), 217-38.
12. ‘Modern perspectives on medieval Welsh towns’, in R.A. Griffiths and P.R. Schofield (eds.), Wales and the Welsh in the Middle Ages. Essays presented to J. Beverley Smith (Cardiff, 2011)
13. (with Paul Everson), ‘The development of the study of medieval settlements, 1880-2010’; (with Keith Lilley), ‘Town and countryside: relationships and resemblances’, in Neil Christie and Paul Stamper (eds.), Medieval Rural Settlement. Britain and Ireland, AD 800-1600 (Oxford, 2012), 11-30, 81-98
14. ‘Harold Fox: his contribution to our understanding of the past’, in Sam Turner and Bob Silvester (eds.), Life in Medieval Landscapes. People and Places in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2012), 8-14
15. ‘The late medieval village of Wharram Percy: farming the land’; ‘The late medieval village of Wharram Percy: living and consuming’; ‘The inventory of William Akclum and its context’, in S. Wrathmell (ed.), A History of Wharram and its Neighbours (Wharram, a Study of Settlement on the Yorkshire Wolds, 13, York University Archaeological Publications, 15, 2012), 312-27; 327-40; 342-9

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Forthcoming

1. ‘The Value of Fifteenth-Century Inquisitions Post Mortem for Economic and Social History’, in  M. Hicks (ed.), The Fifteenth-Century Inquisitions Post Mortem (Woodbridge, 2012)
2. ‘Did peasants need markets and towns, in late medieval England?’, in J. Galloway and  M. Davies (eds.), London and Beyond (London, 2012) (to appear May 2012)
3. Poverty and its relief in late medieval England’, Past and Present, 216 (to appear Aug., 2012)
4. A Country Merchant: 1495-1520. Trading and Farming at the End of the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2012)  (to appear June 2012)
5. ‘The Experience of Being Poor in Late Medieval England’, in A. Scott (ed.), Experiences of Poverty in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Farnham, 2012)

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