‘The late medieval sheep of Britain have so engaged the attention of the agrarian historians that other aspects of stock husbandry appear to have been neglected. Our knowledge of the cattle of the period, and of how they were kept, is somewhat sketchy…’ (Robert Trow-Smith, A History of British Livestock Husbandry to 1700, London: R&KP).
Trow-Smith provides the starting point for Andrew Margetts’ book, examining cattle husbandry in south-east England in a determinedly multidisciplinary integration of early documentary sources, landscape archaeology, place-name studies, and zooarchaeology.
Margetts starts by setting out the history and geography of Kent, Surrey, and the two Sussexes. A sensible discussion of post-Roman continuity follows, and of the importance of ‘marginal’ agricultural areas, following on from Christopher Dyer’s work. Despite the necessary caveats, place-name evidence is used somewhat incautiously. For example, ‘-stock’ names on Sussex downland may refer to cattle-rearing places, but there is little attempt to test whether non-cattle etymologies would be equally plausible.
