The Historic Landscapes of Cornwall and Devon

REVIEW BY STEPHEN RIPPON The character of the countryside all around us plays an important part in many communities’ sense of place. This is particularly clear in the south-west of Britain, where Cornwall’s distinctive place-names – those that pre-date its assimilation into England – are completely different to those of neighbouring Devon (whose places have Old English names). But does this difference in the language of the landscape go any deeper, into the physical fabric of the landscape – its medieval and early post-medieval settlements and field systems? This is what Philip Treveil set out to discover, in his innovative analysis of landscape character in a study area that st