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REVIEW BY MAGNUS ALEXANDER
This is a fascinating landscape history of a medieval ‘watermilling powerhouse’, which demonstrates that over 1,000 years of watermilling has had a huge impact on an apparently natural braided river. Most of the book consists of a chronological examination of the evidence for watermills and their associated landscapes. Understandably, the Romano-British and Anglo-Saxon periods are dealt with briefly and the Domesday chapter contains much of interest.
The book really hits its stride in the high medieval period and examines in detail the conflicts on an intensely exploited river – between different mills and their owners, between conflicting uses (such as milling and navigation), between upstream and downstream settlements, and between the individual and public good – many of which persisted for centuries, well into the modern era. The later chapters on the decline of watermilling and return of the navigation, and its decline in turn to be replaced by more modern perceptions of the landscape (aesthetic and leisure) are equally interesting and frame the final discussions of modelling and managing these locations. This last is of vital importance given the current threats these sites face.
The Watermills and Landscape of the River Great Ouse, Cambridgeshire
Bridget Flanagan and Keith Grimwade
Oxbow, £29.95
ISBN 978-1914427411
