2011 presentation for Fenlands Environment Heritage Project

1. East Anglia Fenlands
through Time
Original 2010 presentation
University of Cambridge
Division of Archaeology
Fens Historic Environment Project

2. Introduction
• Darby (1969, 1974) describes the economic geography of East Anglia from the
1087 Domesday census, and the 1327-34 and the 1640-1641 Subsidy tax
assessments. The switch of wealth from the Uplands in the north and south, to
the Lowlands in the centre, is illustrated through 55 map figures. Some are re-
created here as thematic maps, using Ordnance Survey OpenData released this
month under Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA
3.0) as detailed below.
• NOTICES:
Contains data © Crown copyright and database rights 2010, 2013 Ordnance
Survey
Boundary Line data quality assured using 1SpatialCloud Online Validation Service
Reproduced with the permission of the British Geological Survey (BGS) ©NERC.
All rights Reserved

3. Premise
• Ordnance Survey released County & Parish Boundary Line data
• HC Darby documented Fenlands economic history 1087 - 1877
• 35 out of 55 figures in two books were used
• Parishes taken as constant since Domesday Census
• Attribute data added from figures to Parish shape files
• Classification rationalised and harmonised for correlation
• Created thematic maps that can be stepped through time
• Overlaid scanned and web maps of surficial geology

4. Classification from original metadata
Subsidy year 1327 1332
assessmt. "20th" "15th"
criteria 1/20 1/15 /1000 acre /500 acre
Darby 15 20 30 15
classificn. 30 40 60 30
values 45 60 90 45
original 15 20
derived 23 30
used 38 50
Classification Subsidy
Domesday
SurfGeol R G B Bowring
0 0 155 155 155 = 0
1 1 0 0 255 0 - 10
3 2 155 0 255 10 - 25
4 3 255 0 255 25 - 50
6 4 255 0 0 > 50
1641
Note: University of Cambridge Division of Archaeology had no mapping software - this was before ArcGIS for Home Use and ArcGIS Online - so next pages are QGIS maps

5. East Anglia agriculture wealth distribution

6. Wealth distribution migration over time

7. Restricted datasets over time

8. Correlate lay subsidy (L) & land cover (R)

9. Land cover attributed from map figure

10. Land cover from scanned figure (BGS origin)

11. Land cover from BGS web mapping service

12. Posters