This book looks at the evolution of rural settlement in Scotland from the Mesolithic period through to the improving movement of the 18th and 19th centuries. The main emphasis is on changes in society and technology, but the book also considers how the development of the physical landscape laid the foundation for such changes. The author strikes a balance between general perspectives (including relevant contextual materials such as the political structures) and local studies, with much emphasis on individual sites. Lack of documentation prior to the 10th century places particular importance on the archaeological evidence, but imaginative interpretation of this evidence has led to a major re-evaluation. Ideas emphasizing continuity of settlement and local adaptation are replacing older ’invasionist’ theories emphasizing Celtic war lords and broch-building pirates.

Originally published in 1980, this book examines the evolution of the Scottish landscape from pre-historic times to the mid-nineteenth century. It considers the way in which the structural base of agriculture and the changing farming ‘system’ came to alter the Scottish rural landscape. This book, with its focus on the underlying landscape processes, gives a developmental view of landscape change. It therefore considers the crucial question of the rate and pace of landscape change and argues that the Scottish landscape was not the product of a few brief phases of quite rapid development but rather the result of a continual and gradual process of change. It also looks at the regional variation of landscape change and establishes the importance of regional linkages in the diffusion of ideas especially in new technology.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- List of figures -- List of plates -- Abbreviations -- 1 Introduction -- 2 The physical environment -- 3 Scotland prior to the Iron Age -- 4 Iron Age forts and brochs -- 5 The Dark Ages: Picts, Scots and Vikings -- 6 Medieval Scotland -- 7 The improving movement -- 8 Conclusion -- Appendix -- Bibliography -- Index

First published in 1980, this book looks at the social structure of 18th and 19th century rural Britain. It is particularly concerned with the relationship of landlord and peasant in the rural village and examines the open-closed model of English rural social structure in great depth. In doing so, it explores the ways in which the estate system influenced urban development and how the peasant system facilitated the industrialisation of many villages. This book will be of particular interest to students of Victorian and social history, industrialisation and urbanisation.

This is the changing story of Britain as it has been preserved in our fields, roads, buildings, towns and villages, mountains, forests and islands. From our suburban streets that still trace out the boundaries of long vanished farms to the Norfolk Broads, formed when medieval peat pits flooded, from the ceremonial landscapes of Stonehenge to the spread of the railways - evidence of how man's effect on Britain is everywhere. In The Making of the British Landscape, eminent historian, archaeologist and farmer, Francis Pryor explains how to read these clues to understand the fascinating history of our land and of how people have lived on it throughout time. Covering both the urban and rural and packed with pictures, maps and drawings showing everything from how we can still pick out Bronze Age fields on Bodmin Moor to how the Industrial Revolution really changed our landscape, this book makes us look afresh at our surroundings and really see them for the first time.

By comparison with their English counterparts, Scottish nineteenth-century railways have suffered from a degree of neglect by economic historians. Most of the existing literature is written for the railway enthusiast, concentrating mainly on topography, mechanical developments and entertaining episodes. Few of these books cover the whole of Scotland and most are treatments of single companies or of particular dramatic events. This study covers the earliest period of Scottish railway history, from the years of the first waggonway developments in the eighteenth century to the advent of the railway mania of the 1840s. It concentrates on the planning and formation of the various railways, the problems and achievements associated with their construction, and the financial records of the companies up to 1844. The first two chapters cover the horse-drawn waggonways of the eighteenth century and the coal railways of the early nineteenth century, while Chapters 3–5 cover the railways of the 1830s and 1840s.