Organised by the Medieval Settlement Research Group (MSRG) as a series of seminar workshops around Britain, concluding with a plenary conference held in Leicester which will provide an overview of the seminars. The purpose of the workshops is designed to open up new avenues in medieval settlement studies, by exploring the mentality and culture that lay behind the founding, use and abandonment of settlements. Why were some settlements given regular plans? Why were divergent decisions made about the division between public and private space? How did the inhabitants regard their resources, draw boundaries around them, and defend them? How did they cope with changes, such as environmental degradation and economic crisis? What lay behind the preservation of older features of the landscape, and how was colonisation planned and designed? Did villagers have a sense of identity, and to what extent did they have wider horizons?
-Planning and meaning - Belfast, 23 February 2007.
Organisers: Mark Gardiner and Keith Lilley.
http://www.britarch.ac.uk/msrg/
