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This book provides a regional synthesis of our present understandings of the medieval rural landscape in Devon and Cornwall. The choice of these two counties is justified by their place in the development of landscape studies, from key works by W.G.V. Balchin (1954: Cornwall: An Illustrated History of the Landscape) and W.G. Hoskins (1954: Devon; rev. ante, lxx [1955], 351–2): through recent important work by H. Fox and O. Padel (2000: Cornish Lands of the Arundells of Lanherne), to important technological developments through Geographical Information Systems in Historical Landscape Characterisation. This makes for an interesting volume in which some related historiographical comment and review of how landscape historians and archaeologists have worked is recognised by nearly all the authors. It is disappointing, therefore, that the shape, meaning and significance of this regional focus is never spelled out more clearly or placed into a wider context. Although much can be gained through implication, therefore, this book rarely delivers an appraisal for how studies within the geographical region of Devon and Cornwall can inform work elsewhere. Indeed, even the significance of this volume within the South-West is sometimes lost. With three chapters dealing specifically with Devon, two with Cornwall and one mostly with Cornwall, it is only the chapter by Creighton and Freeman that explicitly draws attention to the medieval landscape of both Devon and Cornwall. This is not to say that the other chapters are necessarily myopic—indeed, Franklin's strongly relates her work to many areas of the UK—but I feel that a regional ‘golden thread’ is never firmly established with which to underline the significance of the collection as a whole.
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