Urban landscapes and the cultural politics of territorial control in Anglo‐Norman England

Abstract

It is examined how urban landscapes were physically shaped to meet the changing needs and desires of aristocratic elites during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Using case studies within the context of Anglo‐Norman England, it is argued that newly‐created towns were designed to help aristocratic lords establish and retain their political control along the frontier of the Norman kingdom, and that the forms of these towns embody the cultural processes of this territorial expansion. The first part of the paper places Norman England in the context of an expanding high medieval Europe and considers the idea of an ‘urban renaissance’ as part of this expansion. Following this, some of the problems in representing, or mapping, medieval urban landscapes are discussed. The rest of the paper is devoted to morphological studies of three Norman ‘new towns’, Alnwick, Bridgnorth and Ludlow, in order to show how the production of these urban landscapes was related to wider socio‐political changes effected under the authority of an aristocratic hegemony. The selection of these three towns also provides an opportunity to review previous attempts at understanding their medieval designs.

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