| Summary: | This study sets out to explore the spatial development, changing use and survival of the post-medieval deer park in Shropshire. In so doing, it is hoped to add to and complement a body of research that has been assembled for other parts of the country, in the belief that individual regional studies can throw light on the wider national picture. Previous research has largely neglected the post-medieval period; this thesis aims to fill that gap. Following the Norman Conquest, Shropshire was a semi-autonomous region governed by barons appointed by the king, and subsequently by the Council of the Marches. This study examines regional differences - physical, political, social and economic - but also highlights the impact of selected national events on local circumstances, and those points at which local circumstances achieved national significance. At the centre of the discussion lies the survival of the deer park, and the extent to which it was dependent on outside events or local conditions. The remit of the thesis covers the period c.1500 - c.1900. However, the opening chapter concerns the Middle Ages, providing the context essential to an understanding of the proliferation of deer parks following the Norman Conquest, which reached a peak in the thirteenth century. It serves to introduce topics that are pursued throughout subsequent chapters: the changing nature of hunting, the status conferred by the ownership of a deer park, the appearance of a non-aristocratic professional landowner, and a developing aesthetic awareness of the deer park through the centuries that led to spatial changes in its appreciation and location. Maps, supported by documentary evidence, are used as a tool in tracing the statistics of deer park survival and numbers are recorded and analysed, in order to compare trends that are local with those that are national.
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