Roadworks

Roadworks: Medieval Britain, medieval roads is a groundbreaking interdisciplinary study of roads and wayfinding in medieval England, Wales and Scotland. It looks afresh at the relationship between the road as a material condition of daily life and the formation of local and national communities, arguing that the business of road maintenance, road travel and wayfinding constitutes social bonds. It challenges the long-held picture of a medieval Britain lacking in technological sophistication, passively inheriting Roman roads and never engineering any of its own. Previous studies of medieval infrastructure tend to be discipline-specific and technical. This accessible collection draws out the imaginative, symbolic, and cultural significance of the road. The key audience for this book is scholars of medieval Britain (early and late) in all disciplines. Its theoretical foundations will also ensure an audience among scholars of cultural studies, especially those in urban studies, transport studies, and economic history.

A groundbreaking, interdisciplinary study of roads and wayfinding in medieval England, Wales, and Scotland. It looks afresh at the relationship between the road as a material condition of daily life and the formation of local and national communities.

A groundbreaking, interdisciplinary study of roads and wayfinding in medieval England, Wales, and Scotland. It looks afresh at the relationship between the road as a material condition of daily life and the formation of local and national communities.

Introduction: Roads and writing – Valerie Allen and Ruth Evans
1. Sources for the English medieval road system – Paul Hindle
2. Once a highway, always a highway: roads and English law, c.1150–1300 – Alan Cooper
3. When things break: mending roads, being social – Valerie Allen
4. The word on the street: Chaucer and the regulation of nuisance in post-plague London – Sarah Rees Jones
5. Getting there: wayfinding in the Middle Ages – Ruth Evans
6. The function of material and spiritual roads in the English eremitic tradition – Michelle M. Sauer
7. The Royal Itinerary and roads in England under Edward I – Michael Prestwich
8. The pilgrimage road in late medieval literature Shayne – Aaron Legassie
9. The romance of the road in Athelston and two late medieval Robin Hood ballads – Chris Chism
10. London: the hub of an English river transport network, 1250–1550 – Claire Martin
11. Conquest, roads and resistance in medieval Wales – Dylan Foster Evans
12. Trackless, impenetrable and under-developed? Roads, colonisation and environmental transformation in the Anglo-Scottish border zone c.1100 to c.1300 – Richard Oram
Index