From pre-history to the present day our landscape has been transformed by dramatic human disturbance, triggered by the rise and fall of populations and their need to be fed, housed, and employed. These changes have built-up layers of evidence which today present historians with exciting new insights about land use and rural communities of the past. In this groundbreaking new study Joan Thirsk and her team of distinguished contributors, many of whom live in the very landscape they so intimately describe, invite us to explore the historical richness of the English landscape. Each chapter synthesizes the very latest thinking and provides fresh perspectives on its specific subject. The first ten chapters in turn describe the characteristic features of the main regional landscape types, including fenlands, downlands, woodlands, marshlands, and moorlands, showing that, however physically scattered they may be, they have been moulded by successive generations to produce many uniting similarities.