Designs upon the Land: Elite Landscapes of the Middle Ages

One of the most satisfying aspects of this book is that it is unashamedly interdisciplinary. * MEDIEVAL SETTLEMENT RESEARCH * A thought-provoking and timely overview of medieval elite landscapes. [...] This volume offers the first attempt to pull together a great deal of detailed research in an interpretative analysis with many plans and illustrations. * ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW * A stimulating study. Creighton has certainly achieved his stated aim of demonstrating that the medieval social elite did commission and appreciate designed landscapes, though their motives and perceptions were not always the same as those of later centuries. * JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL ARCHAEOLOGY * Creighton has produced an eminently readable, accessible, and thoroughly researched assessment of the character and purpose of medieval elite landscapes in the British Isles. [...] This book is an important study that demonstrates the key role archaeology should play in the study of medieval elite culture. * SPECULUM * Whether to those new to the subject, or to those well read in it, this study can be unreservedly recommended. * LANDSCAPE HISTORY * An admirable scholarly work with an easy command of a wide range of literature. ... [This] study ultimately succeeds in making us recognise that medieval elite landscapes were planned by people living and working within a complex and sophisticated culture which embraced and celebrated relationships to nature and environment that were very different to our own. * ENVIRONMENT & HISTORY * Creighton has written an impressive book that gives a general picture of a vivid and exciting field of research. This book should be on the bookshelf of anyone interested in castles, residences, gardens and medieval élite landscapes. * EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY * This stimulating book deserves to be read not just for its theory, but for its wide geographical range of little known sites. * WWW.GARDENHISTORYINSTITUTE.CO.UK * An excellent survey [that] will certainly make you reconsider many modern reconstructions of medieval gardens and landscapes. [...] Highly recommended. * CHICAGO BOTANIC GARDEN * Rescues the study of castles from their purely militaristic contexts and re-establishes them as places that are as much about poetry, art and the intellect as they are about the clash of swords. * CURRENT ARCHAEOLOGY *