A Persistence of Place: A Study of Continuity and Regionality in the Roman and Early Medieval Rural Settlement Patterns of Norfolk, Kent and Somerset

Abstract

There are so many people to thank for all the support, encouragement and advice that I have received over the last three years and the period of study leading up to it. I'd like to thank my mum for starting me down this road as a mere slip of a thing, attempting to find Roman remains in Ilchester (I was looking in the wrong place but I didn't know it then!) and my undergraduate supervisor, Dr Caradoc Peters, who instilled in me the passion, drive and skills to take my studies further. Also thanks to Steve Hartgroves for teaching me not to take it all so seriously! Thanks, too, go to all those people who helped me with the practical skills I needed: Bryn Tapper and Jane Powning at Cornwall HES for their help with GIS matters, Drs Richard Sandover and Chris Smart at Exeter for similar help and advice, and Chris, especially, for encouraging me to persevere in the long haul to finishing the writing up. Thanks to Dr Ben Pears for advice and help with soils characterisation. To Anj Beckham, at Norfolk County Council, Ben Croxford, at Kent County Council, and Chris Webster, at Somerset County Council, for providing me with all the digital information, reports and historic environment records for my regional studies, also huge thanks, as this research would not have been so straightforward without their help. Special thanks and acknowledgement go to my supervisors, Professor Stephen Rippon and Professor Oliver Creighton, for all their help and assistance over the last three years. To Steve, in particular, go thanks for the opportunity to carry out my doctoral research within the scope of the Fields of Britannia Project and for his untiring interest and support.Finally, I would like to thank all those people who were always there to give me support and encouragement, or who dragged me away from the computer to make sure I kept my sanity and perspective: