This lecture will examine the consequences of the great climatic swings associated with the 'Little Ice Age'. This period of time, spanning approximately six hundred years from 1300 CE ('of the common era', equivalent to A.D.1300) through to 1900 CE, was a period of very great shifts in climate patterns, but certainly was not an 'Ice Age'.

The lecture will outline the main climate patterns before the Little Ice Age (LIA) during the Mediaeval warm period, and climate patterns during the LIA. The impact upon the natural environment of the British Isles will be discussed and the impact upon humans will be considered. Natural environmental change that was not associated with climate will be considered, as will certain important elements of social and political history.

In academic circles there was once a time when climate change was considered to have fundamentally affected human behaviour, and then a consensus arose that such environmental determinism was all bunk. More recently it has become understood that complex relationships between circumstantial events (e.g. the outbreak of plague), Malthusian constraints upon a solar powered economy and climate can conspire to produce ranges of possible action that were hitherto neither thinkable, nor necessary.

For example, fishermen would not willingly choose to chase cod to the other side of the Atlantic if there were nearer, more plentiful supplies. During the mediaeval period, this was not the case. Having considered options on dealing with the consequences of a changed environment (almost undoubtedly caused by climatic change), decisions were taken to invest in radical new opportunities, not only for altering Britain, but for creating a New England. The possibilities were endless...

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Self Assessment

If you know the answers to the following questions, you have achieved the aims of today's lecture:

Awaiting questions.

 

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This Week's House

Croxden Abbey, nr. Alton, Staffs.

The abbey was founded in 1179 by monks from a Cistercian house in Normandy. Considered to be a relatively compact abbey compared to other English monasteries, Croxden Abbey incorporates elements of architectural design associated with more elegant and sumptuous Cistercian abbeys.

Cistercian monks were a strict order of Benedictine monks who believed in the virtues of prayer, solitude, manual labour and the renunciation of tithes and offerings. The practical upshot of this was that they became one of the most ruthlessly efficient proto-industrial organisations yet seen in Britain. They farmed intensively and successfully, and were entirely self-sufficient in all manner of manufactures.

The Cistercians desire for solitude led them to parts of northern and western England that were sparsely inhabited (waste in domesday terms) and they soon became great landholders. As climate improved during the mediaeval warm period, human occupation of the uplands grew. In the later middle ages the monasteries were, at least in part, responsible for the depopulation of the English highlands. Climate change had an impact, as did the Black Death and other Malthusian limits to growth, but the monasteries deliberately engaged in the clearance of people from the English highlands, and replaced them with sheep.

The English uplands have remained depopulated until today. The highest village in England (disputedly in Britain) is Flash, in Staffordshire. At an altitude of 403 metres (1,158 feet) above sea level, that leaves an awful lot of land above the height of Flash that has no village. Elsewhere monasteries pioneered enclosure on their 'granges'. There are many places in North Staffordshire that have the word 'grange' as part of their name, or 'hey/hay/hayes'. A 'hey' is the old name for a mediaeval enclosure, and is frequently associated with monasteries.

The wealth and power of the monasteries grew throughout the middle ages, and so did the resentment of them. Whilst there were many conflicts of conscience during the Reformation, the destruction both of the abbeys and the monastic grip on power passed with relatively little protest from the general populace.

The abbey pictured above is all that is left of one of the three main Cistercian abbeys founded in the Staffordshire Moorlands. An abbey consisted of many types of building, all suited to purpose (dormitory, kitchen, dining , prayer etc.). Abbeys were built in Gothic style, the monasteries were dedicated to the glory of God, and exhuded power and wealth. Croxden Abbey is an example of 'Early English' Gothic architecture, characterised by tall, elongated windows (lancets) without mullions (horizontal bars), grouped in threes, fives, or sevens; the pointed arch; and dog-tooth (zig-zag) ornament.

A monastery was also founded at Hulton (now Abbey Hulton) in Stoke-on-Trent. Now consumed and destroyed by the Potteries conurbation, the name reflects how great the environmental changes have been in this part of the Staffordshire Moorlands.