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Paper short abstract:

Late medieval wetlands were sites of conflict between migratory settlement and powerful monastic institutions seeking to reformulate the landscape to fulfil religious and economic visions. Combining archaeological and written records offers new perspectives on these spaces of fluid negotiation.

Paper long abstract:

In late medieval England, fertile estuarine wetlands became sites of conflict between long-established modes of migratory settlement and increasingly powerful monastic institutions with their own conceptions of order, usefulness, and productivity. This paper examines how two communities of Augustinian canons contributed to the transformation of wetlands into dry land, including the priories of Bilsington (Romney Marsh, Kent) and Burscough (West Lancashire Coastal Plain). With varying success, each institution attempted to impose fixed legal and economic frameworks onto fluid and constantly changing landscapes. This was based on a comprehension of an immovable land-sea binary upheld by natural law and embodied in texts such as the Bible and Augustine of Hippo’s Literal Meaning of Genesis (415). Installing complex drainage systems, therefore, was akin to an act of creation, neatly separating water from land in previously liminal landscapes.

For a fuller understanding than previous studies, the reclamation process must be charted through documentary and archaeological sources. At Bilsington, rentals and charters are combined with a geophysical survey allowing reconstruction of previously lost field and drainage systems. At both priories, reclamation was top-down and institutionally driven. Certainly, within geographies devoid of stable natural features, individual tenants had little voice in the demarcation of property rights. Burscough Priory, for instance, used crosses as legal reference points creating a sacred landscape which expressed their seigneurial power. Hence, in transitory wetlands, individuals had an inherent disadvantage over organised, well-resourced institutions able to reformulate the environment to fulfil their own religious and economic visions.