Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
The map is drawn on parchment, with the distinctive shape of the animal's neck to the
right. It covers an area of about 240 square miles. Inclesmoor is shown surrounded by vil-
lages and enclosed by a network of rivers: the Don, Ouse, and Trent join the Humber in the
north-east corner (lower left), while the Aire flows along the western edge of the map (on the
right), crossed by a road carried on a stout stone bridge. These rivers are imaginatively drawn
so that they seem to roll up like carpets at the map's edge, bounding the moor in the middle
so that it resembles an island.
Within this striking design the map beguiles with detail of both the built and natural en-
vironment. The central moor and surrounding pastures are drawn like a tapestry, covered in
marshland plants, while trees crowd round the villages, and rather impressionistic willows
appear as smudges along the rivers. Churches and houses, bridges in solid stone or mere
planks, and wayside crosses, are all drawn in bird's-eye view, so that the viewer appears to
be looking down on them. Each village is shown with realistic buildings rather than sym-
bolic images. Timber-framed houses have different cruck patterns, roofs may be thatched or
tiled, and churches are shown with spires or towers. Some features appear larger than others;
a stone cross just to the left below the moor is drawn larger than the village next to it, pre-
sumably because it was an important locus in the dispute.
Another version of this map, smaller and simpler in design, was drawn in an early 15th
century volume with other documents kept as a record of the dispute in case it arose again.
The Duchy of Lancaster was one of the parties to the dispute, with St Mary's Abbey at York,
and both maps passed to the Duchy's archives, now held at The National Archives. Whether
the smaller map was a distillation of the essential features of this larger, and therefore earlier
or contemporary one, or the larger map was a later elaboration of the smaller one, the map-
maker knew the terrain that he drew in such detail from life, presenting through one of relat-
ively few surviving maps from this time a striking vision of the medieval rural landscape.
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