Affiliated Researchers

The research of Angus Winchester falls under two headings: landscape and environmental history, particularly of upland areas; and the local and regional identity in northern England, especially Cumbria. The focus of his work lies at the interface between past human societies and their environments at local and regional level, using Cumbria and elsewhere in northern England as the laboratory in which to explore questions and test hypotheses. Particular interests are the appropriation and exploitation of land in the medieval and early-modern periods; part of the goal is to offer a distinctive upland and northern English perspectives to balance the predominantly lowland, southern models of rural landscape history in Britain.

Much of his recent work has been on the history of resource management on common land and, in particular, the role of manor courts. His study of manor court byelaws and the management of common land, published as The Harvest of the Hills (2000),led on to further work on the records of manorial administration, including the Cumbrian Manorial Records Project. It has also been developed further in the 'Contested Common Land' project, a major project in collaboration with Newcastle Law School, which formed part of the AHRC Landscape & Environment Programme, the results of which were published in C. P. Rodgers et al. (2011), Contested Common Land: environmental governance past and present (London: Earthscan) (click here for more info on this publication).

Another strand of Winchester's research focuses on the history of Cumbria. In particular, he has prepared scholarly editions of key archival sources for the history of the region. His edition of Thomas Denton's Perambulation of Cumberland, 1687-8 (published in 2003) has made accessible one of the most detailed 1seventeenth-century topographical descriptions of an English county, while his edition of John Denton's History of Cumberland (published in 2010) provides a modern scholarly edition of the earliest attempt at a history of the county, compiledc.1600. Angus Winchester is also the leading researcher in the Victoria County History of Cumbria project, which aims to embark on researching and writing the history of every community in the county.