The Development of Hampshire's Historic Landscape Character : A Brief Outline
While there is evidence of Mesolithic and earlier hunter-gatherers, especially on the sands of eastern Hampshire, most of the earliest evidence of early human impact on the landscape comes from the chalk. Here there are extensive traces of people's activities from the Neolithic onwards. Areas of relatively good soils were extensively settled by the late prehistoric and Roman period, by when they were likely to have been a predominantly agricultural landscape, possibly as clear of trees as it is today.
The sands and clays of the remaining areas tend to be less resilient to agricultural exploitation, and the more acidic soils in particular are prone to over-exploitation and exhaustion. This happened as early as the Bronze Age in the New Forest. Nevertheless, these areas too have a long history of exploitation. The New Forest was an important centre for pottery making in the later Roman period, and in the north of the county, Silchester was one of the main Roman cities of Britain, though it is not clear how fully its hinterland was exploited.
Hampshire was not among the earliest areas of Saxon settlement. In the early middle ages a high proportion of the county was Royal Forest. This principally meant that it was subject to Forest Law, rather than being covered with trees. Nevertheless, substantial areas of heathland and woodland formed parts of the area designated as Royal Forest. Through its special status, the New Forest is exceptional in having retained the old historic patterns of open shared grazing lands mixed with scattered settlement and occasional villages which were once generally the character of the heathland areas of the county. In general, Hampshire is particularly well provided with woodland, much of it of ancient origin.
Over almost
the whole of the county except the most open chalklands, there is evidence of
the clearance of woodland in the form of "assart" field patterns (
as shown to the right) resulting from the gradual encroachment of open farmland
into areas of woodland or wood pasture.
Although Hampshire did have open fields in the middle ages, many of these were enclosed early, before the general parliamentary enclosure movement. Large parts of the county have field systems that reflect informal, mainly pre-parliamentary enclosure. Much of the chalk was open downland up till the late 18th century, although large parts of this area had been arable in late prehistoric and Roman times.
During the 19th century much of the open downland, heathland, woodland and extensive wood pasture of the former Royal Forests were enclosed, often under Act of Parliament. Arguably this was reflecting the most extensive and radical rural change of the last 200 years. Large parts of the chalk were enclosed or re-enclosed with medium to large straight-sided fields, which are the predominant characteristic of much of the central and western parts of the county.
During the last 125 years or so general processes of industrialisation, and the expansion of trade have also had a major impact on the character of the county. It was in this period that large scale urbanisation took place, expanding from key, long-standing centres of defence and trade at Portsmouth and Southampton. The growth of London, and of defence establishments on the Surrey heaths have also had their effect on the proliferation of urban and sub-urban growth in north-east Hampshire.
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