A "relict landscape" in south-east Hertfordshire: archaeological and topographic investigations in the Wormley area

The evidence of field survey, excavation, documents and maps is combined to suggest an extensive ‘organised landscape’ of pre-medieval date in south-east Hertfordshire. This survives in part in the form modern roads and boundaries, but in part as earthworks buried within areas of ancient woodland. It is suggested that this, and other ‘co-axial’ landscapes in England, may have originated through the subdivision of an initially much sparser network of droveways and boundaries, associated with the management of livestock and the exploitation of upland wood-pastures.